Sons and Lovers

Interesting read from the start; by the end I couldn’t put the book down. This book is a great read for anyone, but especially for young adults. Highly recommend.

i approached this book reluctantly as i felt that it was far to detached from my current surroundings to have a note of relevance. I was pleasantly shocked and rewarded for my efforts at broadening my range of classics, this novel is an amazing tale of love and the complexities of family in relation to it. If you haven't read it do so!

This is probably the most autobiographical of Lawrence's novels, dealing with the childhood, adolescence and early adulthood of the author. It is a brutally frank portrayal of the relationship betweem a domineering mother and the younger (and surviving) son, a relationship that colors every aspect of the protagonist's life, from his relationship with his father to his romantic relationships with two very different women. Lawrence paints this portrait with very fine brush strokes: an attention to descriptive detail and some of the best characterization in modern English literature. Although the reader might not like the characters in the novel, there is no doubt that these are real people - especially the mother, Mrs. Morel. The setting of the novel is the coal fields of Nottingham and Lawrence carries on the work begun by Thomas Hardy in writing of the English working class with realism and detachment, eschewing the English literary tendency to moralize and to judge. When Lawrence began the novel he had only passing knowledge of the theories of Freud regarding the mother-son relationship that became the backbone of the psychologist's Oedipus Complex. Essentially the author was writing from experience: the psychic bond between Mrs. Morel and her son, Paul, was very similar to the bond shared by Lawrence and his mother. This bond between son and mother amounts almost to a husband and wife sort of love - without the sex - and prevents the son from ever achieving a fully satisfactory relationship with another woman because of the hold the mother has on the son's soul. It is not until the mother is dead that the son is able to begin to free himself from her hold. The novel, then, is the story of that struggle. I have never been a great fan of Lawrence's literary style, finding it a bit too jerky and over edited - a criticism I find with this novel. True, there are passages of poetic beauty (especially some of the descriptions of the Nottinghamshire countryside) but I found the prose a bit too tedious and lacking spontaneity. This is probably Lawrence's best novel (far superior to the more popular Lady Chatterley's Lover) and the one on which his reputation is firmly based; also, a novel that should be read by every mother and every son.

Sons and Lovers is a book that has been set for years in school for children to read. Somehow doing this usually means that most people emerge with a hatred of it but Lawrence's book is of such quality that it is able to survive.It is about a woman who marries a coal miner someone who is below her class. While he is young there is some joy in her life but as she grows older the class differences create a wall between them. She lives for her two male children who she tried to keep out of the mines and to ensure that they can live middle class lives. As she grows older the children become more important to her. The death of the oldest means that she suffocates the younger son with a love that affects his normal development. The story is told through the eyes of the younger son. There is little question that the novel is autobiographical and based on the early life of Lawrence. His life is almost identical to the events portrayed in the novel. Lawrence was a prolific novelist and short story reader but this work is probably his most accessible. His later novels tended to be more about peoples relationships but without the social content. Nowadays the class issues have receded a bit into the background. At the time of its publication the book would have been seen as revealing the divisions that operated in Britain. Most critics tend to focus on the relationship of Lawrence and his mother as the primary focus of the novel. To some extent this is true but the book is much more. It is a portrait of a society thankfully now gone. It is the portrait of a young man being propelled by his mother to escape his fathers destiny. Unlike Lawrence's other books which have tended to date this book is easy to read and still a classic.

A young man must break away from his mother and her life before he can discover a life of his own.

I skipped over Lawrence for years. I had heard the tawdry tales of his work and felt a bodice ripper is a bodice ripper no matter what century you put it in. But I was wrong! He is a marvel. As soon as I finished Sons and Lover's I went out and got The Rainbow. S & L, reads very quickly, much like Maughm's On Human Bondage. They are both of the same period and are both loosly based on the perspective authors lives. Tantilizing, they allow us a glimpse into the emerging industrial era. The middle classes and lower middle classes are emerging into the plutocracy but slowly. All around them are the dredges of a past system. The coming of age of Lawrence as he throws off his childhood and his need to throw off his mother is engrossing, since you know it is based on real life and not a campy Sally Jessy Rapahel show. He struggles as we all struggle to make the right choices. What Lawrence does is let us in on the stuff that most novels don't let the reader know. The truth the character gives to the reader is unheard of today. Read this book and follow him from childhood of a mama's boy in a coal town in Norther England that love's, and love's, and looses only to truly love .