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3 (p. 81) There were present ... a learned, dry Baronet of fifty, who was always making witticisms and laughing at them heartily in a harsh, horse-laugh: Sir Joshua Malleson is based on the philosopher Lord Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Lawrence and Russell met through Lady Morrell. At first Russell considered Lawrence something of a genius, but later he described him as “a positive force for evil.”

4 (p. 104) Hurriedly, with a burrowing motion, he covered his head under the thick volume of Thucydides: The Greek historian Thucydides, who lived in the fifth century B.C., wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War. The volume saves Birkin’s life. Lady Morrell gave Lawrence a copy of this same volume, a gift that increased speculation about the exact nature of their relationship.

Chapter IX

1 (p. 109) Whilst the two girls waited, Gerald Crich trotted up on a red Arab mare: Lawrence uses the horse as both a symbol of Gerald’s power and his abuse of it, his snow-destructiveness. Note this is a mare, a female horse. In the chapter titled “Water-Party,” Gudrun will taunt bulls.

Chapter XI

1 (p. 122) An Island: Lawrence uses the island as a symbolic paradise where Ursula and Birkin, a new Adam and a new Eve, begin to deal with the modern problem of love.

2 (p. 126) “Look at all the millions of people who repeat every minute that love is the greatest, and charity is the greatest—and see what they are doing all the time”: See the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:13). The hypocrisy of people who praise love and charity has made Birkin disown the word “love.” It has become a cliché.

Chapter Xll

1 (p. 133) Carpeting: In this chapter, which is Hermione’s chapter, carpeting symbolizes her attempt to impose her will on Birkin in the form of decorating ideas. This chapter is opposed by a later chapter entitled “The Chair,” in which Ursula and Birkin buy a chair together and then decide that they have no need of possessions.

Chapter XIII

1 (p. 149) “I agree that the Wille zur Macht is a base and petty thing”: The German phrase means “will to power,” an idea popularized by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) meaning that all living things have an incarnate will to “grow, spread, seize, become predominant,” as Nietzshe put it in Beyond Good and Evil. In Women in Love, Lawrence makes clear he is against the Nietzschean will to power, but in his later works, The Plumed Serpent in particular, Lawrence appears very much in favor of it.

2 (p. 149) “Ah—Sophistries! It’s the old Adam”: Ursula is saying that Birkin is falling back into the old, historical pattern of thinking that men should dominate women. Lawrence also wrote two stories, “The Old Adam” and “New Eve and Old Adam,” on this topic.

Chapter XIV

1 (p. 163) So saying, having givenher word like a man, she and Ursula entered the frail craft, and pusbed gently off: Lawrence establishes here both the repressed condition of women, whose word is not ordinarily taken as binding, and Gudrun’s liberated ideas. Gudrun not only gives her word like a man but insists on rowing her own boat, an obviously symbolic action.

2 (p. 167) Nevertheless, Gudrun, with her arms outspread and her face uplifted, went in a strange palpitating dance towards the cattle: Gudrun’s dance symbolizes both her own liberation and her desire to dominate and even madden males, here symbolized by bulls.

3 (p. 170) “You have struck the first blow”: Gerald’s is a prophetic statement, one that anticipates the end of the novel.

4 (p. 172) “You mean we are flowers of dissolution—fleurs du mal?”: This is another reference to a French Symbolist poet, this time to Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), whose book Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) introduced both Symbolism and modernism into French poetry.

5 (p. 172) “You know Herakleitos says ‘a dry soul is best’”: The Greek philosopher Herakleitos, also spelled Heracleitus or Heraclitus (c. 540-480 B.C.), believed all things were in flux and therefore subject to constant change. He believed fire’s combustion was the origin of the cosmos, anticipating the “Big Bang