Ugh - this book was no fun for me. There were some lovely moments and prose that I copied into my quote journal, and that's about all that kept me going. The introduction advised that "one should not begin one's study of Lawrence with Women in Love", and man, I guess that's right. I really can't stand purposefully obscure language, or a supposedly realist novel that's full of dialogue and emotional reactions that make no sense and bear no resemblance to how people actually talk or think. Maybe I'm just not literary enough for this, but I'm retreating into some easier stuff for a while.

“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”

Women in Love (1920) is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence, a sequel to his earlier (and, I think, even better) novel The Rainbow (1915), following the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Gerald will inherit a colliery, and since coal-mining takes a hit in The Rainbow as an emblem of industrialization’s defiling of natural midland England, we really struggle to see how this relationship between art and coal could possibly work.

“They would never be together. Ah, this awful, inhuman distance which would always be interposed between her and the other being! There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under-stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was tormented with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness.”

Lawrence contrasts this pair with teacher Ursula Brangwen and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who seems to articulate many of the opinions on men and women, love and democracy associated with the author. Lawrence/Birkin and Ursula debate for hours the nature of love, on this kind of near-Buddhist, “unknowing” level:

“You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unknowingness, and give up your volition. . . You've got to learn not-to-be before you can come into being.”

And:

“I want to be gone out of myself, and you to be lost to yourself, so we are found different.”

But this battle-to-define-love also has sweetness in it:

“They looked at each other and laughed, then looked away, filled with darkness and secrecy. Then they kissed and remembered the magnificence of the night. It was so magnificent, such an inheritance of a universe of dark reality, that they were afraid to seem to remember.”

Gerald and Rupert also have a strong attraction to each other: There’s a naked wrestling scene, (I recall vividly now the film version of this) evidence of Birkin’s feeling that he needs an intense—though different—love of a man as much as he needs the love of a woman. Intense is the order of the day always for each of these people.

Much of the novel is anguished, overheated talk, founded in powerful (or, if you choose, just overwrought, youthful) psychological and physical attractions. And they repel each other, too, or maybe it is best to describe them all as colliding with each other in love so intense it is on the edge of hate. Lots of fighting sometimes leading to tenderness. Most of the action, such as it is, happens in England and concludes on holiday for the foursome (and a few other characters woven in and out) in the Tyrolean Alps. This is Lawrence’s favorite of all his novels, and the one most drawing on his life, Ursula's character based on Lawrence's wife Frieda and Gudrun's on Katherine Mansfield, while Rupert Birkin's has elements of Lawrence himself, and Gerald Crich is partly based on Mansfield's husband, John Middleton Murry.

As we know from The Rainbow, Ursula is a schoolteacher, Gudrun a painter. Early on they establish that men and love are superfluous. Then Ursula meets Birkin, and--so much for giving up men!--they proceed to a tempestuous raging relationship, equal parts heat and light. Also early on the two best and quite different friends, Rupert and Gerald, have a similar conversation about women and love as superfluous, but then Gerald sees Gudrun, and they eventually develop a relationship, a case of opposites attracting. There’s heat, again, but less light, and the heat that is generated between them is that such as draws a moth to the flame. The two couples take a holiday together in the Alps where Ursula and Birkin resolve some of their basic differences, and Gudrun and Gerald decidedly do not resolve their differences. I love you, I hate you, I’ll be destroyed by you, I’ll destroy you. So much a struggle of wills. And then a dramatic conclusion in the snows of the Alps. It sounds here like I am not liking it, but Lawrence writes so passionately, you either have to laugh and throw this across the room or you must embrace him (that passionate love/heat thing seems to apply to his readers, too!) , and I seem to have fallen into bed with him (or: replace with wrestling metaphor here, but you get the point).

A 20-second clip from Ken Russell’s 1969 film adaptation, which made a through-line of romantic celebration (Woodstock was 1969) from Lawrence to the sixtes; Glenda Jackson won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Gudrun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtjV5...

Memorable scenes:

*Gerald’s trying to force his mare to stay close to a passing train, to assert his dominance over it, torturing it bloody it in the process. This is cruel Gerald, control freak, the very image of the very male boss who must dominate, master, in an assertion of power and strength. Gudrun, the artist, sees this, is nevertheless confusedly attracted to him (he's a rich and powerful and repellent alpha male, in the way of bad boy romances), though she also fears he will dominate and possibly “destroy” her will.

*Gerald’s father, the owner of the coal mine, dying, refusing to give in to the dying of the light, produces some small but important vulnerability in Gerald, that leads him in the middle of the night to sneak into Gudrun’s house, and bed. We have some (small) hope for him and them on this night.

*Gudrun running and dancing among the cattle, the nature child. Precursor to sixties lovefest dancing and raves?

*Birkin asking for Ursula’s hand in marriage, (unplanned) before Ursula’s traditionalist father, which ignites a weeks-long struggle before she comes to her final decision.

Simone de Beauvoir said of the novel that it was phallocentric, but I—okay, I’m a male—saw more of a balance in the struggle between men and women. Ursula and Gudrun are the strongest voices and spirits in the story, in spite of a certain male power that is present. Women assert themselves against male dominance and find their voices and control over their bodies, in my reading. They get what they want, they don't accept what is not good for them, though they do struggle in the process.

“She was not herself--she was not anything. She was something that is going to be--soon--soon--very soon. But as yet, she was only imminent.”

“Women in Love” is a novel of ideas, but Lawrence’s lyrical prose is also expressionistically emotional, supercharged with erotic energy. It took a while to heat up, this novel of his twenties, and the twenties of these four young people, a book I first read in my twenties, perfect, but I finally fell in love with it again. Maybe it was the mid point of the book where it had its hooks in me again, when they seem to all give in to each other and have fun for a time, dancing, boating, with long wine-soaked conversations.

Like The Rainbow, which I actually liked better, with its primeval depictions of working-class England, Women in Love challenged Victorian conceptions of sexuality. It was great to return to it after more than 4 decades (!). I can certainly see how Lawrence might be disliked for all the (too?) emotional writing, but for me it perfectly captures the late sixties and early seventies counter-cultural focus on freedom, imagining, as it begins to do, alternate conceptions to mainstream industrial/corporate society (hey, communes!).

And sometimes the prose can be lyrical and lovely and soft:

“A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon–like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly–splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music.”

A 5-minute scene from Women in Love by Ken Russell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_ad8...

Well, I'm proud of myself that I finished it. It wasn't horrible but I did push myself through it. I kept reminding myself that this classic novel is "magnificient" and that (the characters) "clash in thought, passion and belief, and the reader is gripped by deeply held convictions about love and modern society" . . or so they say. There are some passages written so beautifully, and definitely some thoughts on our existence that you can't help but think about; but it was the characters that I found so difficult to deal with. They think about and discuss "life" and what it is all about ad nauseum, but they don't actually live. All of the characters are shallow with no attributes to admire or aspire to. It is interesting though that many of the things they worry about and the views they have could be pulled right out of their early 1900's and applied to today. So, in the end, I'm glad I read it, but I won't go so far as to say I enjoyed it. Now I have to decide what to read next . . . I am thankful to be moving on!

all I can say is my professor better have an extremely good reason for putting me thru this experience

It´s funny that Lawrence is now seen as an old-fashioned classic author: how funny it´d be to see his face if he knew. He´s everything he didn´t want to be and isn´t that just wonderful?

I´m firmly in the I´d-read-Lawrence´s-shopping-list camp. Nobody - nobody - has written in English like he does when he´s on form. He had a gift for the language, for words, rhythm, meaning - and a fearlessless about writing that is awesome in its intensity and self-belief.

He was all contradiction; exasperating but fascinating. And he took himself so seriously: doesn´t anyone else read his novels just to see how he turns up, in which disguise, and the situations he makes himself suffer? He´s so earnest the books are almost comedies now and, like all the best comedies, punch you right in the soul when you drop your defences.

But then there´s the plots and characters. My God. Oh, there it all goes wrong, or goes right in flashes. There it places him as a poet writing prose. His books are prose poetry.

Lawrence writes like a candle gives light. He flickers and illuminates but he´s not constant. He burns bright and burns low. He lightens the darkness. He shows us things we otherwise would not see. He is old-fashioned and messy. He provides a point in the darkness, hisses and vanishes.

A tragic story about the impossibility of true love. Lawrence focuses on two couples, partly using protagonists from his previous novel The Rainbow. Birkin and Ursula seem to have a successful relationship, though not completely, Gerald and Ursula fail. I found this book very rich in content, and offering a more coherent story than 'Rainbow'. Lawrence offers beautiful introspections into woman/manhood. But, as always with him, he can walk strange side paths.

DNF-ing this 200 pages in because the reality is that I will not be able to finish it. The blatant patriarchal views and the utter arrogance of the two main male characters just make it difficult for me to go on.

The fact that every time a woman says something she is cut short and the man's reply starts with "No" while he attempts to enlighten the poor damsel of the mysteries of the universe, that HE had got access to because of his nightly ravings and deep introspective abilities that no woman could EVER hope to achieve in any of the possible worlds.

Liked the pessimism of it all, humans really are a damned horrible lot, but when a white (not straight, though) man says it and repeats it every five lines and becomes passive aggressive when a woman dares share her view, I just have to close the book and decide life is too short to deal with stupid books.

Don't know whether this Lawrence guy really was a sexist, but frankly I don't care; I'm sick of excusing misogyny on basis of "those were the times" or "but he is iRoNiC!" or whatever. We do have astounding unproblematic classics: let's read those instead simply because no one has to adjust anything when praising them. If you are a racist/sexist/xenophobic literary genius, then you aren't a genius.

And you aren't worth the time.

« Pah – l’amour. Lo detesto. L’amour, l’amore, die Liebe – lo detesto in ogni lingua. Donne e amore, non c’è tedio più grande » esclamò. Lei se ne sentì un po’ offesa. E tuttavia era la sua stessa, elementare sensazione. Uomini e amore, non c’era tedio più grande.

Non c’è cosa più irritante, io credo, che sentirsi troppo stupidi per capire un romanzo. Non c’è cosa più irritante che sentire che la distanza che ti separa dallo scrittore, in termini di complessità ideologica, di esperienze di vita e di abilità linguistica, non è una piccola crepa, ma un crepaccio. Tra me e Lawrence c’è un crepaccio. Intorno, una valle innevata. Sopra, un cielo bianco lattiginoso.

È uno di quei libri, rari a trovarsi, il cui contenuto in termini di trama si può sintetizzare in mezza riga. Due donne, due uomini, due storie d’amore, anzi tre. Picnic all’aperto, gite in macchina, crudeltà sui conigli, una scazzottata, un contorno di affascinanti personaggi bohemien, l’industria del carbone, tanta tanta voglia di libertà. I due personaggi femminili, Gudrun e Ursula, sono due sorelle, estremamente diverse l’una dall’altra. I due personaggi maschili, Birkin e Gerald, sono altrettanto estremamente diversi. Le tre coppie, Birkin-Ursula, Gudrun-Gerald, Birkin-Gerald, sono ancora più diverse ed estreme.
Le coppie si formano al capitolo due. Benissimo, perché andare avanti allora? Un romanzo di Jane Austen si sarebbe fermato qui. Che problema c’è? Sarebbe un romanzo estremamente carino di 12 pagine. Ma cosa diavolo… ? Perché il mio romanzo ha 542 pagine? Cos’altro deve accadere? Ecco, in realtà non accade nulla. Si riflette. Questo è tutto, si riflette. Ma su cosa? Già, questa è un’altra bella domanda.

Il problema è che in un romanzo di Jane Austen (per quanto la mia venerazione per zia Jane sia eterna ed incrollabile) non si troverebbe qualcosa su cui riflettere. Eroe ed eroina devono arrivare al matrimonio, punto. Dopo il matrimonio possono finalmente varcare la soglia del talamo nuziale e fare tanti bambini. Non c’è altra strada. Lizzy non è mai rientrata a casa dicendo « Mamma, Mr. Darcy mi ha chiesto se vado con lui in Svizzera, così possiamo darci dentro come conigli ».
Il signor Lawrence è un nostalgico, è uno che Jane Austen l’ha letta, e molto bene. Ne riconosce tutti i meriti, ma anche tutti i limiti. Non che zia Jane non fosse una grande artista, ma era una donna del suo tempo. I tempi sono cambiati, e questo il signor Lawrence lo sa.
Siamo nel 1921 e la gente è tutta diversa. La guerra ha cambiato tutto. Ha cambiato gli uomini, ha cambiato le donne, ha cambiato le relazioni tra i sessi. Le donne possono girare il mondo da sole, possono fare lo scultore, bere champagne, andare col primo che capita (e pensate, quello nemmeno è costretto a sposarle, dopo!). Gli uomini possono sentirsi forti della loro virilità e passare da un’amante all’altra, hanno automobili, hanno motori e operai. Il mondo corre veloce, c’è l’industria, c’è il tran-tran delle metropoli, c’è la modernità. Eppure si ritorna sempre allo stesso problema. L’eterno problema. L’amore. Pah, l’amour.

Donne innamorate è proprio questo, una sottile e complessa analisi dei sentimenti umani allo scoccare del secolo, un tentativo di stabilire cosa è cambiato rispetto al secolo scorso, se c’è ancora l’amore e in che forme si esprime, attraverso tutto un campionario di esperienze quali la convivenza, il matrimonio, le relazioni tra persone dello stesso sesso.
Lawrence ce la metteva proprio tutta per dare scandalo. Il romanzo precedente a questo, The rainbow, fu messo al rogo dalla censura (1921, sì, e ancora bruciavano i libri). Il suo romanzo più famoso, L’amante di Lady Chatterley, fu pubblicato a Firenze da un editore che non conosceva l’inglese. Se avesse capito cosa c’era scritto, non l’avrebbe pubblicato sicuro. Lawrence era troppo un uomo del suo tempo, troppo schietto per andare d’accordo con gli inglesi. Gli inglesi sono gente che va d’accordo con Dickens e con Jane Austen, con quelli che rientrano nel canale dell’ordine prestabilito. Ma Lawrence no, Lawrence è uno che ti tira pesci in faccia. La sua scrittura è scandalosa, la sua scrittura è sesso senza essere oscenità, la sua scrittura fa sciogliere le viscere e desta qualcosa, quel qualcosa che il cuore di un freddo inglese del ’21 non riesce ancora ad accettare. Che il mondo è cambiato, signori. Il mondo è cambiato e non possiamo farci niente. Le nostre donne non sono più donne. I nostri uomini non sono più uomini. E adesso i sessi cominciano ad interagire tra loro in un modo che ci manda fuori di testa.

Donne innamorate è un romanzo che investe tutto sui personaggi e quasi nulla sull’azione. Il dialogo, il gesto, è su questi elementi che l’attenzione del lettore si deve concentrare. Su questi e su una serie di simboli ripetuti, di scene chiave per capire in che modo i personaggi interagiscono e quali sono le molle del loro pensiero.
Abbiamo Ursula, donna di passione, di grandi slanci, di grandi gelosie, molto intensa e vera in tutto il suo sentire. Un po’ stupida alle volte, ma certamente umana, come tutte le donne un po’ troppo innamorate, un po’ troppo stupide, un po’ troppo umane. Alle volte vorresti prenderla a sberle, alle volte ti trovi a parteggiare per lei. Qualche volta pensi, è veramente cretina, e qualche volta, dagliele di santa ragione!
Abbiamo Birkin, per molti versi un autoritratto dello scrittore, il filosofo del romanzo, la vera voce ideologica, un pensatore, un sognatore, teorizzatore di amori tutti spirito e niente carne, che vede l’amore come il bilanciamento tra due stelle vicine e poi finisce inevitabilmente per contraddirsi e soccombere all’amore molto più umano e realizzabile di Ursula. Birkin è il mio personaggio preferito. È un tizio che dice sempre cose memorabili. Sull’umanità. Sulla morte. Sul sentimento. Sui dinosauri. Qualsiasi cosa dica è un piccolo capolavoro artistico. Spesso frainteso, come capita alla gente grande quando finisce tra gente piccola.
Abbiamo Gerald, orribile, terrificante, divino. Più che essere un personaggio, Gerald assomiglia a qualche divinità nordica del ghiaccio e del fulmine. È una macchina da guerra e vede il mondo in forma di macchina. Il mondo per lui è un enorme ingranaggio da oliare e ogni persona è uno strumento. Lui stesso è uno strumento, un meccanismo, e un meccanismo non deve mai smettere di funzionare. Gerald è uno sempre impegnato a fare qualcosa. Deve essere sempre impegnato a fare qualcosa. Perché se si fermasse a pensare, morirebbe.
Abbiamo Gudrun. Abbiamo Gudrun, punto. Ecco, io non ho capito questo personaggio fino a venti pagine fa. Pensavo che in qualche modo molto lontano mi somigliasse, ma non capivo perché. È un personaggio così controverso e tremendo. È sadica. È masochista. Vuole dominare ed essere dominata. Vuole soccombere all’amore e non soccombere. Vuole una vita libera e piena di ispirazione e si costringe a un’esistenza di miseria intellettuale. Ci ho messo fino a venti pagine dalla fine, ma poi ho capito. E ho capito che mi somiglia davvero. Ci ho messo tanto tempo a riconoscerla solo perché era un ritratto troppo impietoso da guardare.

Qualche breve considerazione sulla scrittura di Lawrence. Ecco, è semplicemente una delle più belle scritture che conosca. È una scrittura che ha un tessuto, ha qualcosa dell’oro e qualcosa dell’elettricità. È come se una vena potentissima di energia scorresse dalle pagine al lettore. Magari potessi averla. Magari fosse mia.

E allora, vi starete chiedendo, dove dannazione è il problema? Quale cavolo è il tuo problema? Perché non hai dato a questo libro cinque stelline? Perché? Perché sei una cretina! No, perché sono umana. Perché sono umana e 542 pagine nell’inglese di Lawrence sono come la maratona di New York. Sono arrivata in fondo con grandissima soddisfazione, ma che fatica. In italiano avrei forse saputo apprezzarne tutte le sfumature, tastare il tessuto, ma in inglese no. È semplicemente troppo difficile per me, sono umana, e devo accettarlo. Questa barriera linguistica è stata anche il motivo principale, io credo, per cui le vicende dei personaggi mi sono sostanzialmente scivolate addosso. Li ho guardati con molta freddezza, con molta scientificità. C’è stata da parte mia davvero poca partecipazione.
È stato come guardare da fuori un ballo in una sala da tè. Dentro ci sono tutte le signore agghindate, ci sono le tende, c’è la musica, c’è profumo, dentro c’è tutta la tua idea di bellezza orchestrata soltanto per farti piacere. Ma nessuno ti apre la porta. Grazie tante, tu dici.

I found the book dreamy. I'm a sucker for beautiful language and Lawrence is a master at it; his unexpected vocabulary kept me hooked right throughout. The first half I adored, but the second half just seemed a bit of a drag - was it really necessary to have all those meaningless conversations? Likewise the philosophy in the first half was thought-provoking and lovely, but by the second half it had slipped to something of a showing-off; Lawrence seemed to be questioning everything thoughtlessly and stirring no wonder in the reader.
Gudrun and Gerald's relationship I found intriguing, Ursula and Birkin's not so much - but I suppose that was what the book was about. It raised many questions for me about the logistics of love, but more questions about the nature of humanity. Overall, a very interesting and beautiful book, but perhaps bogged down a little by the end.

Novels by D.H. Lawrence possess the absolutely unique psychological climate and Women in Love is definitely one of his groundbreaking masterpieces.

I detest what I am, outwardly. I loathe myself as a human being. Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth. Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies.

Women in Love and Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley constitute an exhaustive portrayal of the tempestuous era – at least on the intellectual plane.

She knew, with the perfect cynicism of cruel youth, that to rise in the world meant to have one outside show instead of another, the advance was like having a spurious half-crown instead of a spurious penny.

Human being is a complex combination of natural instincts, emotions, consciousness, reason and acquired knowledge so one's main task is to keep all these ingredients in harmony.

Someone let the wicked genie out of the lamp tonight. He's writing this, not me.

I promised myself I'd review only books I like.

But he has other ideas . . . and he's tied my hands behind my back and is typing as I watch.

WOMEN IN LOVE
by D. H. Lawrence

Hated the women. Felt sorry for the men who should have gone off together. Brighton in summer would have been a better end.

For the number of times I wanted to fling the book against a wall . . . and didn't, three stars.

The Wicked Genie

"The possibilities of love exhaust themselves."

This novel must have been such a hard to swallow pill back in 1920s. I found its narrative hard to follow and bland sometimes, but overall it got really interesting when characters started to react to each other, and oh so intensely at that. Like the wrestling scene took me out. The sisters' characters were also really independent and rebellious. And Gerald-Birkin-Leurke dynamic and the final tragedy? I still can't get my head around it. I also think I'm gonna re-read some chapters as soon as I can.