《恋爱中的女人》（1921）是劳伦斯最重要的作品，作家用诗意的笔触描述了他全部的哲学观念、社会梦想和对生命个体及两性关系的深入思考。
小说围绕两件爱情纠葛展开。女主角是厄休拉和她的妹妹葛珍，厄休拉在当地一所小学教书，葛珍是同校的工艺教师。厄休拉爱上了学校督察员茹伯特·伯金，葛珍则对年轻英俊的煤矿主杰拉尔德·克立克一见倾心。这两对恋人经历了不少观念上的争执和感情上的波折，最后走向不同的结局。
Women in Love
（1） The story：
As its title implies， Women in Love is a novel about two pairs of lovers， around whom a series of episodes are dramatically presented. The two heroines are Ursula Brangwen and her younger sister Gudrun；and the two chief male characters are Gerald Crich， a young coalmine owner， and Rupert Birkin， a school inspector. At the opening of the story， Ursula and Birkin strike an immediate kin ship with each other， while Gudrun is attracted by Gerald's physical energy.
events and conflicts of personalities. After a series of ups and downs， Birkin and Ursula have reached a fruitful relationship by maintaining their integrity and independence as individuals and decided to get married in the end. But the passionate love between Gudrun and Gerald experiences a process of tension and deterioration. As both of them have let their "will-power" and "ideals" interfere with their proper relations， their love turns out to be a disastrous tragedy.
The symbolic meanings in this novel：
Women in Love is rich in its symbolic meanings. Gerald Crich， an efficient but ruthless coalmine owner， who makes the machine his god and establishes the inhuman mechanical system in his mining kingdom， is a symbolic figure of spiritual death， representing the whole set of bourgeois ethics.
Whereas Birkin， a self-portrait of Lawrence， who fights against the cramping pressures of mechanized industrialism and the domination of any kind of dead formulas， is presented as a symbolic figure of human warmth， standing for the spontaneous Life Force.
Women in Love is a remarkable novel in which the individual consciousness is subtly revealed and strands of themes are intricately wound up. The structural pattern of the book derives from the contrast between the destinies of the two pairs of lovers and the subordinate masculine relationship between Birkin and Gerald.
The two sisters， the two male friends， and the two couples are closely paralleled in ideas， actions and relations so that each is corresponding to and contrasting with the other. Thus， Women in Love is regarded to be a more profoundly ordered novel than any other written by Lawrence.
