This book could have been very easily retitled Men in Love, but that would have gotten Lawrence more grief than he was already experiencing. It is a continuation of The Rainbow focusing on two of the Brangwen sisters Ursula and Gudrun. Ursula, of course, was the focus of the later part of the first book. This is a novel more driven by character than plot. It is also a book in which Lawrence spends a good deal of time expressing his views on class, materialism, industrialism, marriage, love and not so obliquely, homosexuality.He also continues with what seems to be one of the themes of his writing, that the relationship between a man and a woman is really a competition. Sometimes it is outright war.
The two main male characters are Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin. Gerald is a rich scion of a family owning many coal mines. His back story is that he accidentally shot his brother when they were both very young. The stigma of that accident followed him, both internally and publicly. He and his father were not on the best of terms and frequently clashed, although Gerald essentially followed all the cultural norms. While his father lies dying from a long, lingering, painful death Gerald takes over the directorship of the coal mines. He transforms them from nearly played out to thriving operations by updating technology, cleaning house of old employees and bringing in new blood. He is in his late twenties to 31 during the time of the novel.
Rupert Birkin is the best friend of Gerald Crich. While not nearly as rich he does receive enough income annually to not have to work if he so chooses. At the beginning of the novel he is working though. He is a supervisor in the same school system that the Brangwen sisters are teaching in. He is a bit harder to grab hold of, and intentionally so. My guess would be that this character is in many ways, D. H. Lawrence. He is a dreamer, and seems to stand outside of society. Or at least he sees himself that way. He has a “timeshare” in an apartment in London that is populated by bohemian artist types. Most of his time, however, is spent in the Beldover area where he works, the sisters teach, and the Crich family have their mines. He is the vehicle Lawrence uses to espouse his views off of the foil of the industrial magnate, Gerald Crich and occasionally Ursula Brangwen.
Fairly early in the book Lawrence introduces the theme of the attraction/love between Rupert and Crich:
“Quite other things were going through Birkin’s mind. Suddenly he saw himself confronted with another problem—the problem of love and eternal conjunction between two men. Of course this was necessary—it had been a necessity inside himself all his life—to love a man purely and fully. Of course he had been loving Gerald all along, and all along denying it.”
The two men dance around the edges of their attraction. Rupert admits it to himself, but does not act on it from a physical perspective. Gerald is less introspective, and less likely to deviate from the accepted path. But then again there is the naked Japanese wrestling scene in the middle of the book:
“’I used to do some Japanese wrestling,’ said Birkin. ‘A Jap lived in the same house with me in Heidelberg, and he taught me a little. But I was never much good at it.’
‘You did!’ exclaimed Gerald. ‘That’s one of the things I’ve never ever seen done. You mean jiu-jitsu, I suppose?’
‘Yes. But I am no good at those things—they don’t interest me.’
‘They don’t? They do me. What’s the start?’
‘I’ll show you what I can, if you like,’ said Birkin.
‘You will?’ A queer, smiling look tightened Gerald’s face for a moment, as he said, ‘Well, I’d like it very much.’
‘Then we’ll try jiu-jitsu. Only you can’t do much in a starched shirt.’
‘Then let us strip, and do it properly.”
While they do not do anything that could be considered a sexual act, it definitely is homoerotic. It ends with two naked men exhausted, one lying on top of the other. They briefly grasp hands tenderly.
Rupert and Ursula spend an inordinate amount of time dancing around commitment. Ursula does so as it is who she is. It is a continuation of her attitudes from the first novel. Rupert seems to have some esoteric dream of marriage.
“’I know,’ he said, ‘it just doesn’t centre. The old ideals are dead as nails—nothing there. It seems to me there remains only this perfect union with a woman—sort of ultimate marriage—and there isn’t anything else.’
‘And you mean if there isn’t the woman, there’s nothing?’ said Gerald.
‘Pretty well that—seeing there’s no God.’”
Ursula does not buy this. However, after a heated argument by the side of the road something changes in both of them and they marry, quickly, much to the distaste of Ursula’s father.
Gerald and Gudrun take a different route to forming a couple. Gerald’s dying father engages Gudrun as an art tutor for his youngest daughter. This is done with Gerald’s consent. Both Gerald and Gudrun know at some level that this will lead to their coupling. They dance and they dance and it does not move along. And then there was the kiss under the arch:
“His arms were fast around her, he seemed to be gathering her into himself, her warmth, her softness, her adorable weight, drinking in the suffusion of her physical being, avidly. He lifted her, and seemed to pour her into himself, like wine into a cup.”
And then things slow down again due to other circumstances until Gerald is driven outside at night to walk and walk from the various stresses occurring in his life. He finds himself at Gudrun’s house when most have gone to bed. Ursula is walking Rupert to the end of the lane and has left the door unlocked. Gerald slips in, manages to find Gudrun’s bedroom. She accepts his intrusion, and allows his love making, but as it turns out it was not from love.
Rupert and Ursula decide to leave England and spend some time traveling in Europe. Gerald and Gudrun are to go the first leg with them to a ski resort in Germany. This is where things begin to unravel for the pair. At her core Gudrun is narcissistic and Gerald is just a passing fancy. Lawrence is almost cliché in his depiction of Gerald as the iron fisted industrial magnate who is a little needy boy at the foot of a woman. There was never love in the relationship. It was physical attraction and a nearly pathological neediness on Gerald’s part. The relationship turns to one of hate and competition.
While at the resort Gudrun becomes friends with cynical German sculpture, Loerke. Gerald detests the sculpturer before Gudrun becomes friends with him, and when they do his hate just grows. As the hate between Gerald and Gudrun grows, the friendship between Loerke and Gudrun develops. This comes to a head, and Gerald nearly kills the pair. He then wanders aimlessly up the mountain and ends up freezing to death in the night.
Rupert and Ursula had left the resort and must come back to deal with Gerald’s death. Gudrun has very little emotion over it, and she goes off to Dresden with Loerke.
Rupert is devastated as the final piece of dialogue at the end books demonstrates:
“’Did you need Gerald?’ she asked one evening.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Aren’t I enough for you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You are enough for me, as far as a woman is concerned. You are all women to me. But I wanted a man friend, as eternal as you and I are eternal.’
‘Why aren’t I enough?’ she said. ‘You are enough for me. I don’t want anybody else but you. Why isn’t it the same with you?’
‘Having you, I can live all my life without anybody else, any other sheer intimacy. But to make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,’ he said.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘It’s an obstinacy, a theory, a perversity.’
‘Well—’ he said.
‘You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!’
It seems as if I can’t,’ he said. ‘Yet I wanted it.’
‘You can’t have it, because it’s false, impossible,’ she said.
‘I don’t believe that,’ he answered.”
I will have to admit I had a hard time getting through this book. Lawrence’s writing is beautiful. His character depictions are a marvel. There was just not enough plot to drive me forward. What does drive the reader is that you can see the train wreck of Gerald and Gudrun as inevitable. And it is exactly like watching an accident that you cannot take your eyes off of.
This book is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free.
Audio book from LibriVox.org Women in Love
e-Book from Gutenberg.org: Women in Love
It has been turned into several movies/ TV shows
Women in Love (1969) – starring Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson
Women in Love (2011) (TV Mini-Series)
Sinners’ Holiday (1930) aka “Women in Love”