Women in Love (Oxford World's Classics)

A powerful and engrossing tale of extremes and extremists, Women in Love (1920), follows the passionate relationships of Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen with their respective lovers, the ominous Gerald Crich and the charismatic but fragile Rupert Birkin. The abortive alliance between the two men and the couples' affairs are played out against the derangements of industrialism and the need to find new ways of living and better ways of dying. The introduction explores the impact on Lawrence of the violence of the First World War. - ;`New eyes were opened in her soul. She saw a strange creature from another world, in him. It was as if she were enchanted, and everything were metamorphosed.' In Women in Love (1920), Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, who first appeared in Lawrence's earlier novel, The Rainbow, take centre stage as Lawrence explores their growth and development in their relationships with two powerful men, Rupert Birkin and his friend Gerald Crich. A novel of regeneration and dark, destructive human passion, Women in Love reflects the impact on Lawrence of the First World War in the potential both for annihilation and salvation of the self. Quintessentially modernist, Women is Love is one of Lawrence's most extraordinary, innovative and unsettling works. -