Synopses & Reviews
Women in Love begins one blossoming spring day in England and ends with a terrible catastrophe in the snow of the Alps. Ursula and Gudrun are very different sisters who become entangled with two friends, Rupert and Gerald, who live in their hometown. The bonds between the couples quickly become intense and passionate but whether this passion is creative or destructive is unclear.
In this astonishing novel, widely considered to be D.H. Lawrence's best work, he explores what it means to be human in an age of conflict and confusion. It was written during World War I, and while that conflict is never mentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurking catastrophe, continually informs its drama of two couples dynamically engaged in a struggle with themselves, with each other, and with life's intractable limitations.
Lawrence was a powerful, prophetic writer, but in addition he brought such delicacy to his treatment of the human and natural worlds that E. M. Forster's claim that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation does him too little justice rather than too much.
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Synopsis
Women in Love, the novel that D. H. Lawrence considered his best, is a powerful portrayal of two couples dynamically engaged in a struggle with themselves, with each other, and with life's intractable limitations.
The sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, whom we first met in Lawrence's novel The Rainbow, here become involved with two close friends: Rupert, an intellectual school inspector; and Gerald, the wealthy heir to a mine owner. The turbulent relationships that result--chronicled with an emotional and sexual frankness that provoked controversy on the book's publication in 1920--take the characters from an English landscape of coal mines and sooty factories to the snowy heights of the Alps, where tragedy strikes.
Women in Love was written during World War I, and while that conflict is never mentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurking catastrophe, continually informs its drama. Lawrence was a powerful, prophetic writer, but in addition he brought such delicacy to his treatment of the human and natural worlds that E. M. Forster's claim that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of his generation does him too little justice rather than too much.
Synopsis
Widely considered the best novel from one of the best writers of the twentieth century, this "astonishing work" (The New York Review of Books) continues where The Rainbow left off, revealing a powerful portrayal of two couples dynamically engaged in a struggle with themselves, with each other, and with life's intractable limitations.
The sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, whom we first met in Lawrence's novel
The Rainbow, here become involved with two close friends: Rupert, an intellectual school inspector; and Gerald, the wealthy heir to a mine owner. The turbulent relationships that result--chronicled with an emotional and sexual frankness that provoked controversy on the book's publication in 1920--take the characters from an English landscape of coal mines and sooty factories to the snowy heights of the Alps, where tragedy strikes.
Women in Love was written during World War I, and while that conflict is never mentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurking catastrophe, continually informs its drama. Lawrence was a powerful, prophetic writer, but in addition he brought such delicacy to his treatment of the human and natural worlds that E. M. Forster's claim that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of his generation does him too little justice rather than too much.
About the Author
David Ellis is the author of Lawrence's Non-Fiction: Art, Thought and Genre and Wordsworth, Freud and the Spots of Time. He has been commissioned to write Volume HI of the New Cambridge biography of Lawrence.