Picture credits: feedbooks.com
“We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
- D.H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers is a book that talks about everything and anything. It talks about the different forms of love and the intricacies of human attachment. It talks of sex and the psychology related with it. But most of all, it is a book that talks about the complicated human existence.
It also conveys the very simple yet significant message that no matter what happens, life goes on. People grow up and sometimes when they grow up, they grow apart and hence Lawrence supports his above given statement by this amazing book.
Introduction
Book’s name - Sons and Lovers
Author’s name - D.H. Lawrence
Genre - Fictional Autobiography
Language - English
Synopsis - Spoiler Alert!
D.H. Lawrence’s novel ‘Sons and Lovers’ is a trailblazer in its own way. Published in the year 1913, it paved the way for the use of various psycho-analytic themes to be used in written work and also reflects the cruel effects of modernity and industrialization on the common man.
The third published novel of D.H. Lawrence and considered to be a masterpiece, ‘Sons and Lovers’ entails the story of Paul Morel, a young and budding artist and his family. The novel is divided into two parts.
The first part of the novel deals with the Morels as a family and also as individuals. The initial chapters talk about the marriage of Mr and Mrs Morel and the birth of their four children.
It is in the second half of the first part and the second part of the novel that we see the life of Paul Morel first as a boy and then as a young man. Paul is throughout the novel, caught between his love for his mother and his romantic interests. Is he able to find a way? Read more to find out.
About the Author
Born on 11th September, 1885, David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer and poet. Living in the times of the industrial revolution and modernization, Lawrence was empathetic towards the effects the “factory life” had on its workers, since his father was also a factory worker.
Lawrence’s written work did not meet with much appreciation and a lot of criticism in his living years mainly because he wrote about life as it was. He wrote about the not so posh reality of England and included in his work the day to day issues of sex and affairs and what not. It is because of this rather bold style of writing that one of his books ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ was banned.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". He died on 2nd March, 1930.
About the Book
The first part of the novel deals with the marriage of the Morels. Mrs Morel is married to Walter Morel, a miner and a dipsomaniac. They engage into regular fights and he even hits her with a drawer and locks her out of the house, while she is pregnant on two different occasions.
Treated thusly by her estranged husband, Mrs Morel focuses on her four children. She is most affectionate towards her eldest son, William and is heartbroken when he decides to move to London for a job.
William moves to London where he meets a girl and wants to marry her, which Mrs Morel is not very happy about. Soon, William sickens and succumbs to his sickness. The death of William shatters Mrs Morel, who becomes so engrossed in grieving the loss of one child that she forgets about her other children.
It is only after Paul falls seriously ill with bronchitis that she realizes that she has to be there for her other children too and Paul and Mrs Morel now become joined at the hip and seem to live for each other.
Paul falls in love with Miriam Leivers, who lives on a farm not too far from the Morel family. They carry on a very intimate, but purely platonic, relationship for many years. Mrs. Morel does not approve of Miriam, and this may be the main reason that Paul does not marry her. He constantly wavers in his feelings toward her.
Miriam introduces Paul to Clara Dawes, a suffragette who is separated from her husband. Paul is immediately attracted to Clara, although he pretends not to be. As he becomes closer with Clara and they begin to discuss his relationship with Miriam, she tells him that he should consider consummating their love and he returns to Miriam to see how she feels.
Paul and Miriam sleep together and are happy for a while but soon Paul decides he does not want to marry Miriam and so he breaks things off with her. After breaking off his relationship with Miriam, Paul begins to spend more time with Clara and they begin an extremely passionate affair.
However, she does not want to divorce her husband Baxter, and so they can never be married. Paul’s mother falls ill and he devotes much of his time to caring for her. When she finally dies, he is heart-broken and, after a final plea from Miriam, goes off alone at the end of the novel. The novel has also been adapted into a movie titled the same which came out in 1981.
Psychological Analysis
The novel is full of psycho-analytic themes. The most prominent one is what Sigmund Freud termed as the Oedipus Complex. Lawrence has very beautifully and cleverly projected the relationship of Paul Morel with his mother and there are instances in the novel where one sees that Paul feels a certain attraction towards his mother and depends on her a little too much.
It is his complicated relationship with his mother that prevents him from accepting Miriam or marrying her. His affection for Clara, who is an older woman and the intimacy they share all hints towards the complex that Paul has.
Famous Quotes
“He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said so-and-so, it would never have happened.”
“Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spiraling round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that out passed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core of nothingness, and yet not nothing.”
“Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygienists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.”
“Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman.”
The Bottom Line
Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers’ is a heavy read and not for readers who are just beginning their literary voyage. It sure is a complicated novel but so is life and that is all it talks about.
There are many other things that Lawrence has presented in the book apart from the psycho-analytic themes. He shows the harmful effects of industrialization on people and how it drove the men working in the mines and factories away from their own families.
Sons and Lovers is a must read for anyone looking for an insight about modernism and the intricacies of life and the human mind.
My Ratings for the Book - 4 on 5
Get your copy from Amazon - Sons and Lovers
Written By - Sakshi Singh
Edited By - Pavas Shrigyan
.jpeg)
0 Comments