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3.45 AVERAGE
3.45 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
I didn't find this book exactly bad, per se, it's just another character-driven novel (I prefer plot-driven, personally). But I won't say it's well written either. It's kind of a hot mess, honestly. Darkness! Loins! Love! Hate! Indecision! Sneaking! Unhappiness! Indecisiveness! And did I mention Darkness? Various plot lines lead nowhere--what is the point, exactly, since there isn't even an overarching plot that needs a bit of info to work.
This book is so obviously intended to have symbolic meaning. Of what, exactly, I can't say, but there is lots of darkness and then green, when Birkin and Ursula sneak and spend the night in the woods, as an example. What does Hermione represent? And the sisters both being teachers? And Winifred? (And how old is Winifred? 10? 13? 17?). Honestly this reads more like a YA book to me, and i am so glad I didn't read it in an academic lit class, because I am terrible with hidden meanings etc. Though if I had read this in high school English, I can guarantee my friends and I would have jokes about it even now, 30 years later (like Piggy being crushed by the styrofoam rock in the movie version of Lord of the Flies).
So anyway, it's done. I am a little curious about the precursor, as I found Ursula and Gudrun's stories to be interesting. Single sisters in their mid/late 20s still living at home while both being teachers, and their dad was too? Shouldn't he be trying to marry them off or something? So much of this book struck me as unusual--maybe it wasn't, but I guess I have not read or studied a lot about early 0th century England. So maybe it's me.
This book is so obviously intended to have symbolic meaning. Of what, exactly, I can't say, but there is lots of darkness and then green, when Birkin and Ursula sneak and spend the night in the woods, as an example. What does Hermione represent? And the sisters both being teachers? And Winifred? (And how old is Winifred? 10? 13? 17?). Honestly this reads more like a YA book to me, and i am so glad I didn't read it in an academic lit class, because I am terrible with hidden meanings etc. Though if I had read this in high school English, I can guarantee my friends and I would have jokes about it even now, 30 years later (like Piggy being crushed by the styrofoam rock in the movie version of Lord of the Flies).
So anyway, it's done. I am a little curious about the precursor, as I found Ursula and Gudrun's stories to be interesting. Single sisters in their mid/late 20s still living at home while both being teachers, and their dad was too? Shouldn't he be trying to marry them off or something? So much of this book struck me as unusual--maybe it wasn't, but I guess I have not read or studied a lot about early 0th century England. So maybe it's me.
I actually liked this a lot more than I thought I would, considering D.H. Lawrence isn't my usual jam. I mean, nobody feels all that stuff like that all the time. His characters are crazy. His writing is overwrought and repetitive and just stream-of-consciousness-y enough to drive me nuts without really being innovative. And yet... sometimes, it all kinda works. I found myself weirdly gripped by this one and actually considering reading The Rainbow to get more backstory. So yes, long, sometimes interminably descriptive, melodramatic, often inadvertently hilarious, but strangely compelling.
At one point I was like "Ooh, perhaps my first 5-star book of the year?" and then any of the characters would open their mouths and. You know what. Do you know what. Nah.
Every two seconds they would just "glance at the other with true contempt" or look at each other with "real hatred" and boy did that get old after 500 pages.
And I could talk about the misogyny and homoeroticism/homophobia but that's been done before so meh. I thought that actually reading the book might help me understand De Beauvoir's criticism of it ([b:The Second Sex|457264|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327978178l/457264._SY75_.jpg|879666]) but it didn't.
Am giving three stars because the story was compelling enough to make me read it all the way to the end but ughhhh D. H. Lawerence's way of thinking is just not one I find at all appealing.
Every two seconds they would just "glance at the other with true contempt" or look at each other with "real hatred" and boy did that get old after 500 pages.
And I could talk about the misogyny and homoeroticism/homophobia but that's been done before so meh. I thought that actually reading the book might help me understand De Beauvoir's criticism of it ([b:The Second Sex|457264|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327978178l/457264._SY75_.jpg|879666]) but it didn't.
Am giving three stars because the story was compelling enough to make me read it all the way to the end but ughhhh D. H. Lawerence's way of thinking is just not one I find at all appealing.
I connected to this: I too am a young woman dissatisfied with the narrowness of her existence, stumbling around trying to fall in love, thinking a lot about art and love and life, feeling haughty and irritated and scornful, and hopeful. It's utterly different from that godawful [b:Lady Chatterley's Lover|32067|Lady Chatterley's Lover|D.H. Lawrence|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1425007748l/32067._SY75_.jpg|3249302]. It's also shockingly romantic in places, which is very unfashionable for an English literary novel. But obviously romantic love is the great theme of the book, and as much as we the literati may say that romantic comedies and romance novels are sickening in their overgloried belief in neat ecstatic fulfilment... sometimes romantic love is romantic.
"Women in Love" was about what I expected, except for the vague homosexual and pedophilic undertones in some of the characters. Two sisters who are lonely and bored and looking for some kind of excitement—and in the true literary style, they are each other's foils. The difference becomes more pronounced later in the book as the men they respectively date alter their lives and ideas. I find myself curiously ambivalent about this book and its characters, who despite being symbolic and richly depicted are unrelatable. They elicited very little sympathy, or anything else for that matter, in me. Read it if you like but I don't think it's anything special.
Gack! This book is so awful, and so gay (in the most self-hating, closeted, misogynistic way possible). One more line about the manliness of manly flesh and I was going to vomit profusely. Granted, I had ample warnings of what I was getting into and did not expect to like Lawrence in the least, so perhaps I have no room to complain about the self-inflicted torture of reading this book. Other critics have explored the myriad issues with Lawrence's work far more eloquently than I could, so I feel no more is needed in this review than the above exclamation of disgust.