Women In Love

Rating:
Summary: So this is love
Review: A sequel to "The Rainbow," "Women in Love" seems to be a more personal novel for its author, as D.H. Lawrence introduces a character to echo his own feelings about love and the world. This character is Rupert Birkin, a misanthrope who thumbs his nose defiantly at any and all social conventions and has few, if any, likeable qualities. It is this man with whom Ursula Brangwen, the individualistic heroine from "The Rainbow," falls in love, but even she is not blind to his disagreeableness.

Ursula, now 26 years old, teaches in the school of her coalmining hometown, Beldover. In the first scene in the novel where she and Rupert, a school inspector, reveal their mutual acquaintance, they are standing in front of her class, transforming her botanical lecture into a wellspring of sexual innuendo in what appears to be Lawrence's playful attempt at provoking the censors who prudishly criticized his prior work. Also participating in this scene is Hermione Roddice, a haughty aristocratic woman who harbors a secret desire to humiliate and control men, specifically the headstrong Rupert.

Meanwhile, Ursula's prettier and more vivacious younger sister Gudrun, an artist, is attracted to Gerald Crich, heir to the seemingly cursed Crich coal dynasty. Almost the opposite of Rupert, Gerald is a proud, practical, and conscientious businessman who lays down the law with his coal miners and is cruel to his animals, feeling he deserves nothing less than unconditional obedience. The provocative nature of this novel is that Gerald is attracted to Rupert -- socially, physically, sexually -- possibly because he considers Rupert a symbol of liberation from the workaday world he is secretly tired of; and this feeling is readily reciprocated. In a scene where the two men strip and wrestle, Lawrence provides the male counterpart to the lesbian scene in "The Rainbow," as though to say what's good for the goose is good for the...well, you know.

The novel basically tracks the trajectories of the love/hate relationships of these two couples. While Ursula and Rupert eventually find compatibility, having in common their rugged individualism, Gerald and Gudrun drift towards a dysfunctional state of potential violence, as he realizes with jealousy and anger that her artistic world is closed to him.

Lawrence's strength is not tight little plots but character study, and the great achievement in "Women in Love" is that the characters do not exhibit any stereotypical or easily describable behavior; it's difficult to pinpoint their personalities from just one conversation, and not much easier even over the course of the entire novel. Ursula, Gudrun, Rupert, and Gerald are fascinatingly, almost frighteningly, complex people whom Lawrence seems deliberately to have designed to leave the reader at a loss, to test the reader's tolerance for sexual and psychological perversity.

Rating:
Summary: Boring Men and the Women Who Love Them
Review: D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love" features various philosophical ideas, each thinly disguised as a character. They are: the sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen (rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?), collier's son Gerald Crich, and idealist Rupert Birkin. Eventually Gerald pairs off with Gudrun and Ursula with Birkin. Gudrun and Gerald have a rather violent relationship, in which each partner is always struggling for power. Ursula and Birkin strive to relate on a "higher plane", on some vague cosmic level.

Unlike some readers here, I was not particularly bored by the characters' theoretical discussions on love. More annoying were the exhaustingly detailed descriptions of their actions (to use the word broadly) and thoughts. For long stretches of time nothing much happens and no one speaks.

Presumably the reader is meant to identify most with Birkin, who is very close to Lawrence himself. But if the reader is anything like me, he will instead identify with the minor character of a young girl who drowns in a lake. The reader, too, is drowning, but in a sea of philosophy rather than water. One looks frantically about for a plot to cling to.

Then why does this book deserve any stars at all, much less three? Well, some parts are beautifully written. And there are a number of underdeveloped but quite intriguing ideas: such as the way Gerald's belief in ruthless, triumphant industrialization permeates his romantic life as well. The possibility of love (even erotic love) between men who also love women is explored from time to time, to much interest, then sadly dropped.

In a few places the plot moves along nicely, and sometimes it is quite involving. I don't know if these moments make the entire book worth reading, however.

I should say, to be fair, that "Women in Love" is a sequel/companion to Lawrence's "The Rainbow," which I haven't read. But I doubt that it would have made much difference.

Rating:
Summary: Danielle Steele, it ain't
Review: Facts: Women in Love is a story about Ursual and Gudrun Brangwen. The history of the Brangwen family may be referenced by reading "The Rainbow" as a foundational text. Likewise, "Sons and Lovers" as a foundational text will explain the life of a coal mining family. Ursula has a love relationship with Rupert Birkin, a school administrator. They eventually marry. But in this relationship, Birkin wants more than love can offer - "something other" including a love for a man. Gudrun has a relationship with Gerald Crich, a wealthy and good looking man. Although, they have an affair, the relationship fails because it was based upon pity. Gudrun was not ready for a life as a wife and mother to a coal mining family even if he was the manager. Gudrun remains unloved and single with her future course in question.

Issue: Is "love" immutable, absolute, and eternal? NO

Held: In Chapter 13, there was a contest between a male and female mino cats. The female was wild, but submitted to the dominance of the male cat. This metaphor for male and female relationships was lacking. Both Ursula and Gudrun were the stronger in both relationships. Birkin was a flawed idealist. Gerald was looking for a mother. One can be happy that Ursula has managed to love a man, and we can only hope that perhaps she will explore her further potentiality as a mother perhaps. Gudrun has moved on with the minimal knowledge of what not to look for in a relationship with a man. She is a strong character which I prefer to assume will do very nicely in the future in love and all things.

Rating:
Summary: Women In Love
Review: Gerald Crich
a rich
stud won
Gudrun
(Poorly chosen:
He got frozen
out)
Ursula
lacked her colour
but for Birkin
threw her work in
(Same old plot:
they tied the knot)

Rating:
Summary: Very offensive
Review: I had just started the "humanities" requirement for my degree program and was assigned this book to read for a literature course. I did not expect, from the title, that it would be a book for a Christian, but I believe in respecting authority, so I tried to read the book. But I was not able to finish it. It was so dark and full of all kinds of morbid things, that were almost as bad as the pornography. It had no redeeming feature. I felt ashamed while I was reading it, and it was so bad that even the places which were all right seemed suspicious. I thought, how will he find something weird and ugly here? This book was written back when England was full of labor unrest and socialism and paganism and what they called "free love" so I suppose this had something to do with it.
Some of the Christians in my class wanted to complain to the Dean about a hostile study environment for Christians, but we were afraid of retribution by secular humanists.

Rating:
Summary: I would give it 3 1/2 stars actually
Review: I read Women in Love over the summer and upon finishing it I decided that it is not a bad book. Granted, there were many times that I was looking at my watch and page numbers to see if I read enough of what I decided to read. There were many chapters that were really uninteresting and hard to read in their dullness. But conversely, there were many extremely well-written and facinating chapters that, for me, made up for the bad ones. I'd say that half the chapters have some kind of redeeming quality for the other half.

I do not really like British literature very much anyway, and people 100 years ago did write differently. But the relationship between Gudrun and Ursula as well as Birkin and Gerald was very intersting to watch unfold. I felt that I could relate to Birken the most, in his quest for anything close to an ideal, to have both Ursula and Gerald, as platanic friends and lovers, as companions . . .to have that relationship without the mask of gender which does not set the limitations on the possibilities between two people's relationship.

Of course that is an ideal which can never really be in our non-perfect world. The chapters when they take their trips to London, or when Birken and Gerald wrestel, or finally after the marriages when they go to Germany are the best to read. I love their conversations that seem so profound to the characters at the time, when really they are the kind things that anyone that thinks would talk about.

This book has a lot of bad qualities, but also a lot of good ones, which help balance it and I would recommend it to some people, not all.

Rating:
Summary: Way too much theatre and not nearly enough play!
Review: I was tricked into reading this book due to it being a well known classic and from a desire to read a good romantic story which I thought it would be. Well, um, IT'S NOT.

I like to read books that draw me right into the story and then a couple of hours later you notice you are turning page 250 when the last you recall touching was page 97. This book was not like that at all. Unfortunately, I was always conscious that I was reading print from a page but kept reminding myself that a book this famous had to get good sooner or later. Far from not being able to put it down, I found myself often looking to see what page I was on and if I had read my quota for the night. It never did get good and when I had finished the last sentence I felt frustrated and cheated.

I worried that my lack of appreciation for this classic must be due to my inferior intellect and that I must after all be just some obtuse hill-billy. Thankfully I found that several people who had offered their reviews here shared my opinions for this book and I was quite relieved that I was not alone in my reaction.

For me, Lawrence's supremely descriptive, possibly brilliant (although I really wouldn't know) and flowery writing is all for not because of selfish, unlikeable and unbelieveable characters who don't really do anything. At the very end, the only care I had for anyone in the book was poor little Winifred. I hope she was alright.

In conclusion may I suggest that you pass on Women in Love and read instead Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It is so much more a wonderful book about believable, likeable, women in love.

Rating:
Summary: A Must To Read...
Review: Well, the feminists hate it, the Christians apparently hate it (check out Irving Nutt's uproarious "review" below)...is there any other way to convey that Lawrence still has the power to provoke?
This is an absolute must for anyone serious about literature....Lawrence tries to stuff the whole dang world into a book. Everything he is trying to achieve here is breathtaking. The characters are all rather deplorable, but there is such psychological insight and empathy towards even the foulest of them, that the reader feels for all these fools. No two readers are going to look at it the same way....Is Crich a pitiable martyr or a ruthless phallocrat? Is Gudrun Lawrence's swat at women in general, or a pre-cursor to the cold, Thatcher-style "feminism". Is it about women in love...or is the romance strictly between the men? This ambiguity makes "Women In Love" absolutely timeless...
... a poetic, violent, and remarkably unsentimental masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: A Must To Read...
Review: Well, the feminists hate it, the Christians apparently hate it (check out Irving Nutt's uproarious "review" below)...is there any other way to convey that Lawrence still has the power to provoke?
This is an absolute must for anyone serious about literature....Lawrence tries to stuff the whole dang world into a book. Everything he is trying to achieve here is breathtaking. The characters are all rather deplorable, but there is such psychological insight and empathy towards even the foulest of them, that the reader feels for all these fools. No two readers are going to look at it the same way....Is Crich a pitiable martyr or a ruthless phallocrat? Is Gudrun Lawrence's swat at women in general, or a pre-cursor to the cold, Thatcher-style "feminism". Is it about women in love...or is the romance strictly between the men? This ambiguity makes "Women In Love" absolutely timeless...
... a poetic, violent, and remarkably unsentimental masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Women In Love
Review: Women In Love written by D.H. Lawrence is not as explicit as his other novels, and instead of concentrating on sexual content, Lawrence chose to depict the relationships between two sisters and their boyfriends. D.H. Lawrence goes deep into the minds of human beings and reveals the real secrets of emotions, feelings, and thoughts that people usually hide inside. Statements such as "The Dead Should Bury the Dead" illustrate the content of living and dying, which the book frequently discusses. The book is difficult and long to read, but it opens up the reader's mind and forces the reader to reavaluate the content of his or her relationship with other people.