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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
I need to reread this book. I remember experiencing some of the scenes so vividly when I first read this book in college that I have visual memories of them to this day, as if I saw the scene rather than read it. For me, this was the most powerful of any of the Lawrence novels I read, although that may also have been tied in with a growing feminist awareness that made it more interesting to have a book focused so intensely on the lives and emotional conflicts of two women.
We often use this phrase “writer’s writer,” usually denoting an author whose style and craft is exemplary, whose work could be taught in creative writing classrooms. D.H. Lawrence is the opposite of this. He is the anti-writing writer. All of his novels are rough. This novel has some especially clunky sentences, too many to count. And yet Lawrence plows through it all with such confidence and power. His style is part of his philosophy of constantly moving forward, even if it means producing books that are half-unreadable.
This was a bit of an arduous read...lots of scenes in which people stand or sit next to each other and feel a lot of things...and nothing happens.
Another great book from a great author. But I did not see this sad end coming...
Sex sex, insert philosophical monologue followed by philosophical dialogue, love, more talking, some drowning. I cannot be bothered, honestly.
It was ok, as classics go. I found the portrayal of the women interesting, how they want more in life than just marriage; a thought that today isn't all that controversial but in that day might have been more so. I also found the relationahip between the four mains fun; Gerald who somehow is struggling with a role that doesn't suit him; masculinity and leadership whereas Rupert is looking for something else altogether. intresting but a bit slow, and an ending that was a bit out of the blue.
“Better a thousand times take one's chance with death, than accept a life one did not want.”
It is the sequel to his novel The Rainbow and even tho I read The Rainbow first, it doesn't matter which one u read first. I mean Rainbow got banned and people got to read this one first so who fucking cares.
The novel's sexual subject matter caused controversy... fucking prudes, am I right ladies?
Quarantine made me so lazy and I got into a reading slump. I wanted to write a lengthy review but it took me 50years to finish it and I forgot what I wanted to say. Lucky you I guess. Long story short, I think that this is better than Rainbow but that may be just me. No one knows, known cares. I haven’t being outside for a while and my period will probably come tomorrow so I don’t think I can be trusted.
‘’God, what is it to be a man! The freedom, the liberty, the mobility! You’re a man, you want to do a thing, you do it. You haven't the thousand obstacles a woman has in front of her.’’
Go off sis
It is the sequel to his novel The Rainbow and even tho I read The Rainbow first, it doesn't matter which one u read first. I mean Rainbow got banned and people got to read this one first so who fucking cares.
The novel's sexual subject matter caused controversy... fucking prudes, am I right ladies?
Quarantine made me so lazy and I got into a reading slump. I wanted to write a lengthy review but it took me 50years to finish it and I forgot what I wanted to say. Lucky you I guess. Long story short, I think that this is better than Rainbow but that may be just me. No one knows, known cares. I haven’t being outside for a while and my period will probably come tomorrow so I don’t think I can be trusted.
‘’God, what is it to be a man! The freedom, the liberty, the mobility! You’re a man, you want to do a thing, you do it. You haven't the thousand obstacles a woman has in front of her.’’
Go off sis
Horrible. I read this book in high school. I don't know if it was just connected to the rest of the depressing fare I had to read that year or if D. H. Lawrence really is an atrocious writer. . .oh wait, I read the Rainbow in college, about 4 years later, and it was possibly even worse.
I thought Women in Love was full of unlikable characters who were awfully self-absorbed and whiney. Their love did not seem genuine. In fact, I thought that the men were more into each other than their respective lovers. Which is fine, but they were very blase and repressed about it. So although they really enjoyed naked wrestling and sexual tension, neither one even contemplated the idea that the sexual tension might actually be something. Perhaps if they were wrestling a little more with the weight of their own sexual preferences, I might have liked this novel better. As it was, they just came off even more shallow and jerky. Nothing in this novel seemed genuine, and maybe that was the point, but if so I neither got it nor appreciated it.
All I can say was I found it utterly unappealing. I know what some people will say -- that I just hate D. H. Lawrence and that the things I hate about him are what make him great because I just can't appreciate great literature. I don't really see it like that. I think that if one is to have a character-driven novel about people one wants the readers to be deeply invested in, one needs to make those characters even just a tiny bit likable. I have studied literature extensively and I don't actually see any real evidence in the Lawrence books I've read of any so-called literary genius or even a proper attempt at good writing. Perhaps someday I will read more, but currently I am still, even after all these years, trying to get over the bad taste left in my mouth by the insufferable and hideously named Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen.
I thought Women in Love was full of unlikable characters who were awfully self-absorbed and whiney. Their love did not seem genuine. In fact, I thought that the men were more into each other than their respective lovers. Which is fine, but they were very blase and repressed about it. So although they really enjoyed naked wrestling and sexual tension, neither one even contemplated the idea that the sexual tension might actually be something. Perhaps if they were wrestling a little more with the weight of their own sexual preferences, I might have liked this novel better. As it was, they just came off even more shallow and jerky. Nothing in this novel seemed genuine, and maybe that was the point, but if so I neither got it nor appreciated it.
All I can say was I found it utterly unappealing. I know what some people will say -- that I just hate D. H. Lawrence and that the things I hate about him are what make him great because I just can't appreciate great literature. I don't really see it like that. I think that if one is to have a character-driven novel about people one wants the readers to be deeply invested in, one needs to make those characters even just a tiny bit likable. I have studied literature extensively and I don't actually see any real evidence in the Lawrence books I've read of any so-called literary genius or even a proper attempt at good writing. Perhaps someday I will read more, but currently I am still, even after all these years, trying to get over the bad taste left in my mouth by the insufferable and hideously named Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen.
Probably it’s always going to be a mistake to reread a book you loved in your youth. I haven’t read Lawrence for a long time. I believed I had his triumphs and failures pretty clear in my mind. Sons and Lovers, the early stories, The Rainbow and Women in Love all masterpieces; everything that followed going from bad to worse. So it was a shock to discover that Women in Love probably belongs in the latter category. There are, of course, flashes of his unique genius but they are few and far between. As is frequently the case in his later novels Lawrence is here on his soapbox, sermonising and ranting. His fabulous electric insights into the beauty of the natural world are virtually absent.
There’s something of the angry teenager in Lawrence – he’s always on some protest march and his target is always the established order. The four central characters in WIL, with the exception perhaps of Ursula, come across as outgrown children with relentlessly outsized emotions. Every moment is a dark night of the soul or an epiphany. They simply do not do ordinary emotion. He also has the teenage urgency to exalt his own love over everyone else’s, as if what he knows as love is mysteriously denied to all us mere mortals. “How can I say “I love you” when I have ceased to be: we are both caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one.” We don’t though feel this at all. They are just empty words. This is a problem in this novel – the characters do not effectively dramatise Lawrence’s lofty ideas. The novel is all caught up in the subjectivity of its author. Lawrence’s mouthpiece in this novel is Birkin. In every novel he wrote he had to have a mouthpiece and usually this is the character you most feel like slapping in the face.
On the positive side Lawrence can be brilliant at understanding women. Forget the overblown kitsch of the wrestling scene the best moment in this novel is when Ursula gives vent to her rage at Birkin. It’s a brilliant depiction of primeval female fury directed at the cajoling bullying instinct of the male.
I noticed Lawrence has a habit of placing opposition in his character’s feelings. This kind of thing - She was happy and yet she was resentful. He was curious and yet he was bored. They were resigned and yet they were hopeful. He does this all the time. I suppose it does have a place as this novel is about will – the wrestling of one will against another, whether it’s an individual or society as a whole. Lawrence is trying to forge a new concept of will. Ultimately the eternal snow-capped mountains will impede this dawning of a new day in human volition.
One of the reasons I loved this novel in my youth was that I idolised Katherine Mansfield and Lawrence uses her for the character of Gudrun and her husband John Middleton Murray for Gerald.
“Lawrence met Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry when they wrote to him in 1913 to ask for a story to publish in Rhythm - the magazine they edited together in London. When the Lawrences came to England the two couples met and established an immediate rapport. Katherine and John were witnesses at their marriage and Frieda gave Katherine her old wedding ring, which Katherine wore for the rest of her life. Katherine and Frieda never became real friends - Katherine’s affinity was always with Lawrence. There was tension in the relationship because Lawrence was deeply attracted to John, wanting to establish a ‘blood brother bond’ with him. John was also attracted to Frieda, with whom he had an affair after Katherine died. The two couples lived close to each other, first in Berkshire in 1914 and then in Zennor Cornwall in 1915. There were innumerable quarrels and the friendship was broken off several times. Lawrence once wrote to Katherine - a fellow consumptive; ‘You are a loathsome reptile stewing in your consumption. I hope you will die.’ Katherine understood Lawrence and even forgave him, writing in her Journal that ‘Lawrence and I are unthinkably alike.”
So, Women in Love: heavy on verbiage, rubbled with repetitive pseudo philosophy, burdened with three of most unlikeable characters you’re likely to meet in a novel all year and yet here and there dazzlingly brilliant as Lawrence was when he stepped down from his tiresome soapbox.
There’s something of the angry teenager in Lawrence – he’s always on some protest march and his target is always the established order. The four central characters in WIL, with the exception perhaps of Ursula, come across as outgrown children with relentlessly outsized emotions. Every moment is a dark night of the soul or an epiphany. They simply do not do ordinary emotion. He also has the teenage urgency to exalt his own love over everyone else’s, as if what he knows as love is mysteriously denied to all us mere mortals. “How can I say “I love you” when I have ceased to be: we are both caught up and transcended into a new oneness where everything is silent, because there is nothing to answer, all is perfect and at one.” We don’t though feel this at all. They are just empty words. This is a problem in this novel – the characters do not effectively dramatise Lawrence’s lofty ideas. The novel is all caught up in the subjectivity of its author. Lawrence’s mouthpiece in this novel is Birkin. In every novel he wrote he had to have a mouthpiece and usually this is the character you most feel like slapping in the face.
On the positive side Lawrence can be brilliant at understanding women. Forget the overblown kitsch of the wrestling scene the best moment in this novel is when Ursula gives vent to her rage at Birkin. It’s a brilliant depiction of primeval female fury directed at the cajoling bullying instinct of the male.
I noticed Lawrence has a habit of placing opposition in his character’s feelings. This kind of thing - She was happy and yet she was resentful. He was curious and yet he was bored. They were resigned and yet they were hopeful. He does this all the time. I suppose it does have a place as this novel is about will – the wrestling of one will against another, whether it’s an individual or society as a whole. Lawrence is trying to forge a new concept of will. Ultimately the eternal snow-capped mountains will impede this dawning of a new day in human volition.
One of the reasons I loved this novel in my youth was that I idolised Katherine Mansfield and Lawrence uses her for the character of Gudrun and her husband John Middleton Murray for Gerald.
“Lawrence met Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry when they wrote to him in 1913 to ask for a story to publish in Rhythm - the magazine they edited together in London. When the Lawrences came to England the two couples met and established an immediate rapport. Katherine and John were witnesses at their marriage and Frieda gave Katherine her old wedding ring, which Katherine wore for the rest of her life. Katherine and Frieda never became real friends - Katherine’s affinity was always with Lawrence. There was tension in the relationship because Lawrence was deeply attracted to John, wanting to establish a ‘blood brother bond’ with him. John was also attracted to Frieda, with whom he had an affair after Katherine died. The two couples lived close to each other, first in Berkshire in 1914 and then in Zennor Cornwall in 1915. There were innumerable quarrels and the friendship was broken off several times. Lawrence once wrote to Katherine - a fellow consumptive; ‘You are a loathsome reptile stewing in your consumption. I hope you will die.’ Katherine understood Lawrence and even forgave him, writing in her Journal that ‘Lawrence and I are unthinkably alike.”
So, Women in Love: heavy on verbiage, rubbled with repetitive pseudo philosophy, burdened with three of most unlikeable characters you’re likely to meet in a novel all year and yet here and there dazzlingly brilliant as Lawrence was when he stepped down from his tiresome soapbox.
Edit: After reading The First Women in Love and re-reading this, and from reading about the background to this, I changed my opinion about it and it went up to 4 stars. Okay, the characters are still way too verbose and can be quite unpleasant at times, but somehow there are elements that get through about Lawrence's feelings about sex, love and relationships. This was a very brave book considering some of the plot elements. Also, I do think it's the Delphi edition that seems to like caps! The centaur edition of the First Women In Love didn't have them. I found it very interesting to see the changes, but I have to say DHL was a bit too keen on the old rewrite - think I preferred the First edition of both this and Lady Chatterley's Lover, though I understand he had reasons for changing the both.
Ok, so writing about love between men was a brave choice for Lawrence to make. Unfortunately, in the process of making a point some of the major stylistic elements got lost such as a coherent plot and decent characters. What you're left with is a group of snobby, pretentious narcissists prancing about Europe being vile to one another and making ludicrous pronouncements in different languages about just how tedious EVERYTHING is (I don't know if it's just my edition or if Lawrence genuinely did write some of it in all caps). I didn't particularly want to dislike it as much as I did, and I can't say I hated it, I just don't know how I am supposed to take it as a reader; whether I am supposed to find the characters this dislikeable. It's a great pity as I thought the Ursula of The Rainbow had a great deal of potential, but by the end I was left wondering where the rest of the story was and even if he was actually writing about the woman from The Rainbow or just someone with the same name. It was like he'd made his point and did feel like anything else was necessary. Anyway, I think a break from Lawrence would probably do me some good.
Ok, so writing about love between men was a brave choice for Lawrence to make. Unfortunately, in the process of making a point some of the major stylistic elements got lost such as a coherent plot and decent characters. What you're left with is a group of snobby, pretentious narcissists prancing about Europe being vile to one another and making ludicrous pronouncements in different languages about just how tedious EVERYTHING is (I don't know if it's just my edition or if Lawrence genuinely did write some of it in all caps). I didn't particularly want to dislike it as much as I did, and I can't say I hated it, I just don't know how I am supposed to take it as a reader; whether I am supposed to find the characters this dislikeable. It's a great pity as I thought the Ursula of The Rainbow had a great deal of potential, but by the end I was left wondering where the rest of the story was and even if he was actually writing about the woman from The Rainbow or just someone with the same name. It was like he'd made his point and did feel like anything else was necessary. Anyway, I think a break from Lawrence would probably do me some good.