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Nowhere else within the broad realm of literature have I come across such beauteous turns of phrase devoted to exploring the many dimensions of sexual desire. In fact, I cannot cease to wonder how Lawrence manages to convey the intensity and intimacy of a kiss and a caress so effectually without deploying any explicit terms. His men and women are often capricious creatures of instinct and restless, stubborn adherents of their inexorable self will which causes them to be in conflict - even if tenuously - with the world circumscribing them. And carnal love emerges as the only authentic religious force capable of exalting the unsatisfied, solitary halves to a state of spiritual communion and fulfillment.

His pride was bolstered up, his blood ran once more in pride. But there was no core to him: as a distinct male he had no core. His triumphant, flaming, overweening heart of the intrinsic male would never beat again. He would be subject now, reciprocal, never the indomitable thing with a core of overweening, unabateable fire. She had abated that fire, she had broken him.

Multigenerational family sagas usually employ some common thread that binds together the disparate story arcs and subplots - presumably some long suppressed odious family secret, the effect of the altering milieu on evolving family dynamics, the denuding influence of time on family fortunes. And yet Lawrence's account of the Brangwen family is refreshingly free of any such cliched thematic glue.
Instead, the narrative sprawls across a wide swath of years, leisurely routing its way through the rituals of marriages, motherhood, and ambivalent father-daughter bonds to eventually usher us into Ursula Brangwen's vibrant inner world which serves as the site of a perennial dispute between indefatigable individualism and the urge to live up to societal expectations. Even though the sexual politics of Tom and Lydia and Will and Anna Brangwen's marriages are flayed open and dissected with a psychoanalytic precision, it is not until heroine Ursula steps into the embrace of nubile adolescence that I was able to determine a common running theme of an existential tussle between the sexes for supremacy and control.

The men placed in her hands their own conscience, they said to her "Be my conscience-keeper, be the angel at the doorway guarding my outgoing and my incoming." And the woman fulfilled her trust, the men rested implicitly in her, receiving her praise or her blame with pleasure or with anger, rebeling and storming, but never for a moment really escaping in their own souls from her prerogative.

That Lawrence chose to re-create the persisting friction between one's individuality and the need to fit into some generic pre-ordained role set aside for one by society from a predominantly female perspective is evident from the discernible narrative focus on wonderfully humanized female characters. It is the Brangwen women who shield their private inner lives from external interference with a zealous certitude, sometimes even at the expense of emotionally alienating their fathers and husbands. They are unafraid to seek personal sexual gratification both in and out of wedlock. Lydia's faltering attempts at making peace between an irreconcilable past and present, Anna Brangwen's pertinacious rejection of her husband's religiosity coupled with her unabashed celebration of her own fecundity and the bildungsroman-ish account of Ursula's first acquaintance with sexual love and adult responsibilities complement Tom and Will Brangwen's and Skrebensky's viewpoints to create a picture portraying the truth of men and women locked in a contest of self assertion. A battle in which either adversary is eventually conquered by a desire for spiritual consummation transcending the individual's need for validation.

So it went on continually, the recurrence of love and conflict between them. One day it seemed as if everything was shattered, all life spoiled, ruined, desolate and laid waste. The next day it was all marvellous again, just marvellous.

That I have refrained from giving this the full 5 stars can in part be attributed to the raw lushness of Lawrence's prose and excessive reliance on florid metaphors which often suffocated me, dulling my desire to continue reading. Besides Ursula and Gudrun's stories remain to be told in entirety. Only after Women in Love can I decide on a final comment on the Brangwen saga.