Women in Love | Themes

Women in Love Themes

Unreality as against reality

When Gudrun goes to the church to see the Crich wedding, she sees the mining district as an unreal ghost world. Ursula feels like the world is unreal as well, after she marries Birkin, and their relationship is more real than anything else. The reality of social convention, and of the economic means of production, mining and trade and social roles, all seem unreal to the throbbing, vital selves that these four characters experience as their primary reality.

There is a reality, though, to the inner life Birkin is always talking about, and which Ursula seems to be attuned to. This reality is centered on the transcendent bond two people can share with each other and also through each other, with their own internal lives. For Lawrence, this is the source of all real life, the internal life and the natural world that echoes it and...
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