“It’s life,” he said. “There’s no keeping clear. And if you do keep clear, you might almost as well die. So if I’ve got to be broken open again, I have.”
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This was a beautifully descriptive and emotionally immersive book. The descriptions of the woods and how “knowing” they are really spoke to me. Connie’s deadened sexual nature that was reawakened is a focus of the book, but not the main or only focus. 

I loved the plot timing and foreshadowing of Connie and Clifford running into Mellors right after Clifford said she should produce an heir with another man. I thought it was telling how Mellors was one of the only men who had an inner dialogue/inner life presented to the reader. This marked him as Connie’s equal. The rejection of an offer to enjoy her life in London shows she had an alternate path and really chose her life and love with Mellors.

Lawrence was writing about PTSD and the impact of war before it was part of the vernacular. I loved the analogy of the bruise in the self and in society for this. I noticed Lawrence kept this ongoing theme of Clifford‘s yellow coloring when he was angry and jealous, which was a subtle rhetoric of how offputting these traits were in him. 

Beyond the love story, this was a remarkably critical anticapitalist text for this period. This was done through Ivy Bolton’s lost husband, the miner’s lives, and the destruction of their homes and societal structures. The sensual descriptions were so poetic and deeply moving, and again very advanced for their time. 

A very touching and thoughtful novel.