Women in Love? Hah!

D. H. Lawrence is well represented on both the ML list and the RR list with four books that are allegedly great, so maybe I just picked the wrong one to read.  Women in Love (#49 and #75 on the two lists) wasn’t the worst thing on my list I’ve read so far but it was far from great.   Lawrence’s writing style was not particularly appealing to me either.  I’ve not read anything else by him and only had vague ideas about his stuff -- Lady Chatterly’s Lover was some controversial and shocking thing back in the day.  According to the brief foreword Lawrence writes for Women in Love this book was refused by publishers who didn’t want to risk prosecution.  In the introduction to the book it is recommended that no one should begin her study of Lawrence with Women in Love, “the less you know about Lawrence the more baffling and irritating you will find” it.  Should have heeded that advice!

This book is about two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen and the men they allegedly love (and I only make that inference because of the title of the book), Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich.  Ursula and Birkin’s relationship comes closer to something akin to love than anything going on between Gudrun and Gerald.  The book was written in 1913 and rewritten and finished in 1917 but the story itself is left vague as to when it is taking place purposefully according to Lawrence who didn’t want the story to deal with the war but wanted the bitterness of the war taken for granted in relation to the characters.  Mission accomplished. 

I’m not sure why a man would pick women to focus on when dealing with this subject.  He could just have easily called it “Men in Love” but I’m sure that doesn’t sound macho enough.  The men seem to me to be the better drawn characters here.  Whenever the women appear in the first few chapters he goes on and on about what they are wearing “It was green poplin, with a loose coat about it, of broad, dark-green and dark-brown stripes.  The hat was of a pale, greenish straw, the colour of new hay, and it had a plaited ribbon of black and orange, the stockings were dark green, the shoes black” and this is for all the women whenever they change clothes.  The guys are wearing pants.  I found this very superficial and irritating for someone who is supposed to be delving into the hearts and minds of his characters. 

It's a guy thing

Okay, he does show some insight into women  -- On an outing Gudrun wants to take off her clothes and dive into a lake but knows she can’t “You’re a man, you want to do a thing, you do it.  You haven’t the thousand obstacles a woman has in front of her.”  Or when Ursula is recounting how Gerald accidentally shot his brother when they were youngsters – “I couldn’t pull the trigger of the emptiest gun in the world, not if someone were looking down the barrel.  One instinctively doesn’t do it—one can’t.”  Of course this says more about who Gerald is than the fact that he is a man.  And he is no prize as far as I can tell.  None of them are and this is a rather depressing book.  There are lots of “deep” subjects explored and some of them eloquently but for the most part I found it to be a waste of time.  So, maybe now I should go back and start with Sons and Lovers as I was instructed to do in the introduction and then Lawrence’s other novels in order.  But probably not anytime soon.

Next week:  We both read "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder