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Sons and Lovers (Bantam Classics) (平装)
by D.H. Lawrence
| Category:
Litrature, Fiction, Classic |
| Market price: ¥ 88.00
MSL price:
¥ 78.00
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MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers greets the reader with the author's elegant prose while systematically immersing the story in a swirling cloud of tangled dysfunction. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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Dave Deubler (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
This story of the Morel family begins with a dramatic portrayal of the effect industrialization has on human lives. Mr. Morel, a coal miner in turn-of-the-century Britain, lives a life of drudgery, anger and desperation. He takes his frustrations out on his wife Gertrude, while the real source of his unhappiness is his own low self-esteem. Gertrude is embittered by his hardness and so looks to her sons to fill all her emotional needs. This constitutes Part One of the novel, which to this reviewer's taste is the more satisfying section. The detailed descriptions of the arguments and even outright fights between the married couple are as powerful as anything in fiction, and bleakly dramatize how poverty can destroy the very hearts and souls of the working classes. Morel is oppressed by his employer, so he in turn oppresses his wife, who emotionally smothers her sons. Fight the power!
All of which is what makes Part Two such a disappointment. The entire second half of the book revolves around the second son, Paul, and how his closeness to his mother makes it impossible for him to engage in satisfactory relationships with other women. Miriam, the milquetoast who yearns for a transcendent, spiritual love, cares for Paul so much that she lets him walk all over her. The much tougher and independent Clara introduces Paul to a more physically satisfying relationship, but neither of them has any real attachment to the other. The weakness of this second half is not just that it all seems to take far too long; it's that over time, the characters become very unsympathetic. None of them have the strength of will to break away from their failing relationships, despite the fact that these failures cast dark shadows across their lives. And there's certainly nothing tragic about these young people mooning about, complaining that their relationships aren't what they'd like them to be; most especially in the context of Part One, which reminds us that there are people in this world who are really suffering.
Readers who are deeply interested in the internal subtleties of male-female relationships (and this probably includes a majority of young women) will love this book. If the two parts were published separately, this reviewer would unhesitatingly give Part One five stars, while grudgingly giving Part Two three and a half. For Mama's boys (and those who've seriously dated them) this book certainly rates five stars, but others will find these characters so annoying that even four stars may seem generous.
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Tom Munro (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
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.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
The story is brilliant. It is about how a woman (the mother, Gertrude) takes her son (Paul) as her lover instead of choosing her husband. She did not have the will to love the husband, and instead turned that will on a child. The title is not "Fathers and Lovers" or "Husbands and Lovers." The father is capable of being loved, but in Gertrude's mind, she is too good for the husband. Therefore, she turns her lover's heart towards a child ("Sons and Lovers"). In modern psychobabble, Gertrude doesn't recognize boundaries. The child is defenseless to the emotional power which penetrates him. He is absorbed and becomes one with the mother's heart and goals. It is similar to molestation but instead of a physical penetration, there is an emotional penetration. When the boy starts to grow up and should, rightly, begin to become whole with a woman, he is not free to take that step. His sexuality drives him towards an appropriate lover, and seemingly makes him appear available, but his emotional heart cannot take another woman into himself. There is already a lover who has penetrated his heart (i.e. his mother). For a man to be complete in love, he has to be able to enter a woman physically at the same time he takes her into himself emotionally. Paul can't allow another woman in emotionally because his mother is already there. Hence, even though he is able to enter a woman physically, the whole experience is deeply unsatisfying to both Paul and all the women in his life. The mother is not really satisfied because she can't have her lover completely (i.e. physically and as her life's mate), and the other women in Paul's life (with whom he could have a physical relationship) are left unsatisfied because he wills not to take them into himself emotionally, and thereby deprives these women of the experience of wholeness which accompanies surrender in love. Hence, the women he should be able to complete himself with (i.e. those with whom he can complete the physical act), he eventually wears out. They give up because he is not available. His heart belongs to another. E.g. Claire goes back to her husband even though Claire's husband is less refined, because Claire would rather have all of a working man, than only part of an artist. There are scads of women today who are throwing themselves at this inpenetrable wall of the mother's inappropriate molestation of her son's emotions, not really understanding why and how to work with it. Lawrence sheds insight into that process. The cure is to exchange the will to love the mother for the will to love the lover. Go for it!
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Bethany McKinney (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
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.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
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.
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Jeffrey Leeper (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
The Wordsworth Classics are a fairly good editions of some of the classics. Being mass-market paperbacks, they are easy to carry around. The only problem I would have with this is that there is not a lot of room in the margins for making notes about the text. There is some room, but you would need to write small. I would recommend this edition above others if you just wanted to read the story with really studying it.
D.H. Lawrence wrote this in a time which also saw Sigmund Freud start with his writings of Oedipal conflict and motivation. A reader from today will start thinking about how much fun Freud would have with this within the first few chapters.
I would have to say that I have not read a lot of D.H. Lawrence, but this book has convinced me to read more. The actions Paul, the main character, takes tell you what is happening, but if you look at the imagery of nature around them, you will have another idea of what is going on. Lawrence is a great writer. Look at the flowers when Paul and Clara have finished walking the slippery path by the river. Look closely at the flowers that are given to Clara when they stop for tea.
I would recommend this book to anyone. If you are a student, I might recommend using a journal for your notes or getting a used copy of another edition which has larger margins.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
Sons and Lovers is a story of how a complicated relationship between Mother and son affect relations with the son's lover. Sons and Lovers is written with more passion that other Lawrence works, probably because Lawrence's own life so closely mirrors that of the characters in this novel.
The plot revolves around Paul Morel and his family. The Father is a coal miner whose bruttish behavior makes Paul detest him. Paul's Mother, full of contempt for her husband, pours all of her love toward her children, particularly the two eldest males. As Paul matures his attempts at a relationship with a lover are hindered by these complications. Paul, like his older brother William, finds that his choice of lover can never be accepted by his Mother.
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Christopher Braden (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-09 00:00>
This work by D.H. Lawrence was rated number 9 on the top 100 list, and I think it's a fair rating. Sons and Lovers is a beautifully written and intricately drawn story of a young man. This actually serves as a pseudo autobiography as it mirrors DHL's life rather closely. There is a quality to this work that you do not find in contemporary novels. The characters are developed to an incredible depth and with great skill and precision. You find after reading this book that you feel you know some of the characters better than your neighbors. This is not a book about action or drama, it is about life. The focus here is not on the storyline, but on the people involved in it. As opposed to today's authors, Lawrence uses the storyline to define the character and personality of the participants. I think this book is so well written that it can make you look at your own friends and family and understand how little you really know of them. Many scholars talk about the idea of Lawrence introducing the Oedipal complex, but it's not really what this book is all about. While that psychiatrical phenomenon is a component of this work, the defining quality of this work is really about Lawrence's ability to capture the people in his story as eloquently and with such detail as he has. If you can appreciate good literature, this book is a must read for you.
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1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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