Abstract

I argue that Women in Love, despite its air of apocalyptic defeatism, offers D. H. Lawrence’s most intense engagement with the problem of how to imagine the future. Lawrence’s tenuous hope for a world that does not repeat the oppressive patterns of normativity is communicated, surprisingly, through the figure of the couple—often a site of stinging critique for Lawrence—and ultimately hinges upon an unresolved tension between heterosexual and same-sex coupling. Far from being extinguished in the novel’s pages, the project of creating a new future for the couple is passed along to the reader to pursue.

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