QUALCUNO MI RIDIA IL TEMPO CHE HO SPRECATO LEGGENDO QUESTO LIBRO.
Vi prego. Esisterà qualcosa tipo un soddisfatti o rimborsati, che ne so. Un sindacato dei lettori?
Ok, respira a fondo. Cerchiamo di calmarci e di mettere giù il libro, invece di continuare ad agitarlo pericolosamente così. Su, spostati dalla finestra. Da brava, così.

Donne innamorate è uno di quei libri che quando lo finisci di leggere, quando compi quel magnifico e agognato gesto di chiudere l'ultima pagina, fa nascere in te delle domande esistenziali estremamente profonde e di difficile soluzione. Domande che si possono riassumere in un:
"Embè? Quindi?"
Solo che qui abbiamo un libro di 688 pagine. Di solito sono molto magnanima in questi casi, mi dico “e vabbè dai sei tu la villica che non ha capito il messaggio che voleva trasmettere l'autore”, ma non DOPO 688 FOTTUTE PAGINE. No. Dopo 688 pagine è un affronto.

Ma andiamo con ordine. Parliamo della trama, ma sì. Ci sono due sorelle, Gudrun e Ursula, che nel secondo capitolo si innamorano di tali Gerald e Birkin. A metà libro una di loro due si sposa. Nel frammezzo, Gerald e Birkin ambiscono a conoscersi meglio in senso biblico. Nell’ultimo capitolo, un tizio tira le cuoia in maniera imprecisata e non frega nulla a nessuno. Sì, e poi? No no, niente poi, non accade nient'altro. E dico davvero. Lawrence può creare un capitolo di 70 pagine parlando di una gita in montagna (in cui non accade nulla di significativo, se non giustamente delle persone che vanno in slittino sulla neve) o uno di 40 in cui ci sono delle signorine che prendono il tè discutendo della vita. E' tutto un continuo scorrere di episodi di cui non ti frega un'emerita cippa, perché non mi interessa proprio sapere che Gerald per catturare un coniglio gli dà una legnata sul collo, e del fatto che Birkin e Ursula vanno al mercato a comprare una sedia e poi la regalano potevo anche farne a meno.

E allora perché 3 stelline? Innanzitutto c'è da dire che sono clemente, perché sono felice di essermi tolta questo fardello dal groppone. Poi forse, seriamente parlando, qualcosa di buono sepolto sotto tutte le ciance di Lawrence c'è. La filosofia di Birkin, ad esempio.
Non ho mai parlato della struttura di un capitolo tipo. Due personaggi, estratti a caso da un cappello che Lawrence teneva sul comodino presumo, si incontrano per caso. Cominciano a parlare. Iniziano a discorrere del tempo, o di un vestito, poi uno di loro si mette a parlare di vita, umanità, amore, morte, filosofia, coscienza, che non c'entra assolutamente nulla col tema di partenza, però se è Birkin che parla qualcosa di interessante lo tira fuori. Ad esempio:

"L'umanità è un albero secco, e i suoi frutti, gli individui belli e brillanti di cui è carica, sono gusci vuoti. [...] Vorrei che fosse spazzata via. Potrebbe tranquillamente sparire, e non se ne sentirebbe di certo la mancanza, se tutti gli esseri perissero domani. Allora il vero albero della vita si sbarazzerebbe della più repellente, pesante messe del frutto del Mar Morto, l'intollerabile fardello di miriadi di simulacri umani, un peso infinito di bugie mortali."

Certo, non è proprio un discorso che fareste ad una persona incontrata per caso qualche minuto prima su un sentiero che porta a un torrente, ma è senza dubbio qualcosa di interessante, che offre diversi spunti di riflessione. Ecco, Birkin parla sempre così. Poi quando inizia a discorrere d’amore intraprende percorsi in lande desolate che sfociano con la metafisica, l’astronomia, la religione, la semiotica…e che non vi sto a riportare. Sarà dura, ma so che saprete farvene una ragione.

Gerald invece è solo una personcina molto inquietante. Ce l’ha coi cavalli e coi conigli. Vede il mondo come una gigantesca macchina, in cui ogni cosa ha un ruolo preciso nel grande ingranaggio dell’esistenza; può dunque asservirsene come più gli aggrada. Donne comprese, ovviamente. Ah, ogni tanto medita di uccidere qualcuno. Tutto normale, poi gli passa.

Parliamo dello stile. Ecco, lo stile di Lawrence è particolare, secondo me non l’ha capito bene neanche lui. Quando è ispirato sa creare immagini meravigliose, in cui ogni elemento è carico di sensualità e malizia, in cui le azioni vengono descritte come meravigliosi amplessi anche se due persone stanno solo parlando. Poi però a volte non sa cosa scrivere, e allora si mette a costruire periodi a caso, mettendoci in mezzo un “la sua coscienza”, “il suo io mistico”, “la sua anima”,”il suo essere” ogni tanto, che fa figo ma non vuol dire un bel niente, soprattutto se lo ripeti ad ogni capoverso.
“Avanzavano rapidi lungo la strada innevata, contrassegnata da rami secchi piantati a intervalli regolari. Gerald e Gudrun procedevano separati, come gli opposti poli di un’unica feroce energia. Però si sentivano abbastanza possenti da scavalcare i confini della vita per inoltrarsi in luoghi proibiti e tornarne.”
PERCHE’. PERCHE’. COSA C’ENTRA.

Donne innamorate ha diversi lati positivi, ma sono sommersi, seppelliti da quelli negativi. Primo fra tutti è che personaggi del genere non esistono nella realtà, e già qui il lettore si sente offeso. Indignato contro un Lawrence che ha voluto strafare ficcando nel suo libro elementi casuali di filosofia (dozzinale, peraltro) con la forza, come vestiti in una borsa da viaggio che chiede pietà.
Il risultato è un romanzo di pura fantascienza.

I did not like ‘Women in Love’ by D. H. Lawrence. I thought the main characters pretentious and self-centered, all of them acting very much like shallow inexperienced youths on the cusp of adulthood, but weighted with the freight of expressing themselves with the values of an artistic/aristocrat education. Adding to their misbegotten moonstruck philosophizing are their upper-class pretensions of possessing emotional sensitivities over those feelings felt by the common herd. Or maybe it was simply a case of people with neurotic tendencies who are unfortunately exacerbating each other’s mental conditions in having become a social group since they live near each other.

As I read, I felt the characters’ examinations of their sensations and feelings in every moment and main event of their lives appeared to be actually the cause of what to me was their growing mental derangements. For the author Lawrence, I believe he meant all of this self-examination to be a high-end character study of sensitive artistic young people, intellectualized through an artistic lens, while finding themselves and falling in love or infatuation. The point of all of this self-examination was struggling to discover who they were, trying to free themselves from social conventions and expectations.

That said, the novel is very well-written in a high-end modernism technique, with an emphasis on interior psychological dialogues. But the book was to me also more than a touch of multiple point-of-view streams of consciousness which was popular among intellectual writers of the early 1900’s, except with punctuation and a story with some actual forward momentum, which is expected by most general readers. However, the only character who actually appeared psychologically logical to me though was Gerald Crich. All of the other characters - Ursula Brangwin, Gudren Brangwin, Hermoine Roddice, Rupert Birkin were what in my day were similar to what babyboomers (and ‘the greatest generation’) called ‘hippies’:

“Hippies were a group of people who rejected mainstream society and established institutions in the 1960s and 1970s. They were part of the counterculture movement, which also included the New Left and the Civil Rights Movement. Hippies were known for their unique style, non-conformist values, and alternative lifestyle.” -Google.

What goes around comes around. I had no idea Lawrence’s apparent intellectual circle (was it? or maybe Lawrence was ahead of his time) would be re-invented by the babyboomers in the 1960’s.

I don’t really disagree with Lawrence’s, or his surrogates the characters’, ideas of examining their lives in order to learn what they really wanted for themselves, and separating out the demands of society and family from their own needs and wants, but omg! To me, the self-imposed artistic intellectuallism Lawrence imposes on his characters’ search for authenticity is a heavy chain wrapped around his characters’ necks! Or maybe I should say, minds?

Anyway.

I have copied the book blurb:

”First encountered in Lawrence's novel The Rainbow, sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are now grown-up women living in the English Midlands at the time of the First World War. Each becomes involved in a love: Ursula with the misanthropic intellectual Rupert Birkin, and Gudrun with Gerald Crich, a successful industrialist. The contrast between the two relationships – the former happy and fulfilling, the latter tempestuous and violent – facilitates an examination of both the regenerative and destructive aspects of human passion, while the novel's Alpine climax is revelatory of the intensity of close male friendship.

Heavily revised by the author in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the controversy surrounding the publication of The Rainbow , which had been suppressed on grounds of obscenity, Women in Love appeared first in the US in 1920, with a British edition following the next year. Straddling the boundary between nineteenth-century realism and modernism, it was regarded by Lawrence as his most accomplished work, and is considered by many to be the author's masterpiece.”

Since the book is considered a five-star read by many readers, and as it is once again being banned in the conservative religious parts of the South and Midwest of America, I highly recommend it to readers, especially young people with artistic and intellectual orientations, seeking a way to be a person beyond their local social strictures that aren’t fitting them very well. Unfortunately, I did not think the book a masterpiece, gentler reader. It is a book written with too overblown verbosity, and neurotic interior psychological dramas, reminding me of the excessive appearance of some designer hothouse flowers meant to overwhelm one with strong scent and large petals. I do respect its groundbreaking recognition of human sensuality, as well as the same-sex attraction that happens with many men and women, having been published (barely, surviving censorship bans) in 1920.

I think the novel can be standalone, but the novel The Rainbow, considered book one about the Brangwin women and their family and their boyfriends, adds depth. I personally liked ‘The Rainbow’ better, too.

****Spoiler Alert***
This book was hard work from beginning to end. The narrative is arduous and the whole novel is merely a vehicle for Lawrence to proselytise about love and relationships between women and men. As a result I found that other aspects of the book suffered such as the basic characterisation and the storyline. There was no real storyline to speak of really as events merely jumped from one to the next with no coherent narrative. It appears that Lawrence was merely using events as the perfect plot for him to introduce unprecedented RANTS about whatever particularly annoyed him about society at that time. Don't get me wrong, I love a good author who can do that but it can be done in such a way which doesn't BORE US HALF TO DEATH, which Lawrence failed to realise as none of his 'observations' were particularly insightful either. Maybe they would have been at the time but it certainly didn't strike a cord with me, I found it all very boring and predictable.
As well as poor storyline, all the people in the novel are like cardboard cut-outs, apart from the main four characters they are not fleshed out at all, they all merely serve as further vehicles for Lawrence's protestations. These people are so 2-D that when something actually significant happens such as someone DROWNING in a lake they barely react! Everyone just seems to go on with their business as if not a great deal happened, yes, there was a little girl screaming on the side of the lake but the adults show about as much emotion as a doorhandle.
The only detailed characters are the Brangwen sisters, Gerald and Birkin and none of them are particularly likeable. Birkin especially is a detestable misogynist and it makes you wonder what it was Ursula saw in him in the first place?
Also, the books title should have probably been "Men in Love" not women as the true love story seems to be between Birkin and Gerald. The only time you see any sort of tenderness from them is when the two men are together and they offer each other 'knowing looks' and gentle touches. They are the real lovers of the story and their attitude towards the women is pretty indifferent. Maybe Lawrence meant the title ironically and maybe I'll come back to this novel some day and appreciate it differently but in all I found it extremely difficult to find many redeeming qualities, and having been the first D.H Lawrence I have ever read it it has put me off reading any others.

In a word, weird fiction “full of passionate intensity” (Yeats)—

This was my third D.H. Lawrence, and I must confess I don’t know why I kept reading, except that I felt compelled, almost against my will, to read ahead (sort of like his characters). His prose is an incantation—with many repetitions, Biblical references and style—that also carries something of what he calls “the deep, passional soul,” or better yet, “the passionate struggle into conscious being” (from his forward). What’s striking about his fiction is that, for me at least, I don’t understand the characters—I’m often left perplexed by their exchanges (like most of the things Birkin says to Ursula about love) and even their motives (Gerald at the end, anyone?)—or don’t even like them to begin with (with all their sudden and inexplicable rage, hatred, and mood swings), but for some reason, I felt spellbound and couldn’t put it down. The passionate intensity of his work reminded me of Dostoevsky (and perhaps Lawrence is his rightful heir in literature) that comes straight from the depths of the soul and so enthralls the reader. Like Dostoevsky before him, Lawrence is a deeply religious/spiritual writer who, more than his great predecessor, struggles passionately to reach into the unknown and to describe the indescribable, so that not really understanding what is being described feels somehow right, as it should be. Or to put the matter differently, understanding it stops being the point of reading it—you’re in it for a mysterious ride, and a part of you knows that something profound and terribly important for the author is being portrayed and even accessed through the spell of his prose (which can be a slog to read, but has enough brilliant moments to keep you engaged).

Anyways, enough about the ineffable and the mysterious. As far as the story is concerned, this is far better than its prequel, The Rainbow which suffers from its too wide a scope and repetitiveness as it covers three generations of the Brangwen family. Also, you don’t need to have read The Rainbow to understand the story, since it doesn’t refer back to its prequel more than a few times and there are short notes to explain those few instances.

One final note: once the story moves into the Tyrolese Alps toward the end, the setting, mood, and the characters (especially Lorene) reminded me of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain—there was something haunting & magical about the snow-covered milieu, but as far as I’m aware, Mann wasn’t influenced by Lawrence (who finished his book in 1916, and Mann his in 1924). Perhaps a literary coincidence perhaps a convergence of effects (i.e. snowy mountains evoking similar moods and stories).

For now I’ve had enough of Lawrence’s fiction and would like to plunge into his nonfiction work.

Recommended for lovers of Dostoevsky.

I'm sorry, I just don't 'get' DH Lawrence. I think he is the most over-rated novelist I've ever read. And I have tried. I'm sure he broke the boundaries of what was permitted to be discussed in the novel BUT, besides the chapter involving the boating trip and resulting accident, nothing impressed me or remains with me from the book other than intense irritation with all of the characters. The women are unrealistic and the men, arrogant and dull. I wanted to slap the lot of them and tell them to get a life. It is so self-indulgent and self-important. If I'd been given this at school, I'd have been put off the 'classics' for life! What a waste of paper and time

I bet D.H. Lawrence was a lot of fun at parties.

Ha ha! I am kidding, of course. He's the guy you always want to get away from at parties - the guy who pins you in and talks to you about all this stuff that he is sure is blowing your mind, because nobody sees the reality of everything the way he does.

This time out, D.H. has a lot to teach us about love, and better love, and what lies beyond love, and there's a guy named Mary Sue Birkin who's a lot like D.H. and is the way we all should be.

And we have a narrative style where for pages and pages characters will internally monologue, and where we know characters are being ironic, or ironical, or sarcastic, or sardonic, because we are told that they said something ironically, or sarcastically, or sardonically. Upwards of 60 times we are told that, in fact.

I have a lot of snark that I need to organize, but I'm tired and I need to go to bed now. He used 'vaguely' 20 times, including this:

Halliday giggled, and lolled his head back, vaguely.

I don't have even the vaguest idea how one lolls one's head vaguely.

I'll make this better tomorrow when I'm pert as a pixie (Chapter 30).

Should've ditched the beard sisters and ran to Paris. Not gay enough.

Honestly, only Lawrence could get away with this kind of thing, and he really skates on thin ice most of the time.

Women in Love is ostensibly a sequel to The Rainbow, but it isn’t really, most of the characters are new, or newly important; Ursula Brangwen, who we followed for much of the earlier book, seems a different person, and Lawrence has even forgotten the names of some of her younger siblings. It’s a whole different book.

It’s also ostensibly a book about women in love (Ursula and her sister Gudrun), but is actually a book about men in love (suitors Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich), sometimes with women, sometimes with each other.

And frankly, much of it is completely insufferable. Another review warns readers from starting their Lawrence journey here, and I would underline that three times. This is my fourth Lawrence and I think the one with the highest barrier to entry. Always given to repetition, of words, of images, of concepts, or dialogue, Lawrence is in overdrive here. We are treated to an exhaustive description of everything Gudrun wears, and regular descriptions of Gerald’s moustache. Characters are constantly plunging into states of fear, of revulsion, of sneering, of mockery, or their souls are swooning.

Some random selections:
He slept in the subjections of his own health and defeat…Till now, she was afraid before him

Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said. She was rebelling against something else.

He never admitted he was going to die. He knew it was so, he knew it was the end. Yet even to himself he did not admit it. He hated the fact, mortally. His will was rigid. He could not bear being overcome by death. For him, there was no death.

Five hundred pages pass crowded like this, and it is frequently dizzying, annoying or comical in its extremes.

But there’s no denying Lawrence’s power either. He breaks every rule in the book, certainly every rule we would now think of as important. He rants to his readers, usually through his characters. A person could become dizzy trying to parse exactly what Lawrence thinks… I was glad I had read his essays and knew that what Lawrence thinks can change and evolve even while he’s writing it.

One central thing anchoring this book is the tension between art and industry. Birkin buys an old chair, then gives it away, crying “I hate that old chair, though it is beautiful. It isn’t my sort of beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left to preach the beloved past to us. I’m sick of the beloved past.” Gerald is the owner of a mine. And Gudrun, an artist, listens to the beliefs of another artist, who says:

There is not only no need for our places of work to be ugly, but their ugliness ruins the work, in the end. Men will not go on submitting to such intolerable ugliness…They will think the work itself is ugly: the machines, the very act of labour. Whereas machinery and the acts of labour are extremely, maddeningly beautiful… Art should interpret industry, as art once interpreted religion.

And there are wonderful scenes where things happen. A dying father, a boating accident, dancing in a German hotel, stealing a letter.

In someone else's hands, most of this would be complete gibberish. But with Lawrence, you just have to take him as he is. Here, he might be more what he is than ever.

Lawrence is an amazing period piece, just because he's one of the few writers ever to take Freud's theories as deep, meaningful truth. Not a happy guy.

Marguerite Duras with a hint of r/menwritingwomen.

Doting on horses, name-dropping all the way. Highbrow style with repetitions bringing it so low.

Intentions coming out of nowhere or shifting several times in the course of just one page ("and yet she hated him for it" written after almost every paragraph)

541 pages for one man to ask for an irregular marriage and another to realise he can't stay with one woman.

Two sisters used as simple props to observe those men and give them value as archetypes : the bItTeR pHiLoSoPhEr and the mAn oF aCtIon

Passages describing desire from the sisters's perspective are painful to read ("she worshipped his loins, the source of dark matter and electric energy") those describing the sisters themselves are laughable ("her subtle, feminine, demoniacle soul")

Meaningless discussions at surface level on love and marriage, art, beauty, male friendship.
No characters gives enough coherence to hide the fact they're only loose receptacles meant to utter the ramblings of the author.

P.S. DH go nik an "unuterrable" d**k pls

I was close to giving this a five, but with the profusion of loins, shanks and limbs scattered around the pretty prose which at times read like straight up harlequin romance i had to pull back the final star. also, despite my having more in agreement with some of the thoughts/ideas expressed in this novel, it shared the flaw of that work which i share far less intellectual common ground with - atlas shrugged. in both works characters can at times feel like lifeless mouthpieces for the authors philosophy, arragned in poses to spout the authors ideas/philosophy.

After 170 pages I had to give up. I couldn’t relate to these upper class snobs who just whined endlessly about how dreadful life is. “Go get a job” I say – “change some diapers”, “cook a dinner”, “Have a glass of wine”. Do something! It’s repetitive with misanthropic conversations like:

Page 140 (my book)

There was silence, wherein she wanted to cry. She reached for another bit of chocolate paper, and began to fold another boat.
“And why is it,” she asked at length, ‘that there is no flowering, no dignity of human life now?”
‘The whole idea is dead. Humanity itself is dry-rotten, really. There are myriads of human beings hanging on the bush – and they look very nice and rosy, your healthy young men and women. But they are apples of Sodom, as a matter of fact. Dead Sea Fruit, gall-apples. It isn’t true that they have any significance – their insides are full of bitter, corrupt ash.’
‘But they are good people,’ protested Ursula.
‘Good enough for the life of today. But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people’

I just could not see myself enduring this type of thought and dialogue for another 300 pages!

Everybody, in so many different ways in this, novel despises someone else. And its’ about domination and control – man over woman, man over animals, nature...

There is endless nihilism and a lack of humour (well I found myself snickering at passages like the above –as in here goes another rant from the author).

The individual characters are so isolated. In a chapter called “Class-Room”, where one of our main characters is a teacher, two of her “friends” enter and in full view of the class embark into a sordid philosophical conversation of the evils and futility of mankind. Suddenly our teacher dismisses her class – and I suppose her students silently leave. The entire atmosphere was very unreal – as if the students would remain stupefied quiet through-out this. No reference by D.H. Lawrence is made to the youthful inhabitants of the classroom – for him they simply don’t exist.

Years ago I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover which had a story-line and passion. “Women in Love” is bleak and cold. One gets the impression that the author had serious psychological problems.