It's post-WWI in the Midlands. Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen are sisters from a working class family, both teachers, while Gudrun is also an artist. From a higher social standing, Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich are best friends, Rupert a school inspector, Gerald a mining heir who currently manages the town's coal mine itself. In separate situations, each pair talks about their individual feelings concerning emotional love, marriage, the associated physical act of sex, and whether each of those three components can or should ...
Read More
It's post-WWI in the Midlands. Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen are sisters from a working class family, both teachers, while Gudrun is also an artist. From a higher social standing, Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich are best friends, Rupert a school inspector, Gerald a mining heir who currently manages the town's coal mine itself. In separate situations, each pair talks about their individual feelings concerning emotional love, marriage, the associated physical act of sex, and whether each of those three components can or should exist without the other two. The four individuals are all aware of the others, but are brought together into a more intimate situation when pretentious Hermione Roddice invites the Brangwen sisters to a weekend gathering at her country mansion, the gathering to which Rupert - her boyfriend - and Gerald are also invited. Hermione has ulterior motives in inviting the sisters, Gudrun who is more aware of that motive than Ursula. Regardless, from that weekend, Rupert and Ursula, and Gerald and Gudrun begin relationships with each other. All four are different in mentality, each requiring something different from their respective relationship. As such, each of the two couplings end up taking different paths. Based on those needs and wants, the question also arises if a partner or spouse can truly fulfill all the emotional needs - "love" - of the other being only one of two genders.
Read Less
Add this copy of Women in Love to cart. $54.13, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2015 by CreateSpace Independent Publis.
Asked to name the ten greatest novels of the 20th Century very few well read people would leave this explosive, sensitive novel off the list. Lawrence had so many artistic talents - poet, essayist, travel writer, painter. But above all his best novels display all of these talents; and none more so than "Women in Love."
Many may disagree with his convictions that drive his characters in this powerfully unfolding tale, but somehow faulting what Lawrence believes, or for that matter, what his creations do to themselves and others, seems especially beside the point, as the poetic passion simply drowns any cool headed intellectual attempt to reduce the raw recreation of experience with such precision.
This is not suggest that Lawrence lacked the deep intelligence to delve into what it means to be human and expose the frailty of his passionate conduct. He senses with a sure instinct that it is this very passion that makes us all so vulnerable. Yet, he nevertheless shows us in scene after unfolding scene that being false to our true selves leads to even greater misery: the reductive misery of unfulfillment..
