Women in Love was first published in 1920 and forms a sequel to The Rainbow (1915), following the loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual that articulates many opinions associated with the author. The emotional relationships established are given further depth and tension by the implicit homoerotic attraction between Gerald and Rupert. The novel ranges over the whole of British society at the time of the First World War and eventually concludes high up in the snows of the Swiss Alps. As with most of Lawrence’s works, Women in Love caused great controversy over its sexual subject matter.