Women in Love (Barnes & Noble Classics S - D. H. Lawrence [270]
2 (p. 451) She thought of... Mary Stuart, and the great Rachel: Queen Mary Stuart of Scotland (1542-1587) and actress Élisa Félix, also known as Mademoiselle Rachel (1821-1858), are cited by Gudrun as examples of women whose adventurous love lives were secondary to their work. Mary Stuart was married three times. Here Gudrun is rationalizing her inability to love, suggesting it is the product of a higher calling, art.
Chapter XXXI
1 (p. 483) “He should have loved me, ” he said “I offered him”: Birkin until the end of the novel insists on a homosexual connection between him and Gerald. However, it is Ursula whose point of view prevails, even if Birkin literally has the last word.
INSPIRED BY D. H. LAWRENCE AND WOMEN IN LOVE
Theater
Critic Leo Hamalian describes D. H. Lawrence’s play Touch and Go (1920) as a continuation of Women in Love. In D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996), Hamalian notes, “With the exception of Ursula, the main cast of Women in Love takes the stage almost unchanged. Gerald Crich becomes Gerald Barlow, a mining magnate; Birkin becomes Oliver Turton, the spokesman for Lawrence; and Gudrun is transformed into Anabel Wrath, who tutored Gerald’s sister Winifred before leaving Gerald for an affair with a foreigner.” Lawrence, in fact, had just finished Women in Love when he began composing his drama, which depicts the conflict between mine owner Gerald Barlow and his employees, who go on strike when Barlow refuses to allow them to unionize. The play, which depicts the inherent struggle between capitalism and organized labor, closes with the frenzied miners beating Gerald while Anabel watches in horror.
In the preface Lawrence wrote to the play, he proposes a new breed of theater, “A People’s Theater,” which would offer affordable seating and plays that are about “people ... not mannequins. Not lords nor proletariats nor bishops nor husbands nor co-respondents nor virgins nor adulteresses nor uncles nor noses. Not even white rabbits nor presidents. People. Men who are somebody, not men who are something.” Even more than in Women in Love, Lawrence attempts in Touch and Go to impress upon his audience his ideas about democracy in twentieth-century England.
Film
In the 1960s there was a wave of Lawrence film adaptations, beginning with Jack Cardiff ’s Sons and Lovers (1960), and followed in close succession by Mark Rydell’s The Fox (1967), Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969), and Christopher Miles’s The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970). Women in Love continues to be the best known of these. Russell, who went on to direct Tommy and Crimes of Passion, evokes the exuberant rhythm of Lawrence’s writing through the use of dance scenes, a technique he probably learned during the making of his 1966 television documentary Isadora Duncan: The Biggest Dancer in the World, about renowned movement artist and Lawrence contemporary Isadora Duncan. One of Lawrence’s key techniques, repetition, comes alive in the film’s imagery; in one example, Russell juxtaposes shots of Ursula and Birkin entwined, one just after love-making and one with them floating in water.
Russell’s adaptation of Women in Love garnered several Academy Award nominations, including for Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Screenplay. Glenda Jackson was chosen Best Actress for her portrayal of Gudrun. The performances of others in the cast are admirable, including Alan Bates and Oliver Reed as Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich, respectively, and Jennie Linden, who plays Ursula. Russell went on to dramatize two other Lawrence novels: a 1989 film version of the prequel to Women in Love, The Rainbow, and Lady Chatterley, a 1993 production for British television in which Russell also plays the role of Lady Chatterley’s father, Sir Reid.
Visual Art
In addition to writing poems, stories, novels, and plays, D. H. Lawrence was an accomplished painter; one of his friends was American landscape artist Georgia O