Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times (1854) satirizes England’s economic conditions through the fictional industrial town of Coketown. How does Beldover, Lawrence’s fictional mining town, compare to Dickens’s factory town? How did England’s industrial economy change between 1854 and 1920, when Women in Love was published?

How do class dynamics influence the characters’ relationships with one another and their views about marriage?

What is the symbolic significance of Diana’s death by drowning in the lake in Chapter 14? What does her death reveal about the Crich family?