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Sir Malcolm Reid
Hilda is Sir Malcolm’s eldest child and Connie’s older sister. Though the two girls were close in their youth, as they get older, Hilda becomes more similar to her mother: snobby and easily frustrated, claiming socialist values at dinner parties but refusing to actually “mix” with the working classes. Though Hilda initially defends Connie in her marriage, forcing Clifford to hire Mrs. Bolton to protect her sister’s mental health, she turns against Connie once Mellors comes into the picture. Like Clifford, Hilda is satirized in the novel, as her sense of superiority is juxtaposed with her bad manners and awkward behavior.
Hilda Quotes in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
The Lady Chatterley’s Lover quotes below are all either spoken by Hilda or refer to Hilda. 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:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use the sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connection and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.
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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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Chapter 16
Quotes
“But you'll be through with him in a while,” [Hilda] said, “and then you'll be ashamed of having been connected with him. One can’t mix up with the working people.”
“But you were such a socialist! You're always on the side of the working classes.”
“I may be on their side in a political crisis, but being on their side makes me know how impossible it is to mix one's life with theirs. Not out of snobbery, but just because the whole rhythm is different.”
Hilda had lived among the real political intellectuals, so she was disastrously unanswerable.
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Hilda Quotes in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
The Lady Chatterley’s Lover quotes below are all either spoken by Hilda or refer to Hilda. 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:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
But a woman could yield to a man without yielding her inner, free self. That the poets and talkers about sex did not seem to have taken sufficiently into account. A woman could take a man without really giving herself away. Certainly she could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use the sex thing to have power over him. For she only had to hold herself back in sexual intercourse, and let him finish and expend himself without herself coming to the crisis: and then she could prolong the connection and achieve her orgasm and her crisis while he was merely her tool.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16
Quotes
“But you'll be through with him in a while,” [Hilda] said, “and then you'll be ashamed of having been connected with him. One can’t mix up with the working people.”
“But you were such a socialist! You're always on the side of the working classes.”
“I may be on their side in a political crisis, but being on their side makes me know how impossible it is to mix one's life with theirs. Not out of snobbery, but just because the whole rhythm is different.”
Hilda had lived among the real political intellectuals, so she was disastrously unanswerable.
