Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN num: 9780140188165
ISBN number: 0140188169
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 592
Printing Date: September 01, 1995
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 571016
Studio: Penguin Classics
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'I consider this the best of my books, ' D.H. Lawrence wrote of Women in Love in 1917. Composed during the desperate years of the First World War, Women in Love is the story of two English couples whose passions play out against the crushing demands of modernity. The book's exquisite rendering of modern love and its affairs has been startling and disturbing readers ever since, and Women in Love has come to be recognized as one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century.
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Rated by buyers 
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Scottish novelist Catherine Carswell stated that Women In Love is, "easy to read, but hard to understand." Certainly it is difficult to understand Lawrence, but the Amazon review by Robert Moore of another of his books (The Rainbow) does a good job of describing the essence of Lawrence's literary style. Moore states that there are four ways in which The Rainbow and Women in Love, which is really a sequel, are something new in literature. The very first is the general absence of plot. In Lawrence people meet and interact but there is not much action or story development. Secondly, Lawrence instead focuses on character development and on a collection of characters rather than a single one. Thirdly, the characters are psychologically complex, illogical and filled with contrary emotions. Finally, Lawrence's novels are sensual, not just as some have concluded sexually erotic. Moore likes this style and gives the book 5 stars. Another reviewer, Glen Engel-Cox says something similar only with a negative attitude: "I simply could not put up with the seemingly endless vacillations of the characters, the souped-up descriptions of all that they thought, and the plodding story line." Engel-Cox gave it only 1 star. Thus in reading Lawrence one should be aware that one is not getting a great story, but insights into the complexities of human emotions.
It is also difficult to understand Lawrence without knowing something about his life and the times he lived in. He lived and wrote at the time of the First World War when Europe, after a period of optimism, scientific development and relative peace was plunged into a war made all the more horrible by the very technology that had fostered progress. Lawrence was greatly affected by this transformation. While many novels have an autobiographical aspect, this seems to be especially true of Lawrence. Sons and Lovers, for example, closely parallels his early life.
Women in Love centers around four characters, Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen who teach in a primary school, Rupert Birkin, a schools inspector and Gerald Crich, scion of a mine owner. The couples pair off, Ursula and Rupert and Gudrun and Gerald and the novel largely deals with their troubled relationships. The characters outlook on life is decidedly negative. Rupert, for example, muses that the world would be a better place if there were no human beings to spoil it. The climax of the book, while dramatic, reinforces this extreme negativity. Granted Lawrence was deeply affected by WWI and the end of the book includes a quote from Kaiser Wilhelm regretting the war. But the American Civil War was also a bloody, terrible event and there is no tomorrow-is-another-day-Scarlett O'Hara finish to Women in Love. Quite the contrary.
Having read Sons and Lovers and now Women in Love I will not read The Rainbow or other works by Lawrence. I tend to agree with Mr. Engel-Cox in liking an interesting story rather than character study and/or psychological musings. I also think the human condition is not as bad as Lawrence presents it. For that reason I am giving this book a 3 star rating, meaning that it may be very interesting for some people, but others will not like it.
Rated by buyers 
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D.H. Lawrence is not for the faint hearted, or anyone with a short attention span. Women in Love would perhaps be better title Women and Men in Love, as Gerald and Birkin play equally important roles as Gudren and Ursula.
Those looking for mere titillation will be sorely disappointed, however, as the sexual charged moments are primarily portrayed through internal thoughts and emotions - indeed, by today's standards this would be a PG-13 at the most, although the inferences are certainly more adult than that.
The exploration of relationships portrayed here shows the beginning of women's liberation, as well as a philosophy accepting of non-heterosexual love - although again these are through thoughts and emotions, and occassionally conversations, with nothing more blatant than a wrestling scene actually happening.
In the end this seemed to be more about failing to achieve harmonious relations than succeeding at it - though in the end one couple remains and one is apart, I am not sure but that it could have been as easily reversed as to which was which.
Rated by buyers -
Well-formatted for the Kindle, with an easy-to-navigate table of contents. The novel itself is striking -- "right between the eyes." Passion has rarely felt so naked, and yet so much of the passion in _Women in Love_ is the passion of intellectual debate. The characters are desperate to know, *finally*, who they are, and flummoxed by their need for such explanation.
Rated by buyers -
First off, I LOVED the Rainbow, the prequel to this book. I was very excited to get into this book and see how the characters developed further. In the beginning I felt the same interest as I did with the Rainbow, but as many others have stated, somewhere in the middle the reading got a litte tedious. Birkin was such a preachy kind of character, constantly spouting off stuff without ever convincingly proving he believed it himself! Luckily, Ursula seemed to tone that down in him. I did have a point where I debated finishing the book but I figured I had already committed to seeing how things worked out with everyone. Man, what a payoff at the end! BIG twist ending!!! Maybe that was Lawrence's way of rewarding his readers for allowing him his theological or philosophical rants and loving him anyway. He threw in the big exciting finish. Well, I say if you like Lawrence and you liked the Rainbow, this one might feel like a little more work but give it a chance and you're sure to get a satisfying conclusion to these characters.
Rated by buyers -
This book is beautifully written. You could randomly pick almost any paragraph and read it and close the book and think to your self "wow, that was beautiful." It tells the story of sisters Gudrun and Brangwen, two young women in England who stand apart from the crowd and struggle with their quirky independence in a classist society.
Of course it isn't a gripper or a page turner. It took me over a year to finish reading this book. That's not to say it's not good-- on the contrary I say it's a testament to how good it is that I ever finished it. How many times have you put a book down for months and then returned to pick it up where you left off? I can think of one other book I did that with, but I did it several times with Women in Love.
It's slow, and in the beginning I couldn't really keep all the characters straight. But it's beautiful and it's hilarious! The langauge of the day, comsbined with the melodrama of Gudrun and Bragwen as they discuss the banal horror of spending the rest of their life with any of the men they know, is both charming and laugh-out-loud funny.
The book works as a period piece; you can see the structured class system of the England of the day nad the sisters who simply don't fit in with anyone.
The book also works as a philosophical piece; at times it reminds me of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The chapters dedicated to the coal mines and the machine-like endeavors of the men who runs them must have inspired Ayn Rand's work.
This book is deifnitely worth reading, but perhaps best along side another book (or 10).
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