Sons and Lovers

Rating:
Summary: Here I Go....
Review: I know this review is going to sound markedly unintelligent, but I really can't help it in this case. I'm going to say what I need to say about this book, whether it makes a helpful review or not.

Let me get one thing straight first: Sons and Lovers does not flow in the way Lawrence's other works flow. Each scene does not seem to bind itself to the next to make a perfect, seamless whole. The book does lag at times, in fact. It is beautifully written but not 'perfectly' written like Lawrence's other works. I am not rating this book on its composition, though. I'm rating it for something else.

I'm wondering if anyone else felt the same way I felt when I read this novel. I have never before had to lay down a book in mid-paragraph and put my head in my hands for sheer emotional inability to read any further that day. I've read authors whose works hold up a mirror to an entire society, to a clique, to a cult, or a nation, but NEVER have I seen an author hold up a mirror to common individuals like myself. Quite honestly, I have never felt so horrible and so sickened with MYSELF simply because I read a book.

What IS it about this story that makes me feel this way? I can only say that Lawrence must have been an expert at inner self-examination and observance of society. When I say society, I don't mean of 'the English,' or 'the Americans' or 'the-anything.' I mean of 'people.' There must be aspects of all human beings that will never change through time, age, gender, and economic status, because Lawrence captures each and every little thought, feeling, and nuance of human emotion and throws it as us in this book. The effect is a screaming recognition of yourself (at least, of myself.) 'Oh my God, that IS me!' I sympathize with Miriam, I sympathize with Paul, with Lily, with William, with Gertrude, and, God help me, with Walter Morel. I see myself in them.

Lawrence may want us to feel negatively toward Miriam at times, but those are the times when I most identify with her. She may be a 'soul sucker,' but I know that I am, too. Mrs. Morel hates Miriam for this overbearing quality, but there's the clincher:I, too, hate the people who try to suck the souls of the people whose 'souls' I want.

In less ridiculous language, Lawrence uses the relationship between Miriam and Paul to lay the inevitable facts about human jealousy and possessiveness in front of our eyes. We all have thoughts, desires, and jealousies so 'embarrassing' or so shameful that we won't even voice them in our mind's ear. These are the thoughts that will make us weak or despicable if we acknowledge or accept them. Lawrence makes these hidden thoughts and feelings a part of his writing style. When he describes his characters, you'd better BELIEVE he describes them. He leaves nothing out. They are weak, stupid, good, beautiful, and hopeless. I hate to seeing myself in his characters just as much as I hate being like them.

Nearly all of Lawrence's works are like this, it is true, but this was the first of them that really slapped me in the face and made me see myself (and most likely everyone else) for what I really am.

It's a good book. Very powerful, sad, embarrassing, and dangerous. Everyone should read it.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Taboo Love or Incest?
Review: Reading this book makes me want to have sex with my mother. The son is in love with his lonely mother. He wants her but he can't have her due to morality issue. What a torture! Avoid it if the idea of mother-son incest turns you off. If incest turns you on, watch the porn movies, Taboo and its sequels, is more satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: An undying theme of maternal influence
Review: In D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers," the Morel family lives in a coal mining village in late 19th Century rural England; the father Walter is a coal miner who comes home drunk every night and fights, often physically, with his wife and children. Unable to control her husband's unruliness, Mrs. Morel directs her affection to her three sons, instigating them to turn against their father. Her love for her sons is not merely maternal, but so possessive that she gets jealous when the boys focus their attention on the neighborhood girls, whom she treats with haughty condescension.

Paul, the middle son, is Lawrence's alter ego. He aspires to be an artist but works as a clerk in a surgical appliance factory to bring money home to the family. When his older brother William dies of pneumonia, Paul replaces him as the primary object of his mother's affections. At times their mutual endearment is so extreme and smothering that it's downright creepy, such as when she embraces Paul and tells him that she never "really" had a husband, implying that Paul somehow must act as a spousal surrogate.

Paul starts a shy relationship with a girl named Miriam, but his mother's guilt trip prevents him from making a full commitment. Eventually he turns his interest to an older woman, Clara Dawes, who works in his factory and is separated from her husband. As opposed to the clingy, sensitive, virginal Miriam, Clara is liberated, proud, aloof, sexually passionate, and generally distrustful of men. Her husband, who also works in the factory, is a loose cannon and tries violently to intimidate Paul.

Paul's relationships with Miriam and Clara are full of tension and antagonism. He unleashes on the women the hostilities that he had stored subconsciously against his mother, criticizing them for faults displayed by Mrs. Morel and not their own. It is ironic that his mother dies from cancer, since Paul realizes that his mother's cancerous influence on him lingers even after her death.

Lawrence's motive in writing this book may have been to exorcise some childhood and adolescent demons, maybe in an attempt to explain his own personal relationships with women. At any rate, he is an excellent writer; like W. Somerset Maugham, his prose is direct and unpretentious, and he can write romantic scenes and dialogue without being melodramatic or tawdry. The theme of maternal influence is timeless, relevant in any age, and Lawrence captures it perfectly.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: "Sons and Lovers" by D. H. Lawrence is one of my favorite books of all time. It is certainly one of most psychological and frustrating, all the more so since it is based on Lawrence's own adolescence. One becomes frustrated with Paul's struggle to free himself from his mother's love, and at the same time his unwillingness to do just that. I thought his relationship with Miriam is one of the most interesting and twisted love stories that I've read. D. H. Lawrence said this to Jessie Chambers, the inspiration for Miriam: "They tore me from you, the love of my life...it was the slaughtering of the foetus in the womb." As a companion to this great novel, read Jessie Chambers' personal memoir "D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record". It will give you further insight into the early years of Lawrence.

Rating:
Summary: Not Lawrence's Best/ A Little Disappointing
Review: Not even close to Lady Chatterley's Lover. I was expecting more from this novel. Paul Morel loves his mother. He is the ultimate oedipal mama's boy. So much so that he can't marry his true love Miriam. So instead he hates her for creating a conflict that takes him away from mom. Then he has a purely sexual relationship with Clara... At the end of the novel, Paul's coming of age comes to its climax. What will he do as a man??? (move forward or die-- I won't give it away) He makes up his mind in one sentence, and it's a little too Hollywood-ish to believe. But then this is not 1913.

This novel is supremely dated. Read it if you want to check off classics, but don't expect transcendant brilliant ideas to come across from the early 20th C. If you haven't read Lady C, do so first.

Rating:
Summary: SCHOOL BOOK
Review: THE BOOK WAS A SCHOOL BOOK WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE. BUT I MOST ENJOYED IT WHEN I READ AGAIN AFTER SEVEN YEARS. D.H.LAWRANCE IS A FOVORITE FOR ME ALLWAYS. I LEARNED MUCH OF ENGLISH FOR THE SAKE OF READING NOVELS WHICH WERE NEVER TRANSLATED TO TURKISH. D.H.LAWRENCE ALLWAYS EXPRESSES THE EVENTS BY THE EYE OF A MALE. YOU CAN NOTICE THE MANLY OPINIONS AT EVERY LINE AND BEHIND THE LINES. SOME WRITERS TRY TO TELL THE STORY BY THE EYE OF THE OTHER SEX AND THIS GIVES THE TASTE OF LIE TO THE STORY. SO REAL AND SWEET NOVEL. REALITY WAS NEVER SO SWEETLY EXPRESSED LIKE THIS BEFORE D.H.LAWRENCE.

(SORRY FOR THE ERRORS IF THERE ARE, BECAUSE ENGLISH IS NOT MY MOTHER LANGUAGE.)

Rating:
Summary: His best.
Review: This novel wins the unique distinction of being the smelliest novel i have ever read. I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just that throughout the story the reader's nose is besieged with myriad scents of flowers, flowers that are counterbalanced by the pungent scents of grimy coal miners. This is one of the beauties of this novel.

However I am not a Lawrence fan and think this by far his best work. The reason it is his best is because he keeps his utterly irrelavant philosopies out of the story; he doesn't wine and lament about the "plight" of "modern man". He does however do this in the following novel, the Rainbow, which is a complete disaster. Don't trust anyone who compares Lawrence to Henry Miller; unlike Miller Lawrence actually is capable of writing well.

Rating:
Summary: A great study of human emotions
Review: This is a perfect book for anyone who enjoys reading twentieth century British literature. I like the fact that D. H. Lawrence is able to realistically portray the emotions of the many characters in the book. I did not only learn Paul's side of the story, but I also gained insight into Gertrude's, Miriam's, and Clara's thoughts and feelings towards Paul and towards each other. This omniscient narration makes the story a more interesting study into human emotions. Lawrence deals very heavily with psychological motivations for each character's actions, making the characters more human and believable. This is a great story that goes far beneath the surface. Sons and Lovers is a thought-provoking tale of love, death, possession, vulnerability, and heartache. I would recomend it to anyone looking for a good book to read.

Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced Classic
Review: Because this book deals with the timeless feelings of love, obsession, and vulnerablity, it doesn't feel outdated, even though it's set in a time period much different from the current one. Especially interesting is Paul's relationship with Miriam, and how he becomes angry that she is trying to consume his soul--but at the same time, he says that he is looking for a woman who can belong to him. It seems like a double standard, but Paul is so obviously dysfuctional that as a reader, I could easily excuse it. DH Lawrence did a great job of making the content of the book flow well. When I got to the end, I could just feel that he was going to have to work Miriam back into the story somehow--and sure enough he did. And I think that as a reader, when I am able to anticipate what the writer has left to say, that is really a great statement about the ability of the writer to bring his readers to the same line of thought about the characters and the plot that he has. And something that I especially enjoyed about this book is that it is almost entirely dialogue, and it doesn't spend pages describing the scenery and such. So if that's something you like too, then you will probably enjoy this book.