When Tom Brangwen marries a Polish widow,Lydia Lensky, and adopts her daughter Anna as his own, he is unprepared for the conflict and passion that erupts between them. All are seeking individual fulfilment, but it is Ursula, Anna's spirited daughter, who, in search for self-knowledge, rejects the conventional role of womanhood.

    The test is severe—sexual in method, psychological in substance… The artistic interest here has precisely to do with the use not only of erotic materials but also erotic methods, the deliberate stimulation of the reader as a part of and means to a total, authentic literary experience.—Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times