Where's Love??. Review on Women in Love - D. H. Lawrence

First published in London in 1921, though completed in 1916, Women in Love continues the story of two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen who had first appeared in Lawrence's earlier novel The Rainbow. But the knowledge of The Rainbow is not necessary to appreciate it. I have always felt that the title is somewhat misleading.

The story is about women and men, men and women, and men and men.Its not only love which is considered in the novel. It a story of two sisters, Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen, the son of the local mine owner, Gerald Crich, and the school inspector Rupert Birkin.

Story

The sisters live in the coal-mining town of Beldover, and their relationships dominate the novel. Ursula, a teacher , is in love with the school inspector Rupert Birkin who is initially involved with Hermione Roddice (a dominating lady with whom he is not happy). Gerard Crich, a friend of Birkin, is weighted down by the deaths that have occurred in his family (he accidentally caused his brother's death at an early age and feels guilty when his sister too dies, by drowning). Gerard takes over the running of the mine from his father. His relationship with Gudrun affects him in a negative manner. This relationship is in time made difficult by an emptiness in Gerard. Ursula and Rupert, meanwhile, are married, and happier than the other couple.

Gerard and Gudrun are torn apart by sorrow and the latter's flirting with the sculptor Loerke in the Alps while the four central characters holiday together. Read to know what happens in the end.

The Setting

As with Lawrence’s some other novels and short stories, the setting for Women in Love becomes a character-the grimy village, the sordid town. The sullen miners and their wives provide a backdrop of modernization and dehumanization. As mining is mechanized to death, so is the human soul. Later the setting changes when the couples decide to leave England and take their relationships and their futures to the Alps, where they find art truly does imitate life with its mechanism.

The Relations

Destruction and regeneration as a theme was also present in ‘The Rainbow’ and it’s revisited here. Only that it appears to be an endless cycle. The Gudrun/Gerald relationship is full of conflicts. These are won only temporarily.It does not become any better with temporary reprieves of tenderness and sex. Gerald’s emotional conflicts with Gudrun are reflected in Gerald's dealings with animals. How he brutally forces his mare to stay at a railroad crossing or when he punches his sister’s rabbit when it resists being picked up so he can be sketched. The only time that the both seem to find some balance is when accepting and not gravitating towards each other. Meanwhile, Ursula finds herself in a different kind of battle with Rupert. He has some self-contemptuous philosophies about relationships, death, and the will. His vision of love, if he even believes it exists, is of two planets circling one another in perfect equilibrium. With Hermione, he never got these. Hermione was unable to satisfy his physical desires and did not measure up to his spiritual aspirations.

Characterisation

The beauty of WIL does not lie in the story but to how it is told. The heroes are human, feeling the whole array of emotions we feel. The relationship of Birkin and Gerald is a friendship, tied together not only by the women they love, but also an essential urge to find the meanings of their lives. Birkin shuns materialism, Grich revels in it. Their beliefs are wonderfully captured in their conversations. ” While the essential play is between four characters, Lawrence has conjured well developed group of support cast: Hermoine, the enchantress who is rhapsodical in her words, but shallow in self; Gerald's father, whose presence provides remarkable pretext for father son relationship; Loerke, an artist whose appearance in novel makes it multi-dimensional and Winifried, Possum and so on.”

Autobiographical element

Rupert seems to be Lawrence's own mouthpiece, reflecting many of his own views.

Drawbacks

Women in Love starts out slowly, as a lengthy series of conversations that seem unlikely or unrealistic, but develops a crescendo as the battles begin. The change of settings from England to the Alps. Though a revelation it becomes frustrating to read page after page of the mental thrashings of an individual mind's search for truth and authenticity in life and in love.

Virtues

Can be summarized in Vivek Sharma’s words: “The novel is very different from other Lawrence novels I have read so far. Sons and Lovers is most easily readable, and his autobiographical piece; Rainbow is Lawrence at his best, and so the novel is very rich and complex reading; Lady Chatterley's Lover (as its infamous for) explores human sensuality in a very poetic and honest way. Women in Love does not enchant, does not embellish facts or emotions, does not rely on suspense or sensuality of romance, does not attack moral fiber; what it really does is, it gives us a video camera and constant feed about thoughts of people that we are watching and we see, hear and enjoy according to our own perception! Women in love is sort of heavy read, one needs to labor through the labyrinth's of ''words, philosophies, thoughts and ideas'', and hence perhaps should not be first Lawrence you read. Start with Sons and Lovers or Lady Chatterley's Lover or his short stories! If you know women, if you think you know love, if you really know Women in Love, you will figure why this novel must be so!”