There she always felt secure, as if no one could see her, although as a matter of fact she was exposed to the stare of everyone.
Mabel feels guarded in the cemetery because among the graves, she is invulnerable and protected from the outside world by a thick cemetery wall. Mabel likes to clean up her mother’s grave because it gives her a sense of completion, purpose, and order. It brings her closer to the world of her deceased mother. Mabel feels exposed walking down the main street of her town and doesn't like to shop for groceries because she feels the judgemental stares of people who know her family's situation, but perhaps the atmosphere of a cemetery feels impervious to judgement, as if people wouldn't dare to bring gossip into a place of mourning.
Mindless and persistent, she seemed in a sort of ecstasy to be coming nearer to her fulfilment, her own glorification, approaching her dead mother, who was glorified.
Here, Lawrence addresses the unfortunate reality that Mabel's mother could only be so glorified in her death, because while she lived she was taken for granted as fulfilling her duties as a mother and wife. For Mabel, who is single and also taken for granted by her brothers, she feels like she can vicariously experience some of the glorification that her mother has in death by maintaining her headstone.
But so long as there was money, the girl felt herself established, and brutally proud, reserved.
Mabel has managed the house for the last ten years. However, it is only recently that money has become scarce, and she has been obliged to keep the home together in penury for her ineffectual brothers. Living among rudeness and ignorance, Mabel had gotten her proud dignity and confidence from money. The men might have been foul-mouthed, the women in the kitchen might have had bad reputations and her brothers might have illegitimate children—none of that mattered so long as they had money and servants. But now, without the money to protect them, Mabel keeps to herself and tries to avoid ill repute and disrespect.
He had a sensual way of uncovering his teeth when he laughed, and his bearing was stupid. Now he watched the horses with a glazed look of helplessness in his eyes, a certain stupor of downfall.
This quote portrays Joe as both alluring and repulsive. Lawrence describes his laugh as sensual, and for a moment we can understand how his boisterousness might be magnetic to people, how he might in his privileged, reckless manner come off as charismatic. At the same time, the imagery is clearly drawing a parallel to the way horses uncover their teeth when they neigh. Lawrence portrays Joe several times throughout the story in outright horselike imagery that speaks to his character's desparation and anxiety.
He would marry and go into harness. His life was over, he would be a subject animal now.
This quote, even more explicitly than the quote above, compares Joe to a horse. In this instance, the comparison is not physical but rather metaphorical, in that, by accepting a job from his father-in-law, he will be in a position of debt and subjugation to his wife. In horse terms, his days as an unbridled mustang are over, and he feels that he will be trained and drained of his wild, bachelor spirit.
Nothing, however, could shake the curious, sullen, animal pride that dominated each member of the family. Now, for Mabel, the end had come. Still she would not cast about her.
This quote foreshadows Mabel's (perhaps unconscious) decision to walk herself into the freezing lake. It also, once again, compares the Pervins' to animals. Mabel, however, is related more to a dog than to a horse, like her brother Joe. Mabel is undyingly loyal, and her face is described as being fixed, like a bulldog's.
She took minute pains, went through the park in a state bordering on pure happiness, as if in performing this task she came into a subtle, intimate connection with her mother. For the life she followed here in the world was far less real than the world of death she inherited from her mother.
This quote is central to the discussion of gender roles in this story. The fact that the only thing Mabel's mother could leave her as "inheritance" is a "world of death" speaks to the sad state of affairs when it came to women owning property in the 1910s and 20s. But not only that, the task which is relagated by default to Mabel, cleaning her mother's headstone, portrays a lineage of domestic responsibilities handed down from mother to daughter. The Pervin men don't know what it means to clean up after themselves, because the women have always done it for them, and after her mother dies, Mabel is naturally left with the task of keeping her headstone clean.
The word cost him a painful effort. Not because it wasn't true. But because it was too newly true, the saying seemed to tear open again his newly-torn heart.
This quote comes near the end of the story after the narration has switched to a close study of Jack Ferguson's interiority. We have no reason to question the narrator when they state that Jack Ferguson truly does believe that he loves Mabel, so we are left with the question of how this love came to exist so quickly. Lawrence challenges the generally accepted perspective that love has to grow over time, and treats this immediate, passionate encounter with a sense of realism and psychology that made it so interesting to his contemporaries. He showed that when people are lonely, they can quickly become attached to the first person who shows a genuine interest in them.
