Lady Chatterly's Lover, pp 85-146

I find it interesting that in this section we find the sort of exodus of Constance and advent of Mrs. Bolton in Clifford's life, with Connie spending more and more time away from him and Mrs. Bolton spending almost every minute with him (becoming almost a student of Clifford, as Connie notes). But it's also interesting that Clifford has an almost surgical attachment with Connie - he cannot seem to be without her for even moments at a time, and has something like a panic attack when she closes a door behind her. Something like that implies that there is a sort of connection between the two people, but Connie, more and more, cannot seem to be more uninterested in him and becomes almost sick when she is in the same room with him.

Either because, or it was the cause of this waning connection between the married couple, Connie gets closer to the Gamekeeper, making love to him at least three (possibly four, I cannot recall) times in the span of sixty pages. It's also interesting that for Connie, the sex is changing - the more times she does it, the more times she seems to fall for Mellers. But on the other hand, she has an almost love/hate relationship with the man, sort of detesting him but wants nothing but him. It seems, before the final time in the woods, that Connie wants to avoid him at all costs, but afterward, when the two have their "crisis" together, she feels in sync with this man. It's even possible that because of this (or maybe just all the times they've been together and it finally came to this), Connie believes that she may be pregnant with his child. If that is the case, then what does this mean for their relationship? Will she cut off contact with him because she now has an heir for Clifford? Or will she continue the relationship regardless? Personally, I don't think that Connie will just stop their relationship, but it is possible that she might gradually wane it down because she thinks that with the child she and Clifford can regain some kind of spark.

The idea of the baby most definitely excites Connie, and just seeing the red-haired tyke at the Flint's home gets her metaphorical juices going. It might be possible that just seeing the child made her believe to be pregnant after that last encounter with the gamekeeper.

At the end of this section, Mrs. Bolton becomes quite the nosy Nancy, but what will her finding out that Connie has a lover (and that it is the lower-classed Mellers) do to the momentum of the story? It will definitely be interesting to see what she does. Will she tell Clifford and potentially devastate his fragile world, or will she keep quiet and possibly blackmail Connie for some kind of gain, monetary or otherwise?

But, regardless of all of this, I really do think that Mellers was an idiot for going to the Chatterly estate and just standing on the fringe of the courtyard and just watching the house - he might as well have gone to the door, gave it a swift knock, and straight-up told Clifford that he was sleeping with his wife.

T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men"

- I find it interesting that the “Hollow Men” of Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” are characters of the Divine Comedy, because that’s also the name of a Kevin Bacon movie...This is true, yes, but that’s not the interesting part. What I find intriguing is that many times men coming back from a particularly traumatizing experience in a warzone or some sort of battle scenario are referred to as “hollow” – they are empty on the inside, not physically, but emotionally. They seem to be cut off from their own reality and cannot escape the battlefield, no matter how hard they try.
- In regards to the lines of section/stanza IV, “In this last of meeting places / We grope together / And avoid speech / Gathered on this beach of the tumid river,” I feel it has a direct correlation with the “trench warfare” that soldiers had to engage in during WWI. For a large percentage of the soldiers who went over the top, it was their last meeting place, because entering the “tumid river” that is the battlefield was certain death. The silence had to be deafening, with the cracks and pops of far-off machine gunfire intermingled with the loud booms of mortar fire the soundtrack to their almost-definite demise. It is possible that the only consolation was that the man you were sandwiched next to was in the exact same boat as you – no one was above another in the dark, dirty, dangerous trench.
- I think Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” can be applied to any war, but this work and WWI have numerous parallels that are too hard to ignore and some that, though subtle, are there, you just need to look a little deeper.