Product Description

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother's suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, "Sons and Lovers" (1913) is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10045 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author
D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence (1885-1930) English novelist, story writer, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. Among his works are The White Peacock(1911), Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915) and Lady Chatterly's Lover, first published privately in Florence in 1928.

Customer Reviews

The perfect introduction to D.H.Lawrence
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.

Judge not
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.

Superb
The book itself is brilliant; my only concern is that this particular edition is deceptive. I hadn't realised I'd be buying a book with such a bad cover, its basically green paper and not the cover shown on Amazon, it was laziness that kept me from returning it. I honestly was appalled; it felt as if it would come apart in my hands.