Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen are sisters who live in Beldover England. Ursula is a school teacher and Gudrun is an art teacher who has made a reputation for herself as an artist. The two women are in their twenties, and they are looking for love. When they meet Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich, respectively, they struggle with their lovers and with their own natures, to try to make the marriages that will fulfill them against the dissolution and degeneration of their industrial times.