Women in Love

Introduction and Notes by Dr Jeff Wallace, University of Glamorgan. Lawrence’s finest, most mature novel initially met with disgust and incomprehension. In the love affairs of two sisters, Ursula with Rupert, and Gudrun with Gerald, critics could only see a sorry tale of sexual depravity and philosophical obscurity. ‘Women in Love’ is, however, a profound response to a whole cultural crisis. The “progress” of the modern industrialised world had led to the carnage of the First World War. What, then, did it mean to call ourselves “human”? On what grounds could we place ourselves above and beyond the animal world? What are the definitive forms of our relationships – love, marriage, family, friendship – really worth? And how might they be otherwise? Without directly referring to the war, Women in Love explores these questions with restless energy. As a sequel to ‘The Rainbow’, the novel develops experimental techniques which made Lawrence one of the most important writers of the Modernist movement. AUTHOR: D(avid) H(erbert Richards) Lawrence (1885-1930) was an English novelist and poet, whose works were not only controversial during his lifetime, but long after his death. The explicit sexuality of his books, including his most popular work, ‘Sons and Lovers’, reached a peak with ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, his final book, that was not published in an unexpurgated form in the U.K. until after a court case for obscenity was dismissed, in 1960.