Women in Love

D. H. Lawrence, 1920

A-level set text OCR A-level

Two sisters' conversation about marriage begins an exploration of intimacy and independence.

Read the book Contents

Listen free: the LibriVox audiobook, read by Ruth Golding.

Length: 31 chapters
Reading time: About 12 hr 37 min
Words: 180,138

About the book

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sit working together and discuss whether marriage is something they want. Their different ways of answering establish a novel in which intimacy involves arguments about what a life should contain, rather than a straightforward agreement on happiness.

Lawrence places personal discussion beside the material surroundings of a community shaped by industry. Bodies, work and the landscape carry feeling as well as spoken ideas. The opening encourages readers to attend to hesitations and shifts of tone, where attraction and resistance may be difficult to separate.

On these lists

Modernist novels

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. D. H. Lawrence died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK.