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Throughout Lady Chatterley’s Lover, flowers symbolize the beauty and strength of nature, even in the face of mechanized threats. Connie’s affair with gamekeeper Oliver Mellors begins in the springtime, as violets and daffodils push their way out of the cold ground. It is only fitting, then, that flowers often stand for the—natural, biological—urges that Connie and Mellors feel for each other. Connie, describing the flowers near Mellors’s hut as “erect” and “alive,” endows them with phallic power and attraction, while Mellors touches Connie during sex as tenderly as “if she were a flower.” Eventually, Mellors and Connie even decorate each other with forget-me-nots and primroses, threading the flowers through each other’s pubic hair as a way of expressing their desire and care.
But just as flowers represent the pure, natural love that Connie and Mellors share, they also hint at the fragility of such love in the face of Clifford’s more mechanical interests. Connie often reflects that the mines, which Clifford fights so valiantly to grow, are “killing the very air” that the flowers need to grow. Moreover, Clifford’s obsession with literature and poetry also does damage to the flowers’ straightforward beauty; instead of appreciating flowers as they are, Connie laments that Clifford uses words to “suck […] all the life-sap out of living things.” In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, then, flowers symbolize not only natural beauty and desire but also the difficulty of preserving these natural pleasures, especially in the face of over-intellectualization and technological destruction.
Flowers Quotes in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
The Lady Chatterley’s Lover quotes below all refer to the symbol of Flowers. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 8
Quotes
“Thou still unravished bride of quietness,” [Clifford] quoted.—“It seems to fit flower so much better than Greek vases.”
“Ravished is such a horrid word!” [Connie] said. “It’s only people who ravish things.”
“Oh, I don't know…snails and things,” he said.
“Even snails only eat them, and bees don’t ravish.”
She was angry with him, turning everything into words. Violets were Juno’s eyelids, and windflowers were unravished brides. How she hated words, always coming between her and life: they did the ravishing, if anything did: ready-made words and phrases, sucking all the life sap out of living things.
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Chapter 10
Quotes
Yet it was spring, and the bluebells were coming in the wood, and the leaf-buds on the hazels were opening like the spatter of green rain. How terrible it was that it should be spring, and everything cold-hearted, cold-hearted. Only the hens, fluffed so wonderfully on the eggs were warm with their hot, brooding female bodies! […]
Life, life! Pure, sparky, fearless new life! New life! So tiny and so utterly without fear! […]
Connie was fascinated. And at the same time, never had she felt so acutely the agony of her own female forlornness. It was becoming unbearable.
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The fault lay there, out there, in those evil electric lights and diabolical rattlings of engines. There, in the world of the mechanical greedy, greedy mechanism and mechanized greed, sparkling with lights and gushing hot metal and whirring with traffic, there lay the vast evil thing, ready to destroy whatever did not conform. Soon it would destroy the wood, and the bluebells would spring no more. All vulnerable things must perish under the rolling and running of iron.
He thought with infinite tenderness of the woman. Poor thing, she too had some of the vulnerability of the wild hyacinth, she wasn't all tough rubber goods and platinum, like the modern girl. And they would do her in! As sure as life, they would do her in as they do in all naturally tender life. Tender! Somewhere she was tender.
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Chapter 13
Quotes
And the chair began to advance slowly, joltingly down the beautiful broad riding over with blue encroaching hyacinths. Oh last of all ships, through the hyacinths in shallows! Opinions on the last wild waters, sailing in the last voyage of our civilization! Wither, oh weird wheeled ship, your slow course steering. Quiet and complacent, Clifford sat at the wheel of adventure: in his old black hat and tweed jacket, motionless and cautious. Oh captain, my Captain, our splendid trip is done! Not yet though! Downhill in the wake, came Constance in her grey dress, watching the chair jolt downwards.
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Chapter 15
Quotes
And he stuck flowers in the hair of his own body, and wound a bit of creeping-jenny round his penis, and stuck a single bell of a hyacinth in his naval. She watched him with amusement, his odd intentness. And she pushed a campion flower in his mustache, where it stuck, dangling under his nose.
“This is John Thomas marryin’ Lady Jane,” he said. “And we mun let Constance an’ Oliver go their separate ways. Maybe—”
[…] “Maybe what? Go on with what you were going to say,” she insisted.
“Ay, what was I going to say?”
He had forgotten. And it was one of the great disappointments of her life, that he never finished.
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Get the entire Lady Chatterley’s Lover LitChart as a printable PDF.
Flowers Symbol Timeline in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
The timeline below shows where the symbol Flowers appears in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
...time, Connie goes for walks in the park, taking in the autumn leaves and the flowers in spring. She plays hostess to the intellectual men that Clifford invites to Wragby, all...
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Chapter 3
...Michaelis is unscrupulous about pursuing success, whereas Clifford is so timid. When Michaelis appears, holding flowers and looking sad, Connie reflects that she is in love with him. With her lover...
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Chapter 7
...does not forgive Connie for outsourcing his care, feeling that she has killed “the real flower” of their intimacy. Connie feels that the metaphorical flower was never very beautiful to begin...
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Chapter 8
...the meadow, she is reminded of Mellors’s shirtless body—“like a lonely pistil of an invisible flower.” For the first time in months, Connie feels the stirrings of desire.
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It is a cold day, but Connie feels cheered by the spring flowers (primroses and violets) that have sprung up in the hard ground. When she at last...
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...though they are drooping, she is confident they will revive quickly. Clifford quotes Shakespeare on flowers, and Connie, annoyed, remarks that there is no “connection” between this poetry and the flowers’...
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...killing the very air,” she laments, with their boredom and discontent and anger. Connie gathers flowers for Clifford, and he again begins quoting poetry. This angers Connie: “how she hated words,”...
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Chapter 10
...to frustrate Connie, and even letters from Michaelis now disgust her. Spring begins, and the flowers start to grow. But Connie only resents the life around her—it is warm outside, but...
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...running of iron.” Mellors cannot help but think that Connie has the tenderness of a flower, so unlike the other women of her era.
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...than the tea at Wragby, though Mrs. Flint does not believe her) and the beautiful flowers. After about an hour, Connie starts to head home. As she goes, Connie notices an...
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Chapter 11
That afternoon, Connie and Mrs. Bolton work in the garden together, planting flowers. The two have gotten closer recently, and Connie now starts asking Mrs. Bolton about her...
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Chapter 12
After lunch, Connie goes into the woods again, which are overflowing with flowers. Mellors is not at his hut, so she goes to his cottage, where he is...
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...he loves her, so he does, his hands stroking her as if she were a flower.
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Chapter 13
...argue any longer, so they continue in silence. Connie notices that Clifford’s wheelchair is squashing flowers as it wheels across the forest. Privately, she wishes that the natural life around her...
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Chapter 15
...towards carnal desire and beauty. But Connie is barely listening; instead, she is threading forget-me-not flowers through Mellors’s pubic hair. Connie wants to share her observations about Mellors’s body, but Mellors...
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Mellors goes back to the house, but Connie takes her time in joining him, picking flowers as she goes. Connie sits by the fire to dry herself off, and Mellors admires...
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Now it is Mellors’s turn to weave flowers into Connie’s pubic hair; he wants to make sure she will “remember” him even in...
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Chapter 19
...is necessary, though he thinks that sex creates everything good in the world; even the flowers, Mellors believes, are born from the sun and the earth copulating. Finally, he signs off...
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