Well, the feminists hate it, the Christians apparently hate it (check out Irving Nutt's uproarious "review" below)...is there any other way to convey that Lawrence still has the power to provoke?
This is an absolute must for anyone serious about literature....Lawrence tries to stuff the whole dang world into a book. Everything he is trying to achieve here is breathtaking. The characters are all rather deplorable, but there is such psychological insight and empathy towards even the foulest of them, that the reader feels for all these fools. No two readers are going to look at it the same way....Is Crich a pitiable martyr or a ruthless phallocrat? Is Gudrun Lawrence's swat at women in general, or a pre-cursor to the cold, Thatcher-style "feminism". Is it about women in love...or is the romance strictly between the men? This ambiguity makes "Women In Love" absolutely timeless...
... a poetic, violent, and remarkably unsentimental masterpiece.