Like summer, Linda is vulnerable to the winds of change, and yet her essence remains unchanged until the end of the novel. Linda, perhaps in a less conscious way, also fights to protect her own ideals of romantic love, which are threatened by her two husbands, who try to make her conform to their own ideas of marriage and womanhood. Linda's father Matthew is terrified that his country refuge will be invaded by the Germans, and expects all his family to fight to the death to defend it and the ideals of English aristocracy it represents. The urban environment of London, despite being described positively in parts of the novel, is most closely associated with Christian's communist activity, and therefore also ends up stifling Linda's romantic views of life. Alconleigh, the Radlett family house, seems like a paradise of undamaged nature when compared to the sterility of the Kroesigs' country home in Surrey. Much of the earlier part of the novel takes place in the English countryside, which evokes the beauty of the natural environment and sense of adventure that fills Linda's life wherever she travels. However, the couple is threatened by a ‘winter of discontent' in the form of war, and the separation that this entails for the two lovers. Their time together exudes the joy and liveliness of summer, with the hope of the renewed promise that summer brings. She is finally successful in her “pursuit of love” in her affair with a French aristocrat named Fabrice de Sauveterre, whom she spends a year with in Paris. Both these men leave her unfulfilled, however, as they are unable to give her the all-encompassing personal love which she most desires out of life. She begins by falling in love with Tony Kroesig, a banker's son, who she then leaves for his polar opposite, a communist named Christian Talbot. Linda Radlett, the novel's passionate protagonist, seems to live in a perpetual summer of romance and opportunity. While Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love takes place across many years and seasons, this short novel encapsulates the essence of summer for many readers.

The pursuit of love mitford