As with most of Lawrence's works, Women in Love's sexual subject matter caused controversy. For example, W. Charles Pilley, an early reviewer wrote of it in John Bull, "I do not claim to be a literary critic, but I know dirt when I smell it, and here is dirt in heaps—festering, putrid heaps which smell to high Heaven."[4] Lawrence was sued for libel by Lady Ottoline Morrell and others, who claimed their likenesses were unjustly drawn upon in The Rainbow.[5] The book also later stirred criticism for its portrayal of love, and denounced as chauvinistic and centred upon the phallus by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949).[6]
In contrast, the critic Camille Paglia has praised Women in Love, writing in Vamps and Tramps (1994) that while she initially reacted negatively to the book, it became a "profound influence" on her as she was working on Sexual Personae (1990). Paglia compared Lawrence's novel to the poet Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590). Paglia observed that while Women in Love has "bisexual implications", she is skeptical that Lawrence would have endorsed "full sexual relations" between men.[7] The critic Harold Bloom listed Women in Love in his The Western Canon (1994) among the books that have been important and influential in Western culture.[8] Francis Spalding suggested that Lawrence's fascination with the theme of homosexuality is manifested in Women in Love, and that this could be related to his own sexual orientation.[9] In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Women in Love forty-ninth on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the 20th century.[10]
