Customer Reviews

Sons and Lovers (Penguin Popular Classics)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is of course the masterwork by one of the great influential writers of the 20th century. It's autobiographical content is not only an explanation of the evolving souls of its characters, the Morel family and those they love, but a brilliant evocation of life in a working-class mining town and the struggle to escape such roots. It's one of those must read texts!

Or rather, in the audio edition, it's become a must-listen text. Paul Slack, a former RSC actor and now the principal voice of Lawrence through his one-man touring production, Phoenix Rising, gives a virtuoso reading performance during which he brings to life the characters in all their rich vernacular and character.

Normally, I'd prefer a book over an audio version unless I wanted something to listen to while driving, but this is such a fine rendering they did add significant value to the original book, particularly as the accent, indeed patois of the mining village is so important to the quality of the novel and its dialogue.

This book begins with the story of Gertrude, a well educated girl with a passion for books and the arts who falls in love with and marries a charming and dashing coal miner, Morel. Once the initial passion wears off she finds herself unhappily married to someone with whom she has little in common. Her husband also loses his spark and becomes distant, aloof and somewhat cruel and violent towards his family. Stuck in a dull and loveless marriage, Gertrude pours her love on her three sons, living out her hopes and dreams through them.

Following the loss of her eldest son, the attention of the story turns to the middle son, Paul, and his conflicting relationships with the women in his life. Paul is a gifted artist who shares his mother's love for culture and the beauty of nature. He meets a girl, Miriam who is his intellectual soul-mate and the two of them make an ideal match. However, Gertrude sees Miriam as a threat and Paul is torn between the two of them, ultimately choosing his mother. He then embarks on an affair with Clara, an older woman separated from her husband. Clara and Gertrude get on well and there is no conflict. Clara's loyalty remains with her estranged husband throughout the affair and she is no threat to the mother-son relationship.

I found this book difficult and it took a long time to read. It jumps around a great deal and repeats the same thought processes and concepts ad nauseum. I also felt it was not that well written and could perhaps have done with some decent editing (can I say that about DH Lawrence?). I mean, how many times did Miriam's pupils dilate?! There again, there is so much to think about and talk about with this novel that perhaps it isn't the reading of it that makes it great, rather the analysis that goes alongside it. Furthermore, it is semi-autobiographical with Gertrude representing Lawrence's own mother and Paul being based on Lawrence himself, making it an important piece of literature.

I felt the book was somewhat feminist in outlook and ahead of its time. It is set in the early 20th century just before the ourbreak of world war one and when the suffragettes were battling for women's rights and the vote. Lawrence seems to sympathise with the frustrations that intelligent women faced, being expected to stay at home and raise a family whilst men were free to pursue their dreams. That is why Gertrude Morel looked to her sons to go out in the world and make something of themselves though her jealousy of the women in her sons lives held them back.

In the end it is only after the death of Gertrude that Paul can be free to choose his own destiny. Is he so dependent on his mother's love that he follows her to the grave or can he choose to live without her?

I enjoyed the first part very much, and was expecting this to be a 4 or 5 star read, having recently enjoyed Lady Chatterly. The study of the struggling mining family was excellent. But as the second part went on, I found myself getting more and more bored. Irritated, too, with the endless analysis of the main character's relationships with his girlfriend (who isn't really his girlfriend) and his mother (which could be summed up as 'peculiar'). On and on it went, and I do feel sorry for any student who had this foisted on them.

There are also a number of continuity and consistency issues that puzzled me; in the first part, the father is taken into hospital with what the reader is given to believe is a very serious leg injury sustained in the mine. But there's no resolution to this - a few chapters later he's back at home and the incident is never mentioned! Then there is Paul's birthday - the author tells us twice that he's twenty three, only for him to celebrate his twenty third birthday two chapters later. The relationship with the father in the second half differs radically from that in the first; the hatred of the sons has turned to indifference, while the mother seems to have accepted him and his behaviour.

I suspect this wasn't written as a novel at all, but just as a series of character studies and exercises in writing that were cobbled together. Or maybe it's because it's an early novel. Certainly Lady Chatterly is far superior; this has me wondering whether to try another Lawrence or not.

A critic once remarked that this is a book best appreciated in adolesence. Yes, I agree - that is when I first read it, but I also feel that this book, along with the short stories, are the perfect introduction to DHL. This is vintage DHL, the golden period post the early mistakes of over-writing and before the preaching mania took hold.

Think "Angela's Ashes", and you have the Morel family: mismatched and locked in eternal combat, yet held together by unknowable forces. At times, the writing soars on wings of pure poetry, and the ending, for me, foreshadowed Dylan Thomas at his best. It has also been said that this book begins as a 19th century novel, and ends as a 20th century one. DHL manages to straddle the best footholds in both traditions: good, clear story-telling, excellent characterisation, humour, pathos and psychological insight. For me, personally, the author he emulates most closely is Emily Bronte with her sense of another world beneath this physical one. Miriam's aching love for Paul echoes Catherine's and Heatchcliff's - it is frightening and choking, and that is why he must break from her. Reading this book is like seeing the world through a new pair of specs. Indeed, DHL makes everyday household objects tremble with life! Enjoy! And use it as a springboard to the more "difficult" novels.

I read this book as I had enjoyed Lady Chatterley's Lover. I found this book a little disappointing. At its centre is the stiflng relationship between Paul Morel and his mother. The first half of the book concerns the marriage of Paul's mother to his father, and how she is disappointed with domestic life married to a miner who drinks heavily. The second half explores Paul's attempts to form romantic liaisons whilst still being a mummy's boy. It is beautifully written, desperately sad, and about 200 pages too long. It moves too slowly for modern tastes.

this is a comprehensive version of Lawrence's 3rd novel, albeit with the accepted editor's cuts to reduce the final size of the novel and comply with allowable sexual content of the time. Its a superb autobiographical study of family life around the mining community of Nottingham. Highly recommended.

Sons and Lovers I agree with the last reviewer that this is the best of D H Lawrence. I think he went off the rails in the later stuff. This book sticks mainly to hard facts, and we get a really good portrait of life , probably mostly from his own experience, growing up in working class Nottingham. He brings in a lot of sensuality which in his later books goes what I consider "over the top" and self indulgent. I read this book when I was very young, my mother giving it to me when I was 19 and leaving home to go to college.I have often wondered since why my mother gave me this book, surely a bit risque in 1963, but now I have re read it I see it was for the benefit of my sex education, as the book does deal with adolescent feelings. I enjoyed re reading it. This is where a Kindle is so marvellous that otherwise I would have to go to the effort of buying a book, then recycling it, or ordered it from the libray (65 pence) then going to get it, then returning it before the fine (another 50-60 pence) was levied. The Kindle brings it home to me. The formatting of this book is quite good, there are frequent sections where I can see it has gone wrong, but it is quite readable, and its free! I loved reading Sons and Lovers, a good experience which gives a good picture of how a dominant mother can hinder her son's natural development. I don't want to read any more,but thank you Kindle for a good free read.

Nobody has a good word to say about Mrs. Morel. She is perceived as a pathetically neurotic, even cruel woman who constructs an unnatural relationship with her sons and then keeps them in this position for her own evil purposes.
I have never been able to come to terms with this explanation because it would mean that every mother has this kind of power. Freud teaches us that all little boys are 'in love' with mother (of course he then goes on to explain why and how the little Romeo should give it up). I would say he does not give it up and there is no reason why he should. The feeling simply becomes unconscious (he forgets) and later transfers itself to other women who are not his mother.
In the Morel family this goes awfully wrong. What happens to a man who must (read Freud) fall in love with a woman who has a masculinity complex? A woman like Gertrude Morel who would obviously rather be a man, identifies strongly with men's achievements, admmires masculine traits, despises ornaments, can't cry and has more logic than intuition. It is well-known that women who would prefer to be men don't actually get on very well with them (too much envy). Mrs. Morel married her husband because of her strong physical attraction to him. Almost immediately, the mental battle begins and her husband, who is intimidated by her, becomes violent. Soon he gives up, but he never gives in.
And her son, the rather odious, flower-loving Paul Morel, becomes effeminate: there he is, forever helping his mother in the kitchen, allowing women to woo him before he makes good his escape, never losing because he never fights.
The eldest son, William, fares even worse. If a masculine mother brings out the feminine side in her sons, the conflict is not between mother/girlfriend but between the masculine/feminine side of their personality. They can't become men because their mother is not fully a woman.

This was the first Lawrence I ever read and so still reminds me of being 16,reading in the back garden of my parent's home... but even beyond the lovely memories it's still one of my favourites.

Passionate and enthralling, it shows Lawrence's skills at dissecting the relationships that bind men and women, and not just in a sexual sense. This is visceral and emotional, the kind of book that stops you in your tracks and makes you think 'yes, that's how life it'. Wonderful stuff and one of the most autobiographical of Lawrence's novels.

The setting of the novel is in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire area of England. The novel is the story of the Morel family. Gertrude and Walter Morel married and went to Bestwood, a mining village in Nottinghamshire. She was a well educated and refined person; he was a warm, vigorous, uneducated man. They had four children- Annie, the daughter, and three sons- William, Paul, and Arthur. As Gertrude Morel's sons grew up, she no longer felt love for her husband, and instead turned all her love and passion towards her sons. The sons grew up hating their father and completely dependent upon their mother, who became the strongest factor in their lives; as a result, when they became men, they were unable to find a satisfactory relationship with any woman. William, the eldest, chose a flignty girl who gave him physical satisfaction, but nothing more, for his soul was his mother's. The struggle of this impasse killed him. Paul the second eldest, chose Miriam, who fought his mother for his soul; torn between the two women he ultimately returned to his mother. Later, he turned for a physical relationship to Clara, an older married woman, but again he found that the ties with his mother were too strong for a succesful relationship. Paul told his mother that as long as she lived he could not live a full life or love any woman. She became ill, and Paul dedicated his life completely to her. When his mother died, he was left alone with a wish only for death.