Sons and Lovers (Signet Classics)
by D. H. Lawrence
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Book Summary Information
Author: D. H. LawrenceIntroduction: Benjamin DeMott
Afterword: Dennis Jackson
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-12-06
ISBN: 0451530004
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Signet Classics
Book Reviews of Sons and Lovers (Signet Classics)
Book Review: "I can't physically love you, any more than I can fly up like a skylark."
Summary: 5 Stars
In what is considered to be D. H. Lawrence's most autobiographical novel, Lawrence's main character, Paul Morel, is a frail, artistic boy, having more in common with his mother than with his coal miner father. His mother had had some education before she married the once-attractive Walter Morel, but he eventually succumbed to alcohol and his bleak life in the pits. When Paul's older brother, who became the mainstay of the family, left for London and later died, his mother transferred her dependence from him to Paul.
Written in 1913, the novel was shocking at the time, dealing as it does with an unhealthy relationship between mother and son, leading to the son's subsequent inability to love women his own age. Having only scorn for her wayward and irresponsible husband, his mother needs Paul for emotional support. When Paul begins to develop a love for Miriam Lievers, a neighbor with whom he has been close friends since childhood, his mother becomes even more possessive. A "spiritual" girl, Paul comes to believe that even though Miriam has "given" herself to him, she does not love from an inner need, that at heart she is "a nun," and that her passion is more dutiful than real. Since he himself is still tied to his mother, emotionally, his own ability to love fully is also compromised.
His next relationship, with Clara Dawes, a married woman separated from her husband, is far more passionate, but Clara is also far more liberated than Miriam, and she demands an emotional commitment from him in return. It is not until his mother's death, however, that Paul realizes the extent to which his mother has truly controlled his heart and soul, leaving him far more bereft than is normal for loving sons.
A novel which probes the inner psyche of Paul Morel, Sons and Lovers is a novel which speaks directly to the modern reader, eliciting both sympathy and empathy as Paul tries to become his own man. Lawrence's ability to tap into universal feelings and needs elevates this novel into a sensitive study of love in all its forms, not just in the case of Paul Morel, but on a deeper, grander scale. Though the novel is almost a hundred years old, it is as fresh and rewarding to read today as a contemporary novel, even when one considers the mores and prohibitions of that time period. Lawrence, ahead of his time, has created one of the enduring classics of English literature, one which supersedes time and place. n Mary Whipple
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Summary of Sons and Lovers (Signet Classics)
D.H. Lawrence's great autobiographical novel is a provocative portrait of an artist torn between love for his possessive mother and desire for two young beautiful women. Set in the Nottinghamshire coal fields of Lawrence's own boyhood, the story of young Paul Morel's growing into manhood in a British working-class family rife with conflict reveals both an inner and an outer world seething with intense emotions. Gertrude is Paul's puritanical mother who concentrates all her love and attention on her son Paul. She nurtures his talents as a painter - and when she broods that he might marry someday and desert her, he swears he will never leave her. Inevitably, Paul does fall in love, but with two women - and is unable to choose between them. Written early in Lawrence's literary career, Sons and Lovers possesses all the powers of description, insistent sensuality, and scathing social criticism that are the special hallmarks of his genius. "A work of striking originality," writes the critic F.R. Leavis, by "the greatest creative writer in English of our time."
Sons and Lovers was the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mother's love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's young protagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. In his 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him all his life--for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, and for his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrence's own account, a book aimed at depicting this woman's grasp: "as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers--first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother--urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives."
Of course, Mrs. Morel takes neither of her two elder sons (the first of whom dies early, which further intensifies her grip on Paul) as a literal lover, but nonetheless her psychological snare is immense. She loathes Paul's Miriam from the start, understanding that the girl's deep love of her son will oust her: "She's not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him." Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable of committing himself in either direction: "Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?... And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated her--and he easily hated her." Soon thereafter he even confesses to his mother: "I really don't love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you."
The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette, Clara Dawes, who fulfills the sexual component of his ascent to manhood but leaves him, as ever, without a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. As Paul voyages from the working-class mining world to the spheres of commerce and art (he has fair success as a painter), he accepts that his own achievements must be equally his mother's. "There was so much to come out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled... All his work was hers."
The cycles of Paul's relationships with these three women are terrifying at times, and Lawrence does nothing to dim their intensity. Nor does he shirk in his vivid, sensuous descriptions of the landscape that offers up its blossoms and beasts and "shimmeriness" to Paul's sensitive spirit. Sons and Lovers lays fully bare the souls of men and earth. Few books tell such whole, complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. It's nothing short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner. --Melanie Rehak
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