Sons and Lovers

This was a painfully slow and redundant read for me. That said,you certainly get the feel of the place in its time period, and there was some interesting psychological depth and interplay amongst the characters, but not enough for me to recommend it.

Great story line but almost too descriptive when it comes to countryside. Skipped over that a lot. Had difficult time with the father's language. Felt sorry for Paul's mother's hold over him. Predicted the outcome.

I liked the characters , they were well portrayed. Paul is an intelligent man, he managed to hold down his job. He became a manager. Paul was also talented in arts. He was very aware of what was around him, especially when he was in the country. He loved the scenery and loved to be in the country, he used these experiences in his paintings. He could also paint portraits, he was able to express his talent while expounding his feelings .
I found It difficult to understand his feelings for his mother, and the woman with whom he became intimate.
He and Miriam became such good friends, she understood him. He enjoyed the friendship with Clara. Why could he not choose and make a life for himself?
I would not recommend this book

I bought this book because my brother was reading it and kept saying how interesting it was. The story is about a woman who marries someone below her class and then invests everything in her children. The story focuses on her relationship with her son Paul. The story follows the life of Paul from birth through early adulthood. His tightly knit relationship with his mother seems to have a negative impact on his love life. How does it all end?! You'll have to read it to find out!

Could not possibly give this more than 2 stars. In the end the only one I felt any sympathy for was the father. Everyone seemed to be so full of hate they couldn't love anyone. And as for the mother, the less said the better.

I beared, beared and then beared the story some more... So much on my part to think that the book will have something worthy of my attention and then have all my hopes dashed out in the end!

Not a great admirer of classics, but Sons and Lovers caught my interest in the beginning, made me little irritated in the middle and then, streight-out, made me bored and furious in the end. Like the Scarlet letter, this book, too, was the product of some writer who had no story line and was struggling with the emotions, melodrama and making a short story long.

Like Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and Lovers too was a flat book for me with no story what-so-ever. Do not waste your time, it will not come back

Dull, long-winded, and goes pointlessly on and on. Would never recommend the and am quite angry that this was required for a class. I want the part of my life back that I wasted trudging through this.

I read this for book club. We occasionally read classics and are never disappointed - until this time. Boring, uninteresting characters, and depressing. We were all stumped as to why it is considered a classic (other than who the author is).

“You're always begging things to love you," he said, "as if you were a beggar for love. Even the flowers, you have to fawn on them--”

I believe this is my first full reading of a DH Lawrence novel. I think when I was younger I read all the “good parts” in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but not the full book. This story is about Paul Morel and his absolute love for his mother and his hatred of his father. Does this remind you of anything? Yes, it is all about the Oedipus complex.

Paul is a sensitive young man whose father is a miner and a bit of a brute around his mother. Many times in his youth, he witnesses ferocious drunken fights with his mother the victim. He vows to grow up to protect her and take care of her for the rest of her life.

Paul has two women that mean something special to him Miriam and Clare. Neither of them can get past the love he has for his mother. His mother will always be first in his life even after she dies. She once tells Paul, “I was never really a wife, and you know how it was.” I found that a very chilling and too intimate thing to tell a young man. No wonder he could not find love elsewhere.

This is a beautifully written story but also extremely sad and disturbing. I liked Paul; I liked all of the characters in this book, even his father and mother. They were very believable human beings.

I liked Lawrence's 1913 "Sons and Lovers" better than I liked the two later novels of his I've read. The first part of the book actually moves along well, without becoming bogged down in the "he loves her, he loves her not" tedium of "The Rainbow" and "Women In Love." Lawrence does a masterful job of describing the trials and travails of a family oppressed by an alcoholic husband and father; how a woman can transfer the love she once felt for her husband onto her sons. The novel is also fascinating for the light it sheds on early 20th century life in a British Midlands coal town.

Indeed, "Sons and Lovers" is essentially the retelling of the Oedipus story. Freud was big in 1913 and despite the fact that Lawrence would throw hissy fits over critics applying Freudian analysis to his work, there's no doubt but what Lawrence was influenced by Freud's theories of psychosocial development. Where Lawrence goes beyond Freud is by showing how an unhealthy attachment of sons to their mothers can actually be engendered by the husband/father's alcoholism, rather than be some universal tendency of rather mystical etiology, as Freud would have it. No woman could be as good as the sons' long-suffering mother and this attachment poisons their relationships with potential marriage partners, to the young mens' ruin, is the gist of the novel.

I suppose the book would suffer from Lawrence's becoming preachy against alcohol or the ruthless capitalism that contributed to exploited miners turning to drink. Lawrence may have missed his chance to drive these points home but doing so wasn't his intention. Certainly Lawrence had nothing against drink! If anything, Lawrence is against clingy mom's turning out mamma's boys. The reader loses sympathy for the abused mother of the first part of the book as the story continues and the pathology of her relationships with her sons becomes apparent. The drunk even mellows out as he grows older, becomes less violent even if no less excluded from the family's affections. The book ends with the impression that the sons' ruin was the mom's fault, not the fault of the drunken dad or the capitalist mine owners. Or were the sons simply repressed homosexuals who could never have formed healthy relationships with women their own age, regardless of their mom's contribution?

Lawrence said that only Americans bought his books but if an Englishman read his work, at least he could be sure the Englishman understood it. So maybe I don't understand Lawrence. I'm not even sure a contemporary British person would understand him anymore. His characters seem highly neurotic, conflicted, repressed and affected in all his novels, to me. Still, I enjoyed Lawrence's mastery of dialogue, descriptions of setting, psychological insights and sheer skill as a novelist.

Lawrence, DH. Sons and Lovers

Re-reading this classic after half a century, I was struck by the modernity or perhaps I should say timelessness of this family story of life in the mining village of Bestwood (aka Eastwood) in the early Twentieth Century. The word ‘love’ appears in virtually all Lawrence’s major titles, and it this exploration of what Larkin cynically called ‘that much-mentioned brilliance’ that is explored in all its manifestations in this book. What do we mean by the word? Is it a constant? Is it measurable? Is it of necessity good in itself? Of course Lawrence’s job is not to give us the answers, but simply to present some aspects of the phenomenon that seems to obsess humanity.

At the heart of the book is the relationship of Gertrude, the mother, to her offspring: her dependence on her children as love objects, especially Paul, the youngest who preoccupies the story. Paul spends his life looking for a satisfactory partner, but is frustrated by his overwhelming dependence on his mother and, after her death he in a sense is dead himself, losing himself in a search for life in the golden light of the city. Morel, the uneducated drunken father is in a way jealous of his children and his wife. The come to despise him, taking their cue from the mother.

Lawrence’s insight into human nature, its unpredictability, its search for harmony in a random world makes the marriage game of many other novelists seem trivial by comparison. You might say that Paul and Gertrude use each other as love substitutes, for neither can survive and prosper while they are locked into the ‘love’ prison. ( Blake comes to mind). Mother and son stifle each other, prevent rather than encourage growth and expermentation. Like the village community they return to each other for comfort and reassurence.

Lawrence''s words flowed across the page as smooth as silk. His characters are so fully developed that I would recognize them on the street. His writing is easy, even an uneducated person could follow this story. In summary he is a magnificent writer. But I was soon bored with the story and wanted to shake these boys who were dominated and possessed by their mother. Gertrude, the mother was selfish, possessive, and self centered. She held a high opinion of herself. She grasped her children tight and created weaklins. The setting of 'Son's and Lover's" is the same as "How Green Was My Valley" written by Richard Llewellyn

Here too was the mining family, a strong mother, a close-knit family. Here too was literature. The only differences are in the family types. One family is founded on love as witnessed in Llewellyn's book. The other family is lacking in compassion. I could not help but compare the books. Often times I felt I was reading about the loving family that had lost its way. I did not enjoy "Son's and Lovers". It was slow moving, tedious and left me feeling dissatisfied. The other book was beautifully written, it was warm and left the reader feeling inspired by the picture of a true family.

First published more than a century ago (around 1913), it's no wonder that SONS & LOVERS has become a classic.

The repetitiveness of the writing (if I had to read once more how "bitter" one of the characters were, or how much one character "hated" another I'd have screamed!) did not detract from the sheer brilliance of Lawrence's characterisations of the slyly poisonous mother and her castrating effect on the men in her life.

Gertrude Morel's disappointment in her marriage to the rough miner Walter Morel (the character I felt most sympathy for) soured her into becoming a manipulating, horrible woman who lived out her romantic fantasies through her sons.

First, her eldest son William who, in his struggle for an identity and life separate from his mother's passions, almost broke free of her control by choosing a wildly inappropriate lover. His unhappiness had tragic consequences, which turned Mrs Morel's hopes onto her son Paul, the main character of the book.

Sensitive, romantic, artistic Paul was a sitting duck for his mother's emotional blackmail: the inner battle he waged trying to establish some sort of manhood and masculine identity under her powerful influence drives the story forward. Ultimately, it led him into cruel power struggles with the two lovers in his life. He treats both Miriam and Clara shockingly, reflecting the emotional abuse his mother inflicts on both her sons and her husband.

SONS & LOVERS is worth the struggle to read : the language is dated and requires concentration and, as mentioned above, there is a lot of repetition. The descriptions of life in a mining village, the poverty, the daily struggles were, however, well depicted (and resonated deeply as I come from a 3-generation mining family).

However, there is so much spite and anger underlying the story it was almost an unpleasant read, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. To see how damaging a mother’s influence can be, not only for her son, but for his lovers as well, made for painful, if interesting, reading.

Lawrence's depiction of the relationship between Paul and his mother, of how Mrs Morel subtly and selfishly uses her immense personal power (disguised as a fragile and delicate femininity) to set up her sons in opposition to their father, is a masterpiece in describing the psychological phenomenon known as the Oedipus complex. This gripping aspect of the story is what kept me reading and is why I highly recommend SONS & LOVERS.

The nonexistent plot and painfully stunted characters speaking stilted, repetitive lines are nearly offset by some passages of lyrical prose describing the nature and architecture of the industrial Midlands. Lawrence seems to have lived a short, angry, and unhappy life. This book offers some insights into why that was the case.

First published in 1913, when its author was 28 years old, D H Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" is a semi-autobiographical novel set in central England's Nottinghamshire, Robin Hood country. The story opens with the courtship and marriage of Walter Morel, a miner, and the quiet Gertrude Coppard, four years his junior. Immediately Lawrence sets the mood: " ... for three months she was perfectly happy; for six months she was very happy." Soon Walter's drinking takes over their relationship and he begins beating Gertrude, one cold night locking her out of their house. Babies come as a matter of course, and their third child Paul becomes the novel's protagonist, not a gifted writer, like the author himself, but a painter who can hope to support himself with his art. Paul is depicted as having a very strong sex urge, an attribute not frankly discussed in English literature of the previous generation. Even Thomas Hardy (and I detect a very strong influence here) could not depict sexual situations in narratives like "Jude the Obscure" as Lawrence does in his novels. (In fact, an unexpurgated version of Lawrence's 1928 "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not approved until a generation after its original publication, thirty years after the novelist's death.) Paul's intense relationship with his mother has provided critics with all sorts of theories, the most common being that it skirts incest. True, they are very close when Paul is a child and, like his mother, Paul learns to despise his father. He lavishes affection on Gertrude, invents little pet names for her and even admits in one chapter that he won't marry as long as she is alive. But I don't think it's so much attraction on his part as affinity. They both distrust the same people, such as animalistic Walter and tenacious Miriam, the girl Paul comes close to marrying, much to his mother's horror. (Paul also seems to have inherited his mother's basic selfishness along with her devotion, so that his motives in Chapter XIV are apt to raise ambivalent feelings in the reader.) Gertrude is more ready to accept the coolly elegant Clara, probably because Clara is already unhappily separated from her husband Baxter, a man his wife finds difficult but still desirable. Paul's tense relations with these three women form the plot of "Sons and Lovers" and keep the reader deeply involved in its development. Granted the prose sometimes shades off into purple ("The hot blood came up wave upon wave"), for the most part the tone is well-controlled. To read this direct book is to understand why Lawrence became one of the most controversial authors of his time.

I had a hard time getting engaged with this novel. Partly it was the language, the Derbyshire dialect of the father. More to the point, however, is the meandering sense of plot. I know it's about relationships, so a lot of the action is internal, but for the first 80 pages, there wasn't a lot of conflict other than between Mrs. Morel and her oafish husband. I was about to put it down at page 100 when it finally got somewhat interesting - Mrs. Morel's son William died suddenly, so there's the emotional tension of what that does to the mother, and then the son Paul starts falling for this intense young thing, Miriam Dievers, so we have emotions flowing left and right. Though Lawrence does seem to understand the inner life, and to that extent the story has some appeal, but I finally put it down at page 180. Too plodding, too much apparently bland action that supposedly is reflective of internal states, and simply too much of a late adolescent / young adult's psycho-sexual Sturm und Drang. Yes, i might have hung around to see the psycho-social dynamics of the Mrs. Morel-Paul-Miriam triangle, the mother's repressed emotions, the son's emotional love and unacknowledged physical attraction for his mother, and how that affects his relationship with Miriam Lievers, but ... ultimately I realized I didn't give a damn about what happened to any of them. Top 10 best English novels or not, I just didn't care. A century ago this might have been riveting reading, but that moment has passed.

I'm 66. If I'm lucky, I'll have another 14 years of reading before I'm dead. I have other books I'd rather read. Lesson - don't go over 100 pages. If it isn't interesting by then, it isn't going to be.

Has any literary reputation (maybe Hemingway's) fallen like Lawrence's has? In my parents old set of encyclopedias, c. 1950, his entry was a paragraph long. In the 1970 Ency. Brtit. it was pages long. He was suddenly on par with Joyce... When I went through school I caught the very tail end of this mass admiration for Lawrence. It was a strange admiration too, mostly male critics gone overboard, calling such juvenile drivel as Lady Chatterly great literature and whatnot. I read practically all of Lawrences works, no mean feat, because the man wrote like a banshee. I also read the bios and the Letters... And I've come to the conclusion that Lawrence wrote one beautiful novel and that's it: Sons and Lovers. That Lawrence later disliked the novel is interesting because it evidently ran afoul of his ludicrous philosphy of life (and that so many intelligent British men at that time were taken with such nonsense is a bit disturbing and quite funny; I can't think of any woman infatuated with with his loopy ideas). This novel is written in beautiful prose and it evokes an England that no longer exists; nothing else that Lawrence attempted comes close to the beauty in this novel... Some of his earlier, short stories and novellas do, but they are few and far between.

T.S. Eliot once said that Henry James had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it. Lawrence is an example of the absolute opposite: of a writer getting so carried away with his ideas that the art starts to suffer. He's like Tolstoy (but on a vastly smaller scale) in that he had to propagandize his ideas at every little turn... But Sons and Lovers is definitely worth the reputation that it has had all along.

This is a well-written expose of quotidian family tragedies. To my understanding, this is a semi-autobiographical work. I don't find that the added authenticity of a piece of literature does much to alter its quality, but I do acknowledge that there is a unique intimacy to many scenes within Sons and Lovers that suggest they are folios from Lawrence's own life. The book is a struggle to read because it is consistently gloomy. If you are currently troubled by life, I do not recommend this work, which is a careful presentation of human suffering and confusion. That said, it is a fine work of literature, especially in the aesthetic of its visual details. Here, Lawrence is rarely profound, but he is always gripping in description.

Sons and Lovers is D.H. Lawrence's highly autobiographical novel of the early years of a young man's life in mid-nineteenth century England. As such, the book is very intense emotionally, as Lawrence seems to convey his own strong feelings about his family into his characters. One result of this exaggerated level of emotions is a constant state of tension and unreality. A simple scene becomes a moment of high drama and the constant repetition of such scenes eventually dulls the reader to those moments of genuine crisis.

The book begins with the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Morel. Gertrude is an educated, sensitive woman who marries Walter because of his physical appearance and charming personality. She also believes, falsely as it turns out, that he does not drink and is the owner of this own house. Mr. Morel is a miner and the family lives in "The Bottoms," a hardscrabble mining community. It soon becomes clear that he cannot cope with the responsibility of raising a family that grows to four children. In response he turns to drink and abusive language (although no real violence) toward his family, and especially toward his wife. Throughout the book Walter is portrayed, not as an evil man, but as one defeated by life. His family comes to despise him and at the same time love him, depending on his moods and behavior.

William, the first child, is athletic and intelligent. He grows to manhood early in the book and leaves to go to London to seek his fortune, but comes to a tragic end. The second child, Annie, has only a modest role in the novel as benefits a book with this title. Paul, the third child, is the main character and Lawrence's alter ego. Unlike his siblings, Paul is sickly and unathletic, and he and Mrs. Morel develop a strong attachment for each other that carries throughout the book. The final child, Arthur, also plays a minor role in the plot.

The book is divided into two parts; the first largely concerned with the early years of the Morel family and the second with Paul and his love affairs. As a teenager he meets Miriam, a young girl on a nearby farm. Paul develops a fondness for the whole family and he and Miriam become entangled romantically and the understanding is that they will marry some day. But neither Paul nor Miriam can make a sufficient commitment to this idea and even when Miriam finally does so Paul is incapable of a similar response. At this point an older woman, Clara Dawes, comes into Paul's life. She is married to Baxter Dawes, a brutish man from whom she is separated. Paul is attracted to her physically and they begin an adulterous relationship. But again Paul has difficulty sustaining a mature relationship and is constantly torn between his love for (and even dependence on) his mother and his wish for a mature and stable relationship with a woman.

The novel is also infused with a heavy dose of religion. Miriam in particular, is described as highly religious and even derogatively referred to as a nun. The religion view that sex is something dirty is also evident.

It would help, given the nature of the book, to read a biography of Lawrence before tackling this novel. Many of the characters in the novel act in dysfunctional ways and the reader wonders how much of their behavior is a reflection of Lawrence's own life experiences.

It is difficult for me to rate this book much above three stars because of the depressing tone and unrealistic behaviors of the characters. One wants to say to Lawrence, "get some psychological help before writing about your life!" On the other hand it is a fascinating story written by one of the outstanding English writers of the nineteenth century. It is not his best work, but still quite good in many respects.

DH Lawrence was born in Nottingham, England in 1885. He died at age 44 in Vence, France in 1930. In between those birth and death dates he created great fiction. His first big book and, probably, still his greatest is "Sons and Lovers."
The novel is highly autobiographical. Walter Morel is a crude, hard drinking miner who has no intellectual interests. He weds the etheral and lovely Gertrude. The couple have four children: William, Annie, Paul and Arthur. William, the eldest, is a good boy engaged to a flighty woman. He dies at an early age. The other children, with the noted exception of Paul, live mundane lives.
Paul is the Lawrence figure in the book. He is a momma's boy tied to her tight apron strings. Paul loves books, learning and the beauties of flowering nature. He has long affairs with the beautiful but shy Miriam who lives on a nearby farm and Clara Dawes (resembling Lawrence's wife Frieda Weekly). He marries neither woman leaving his boyhood home for adventures elsewhere. As the novel ends, Paul will continue his artistic work and his spiritual questing.
There is little action in this novel. It is, instead, a pyschological probing of such human affairs as familial and erotic love, death, suffering and the process of saying goodbye to childhood. It is a deeply moving book. One cannot refrain from crying at the death of Paul's saintly mother.
"Sons and Lovers" was written before Lawrence was scorned by critics and damaged by life. It is an excellent book which everyone should read if they are interested in life within a family. This book is rich with descriptions of nature and is a joy to read. Excellent!

This novel created considerable controversy, along with Freudian accusations of an Oedipal relationship between Paul the son and his mother Gertrude.
D. H. Lawrence depicted the physical attraction between Paul and Clara in a very frank direct manner that was quite radical for the time. The tormenting uncertainty between
Paul and Miriam, along with his strong attraction to Clara as compared to the mutual emotional dependency between him and his mother were understandably overwhelming to the public.

It was very instructive to see how the absence of love in the mother's life led her to have an emotional dependency on one of her kids, only to switch to another son when she loses the first one. Portraying human narcissism through motherly love is a very shocking way of examining human nature. It was very interesting, as well, to see how the son was always torn between loving a woman and loving his mom, which are very different and incompatible emotions.

Lawrence's honesty is very admirable considering the period in which the novel was written, and the unique way he described the son's decision while the mom is in pain on her death bed might raise some deep insight regarding this Author's vision. I, though, reject the possibility of a deep emotional thinker, and go with a merely honest portrayal of a pleasure worshipping male, who did not understand typical male desires as compared to typical human feelings.

Lawrence had many admirers, including some smart/confused feminists, who thought of him as a great writer who portrayed quite accurately women's feelings. I, on the other hand, agree with the good writer part but sense in him shallowness and pure blind desire with a great dearth of complex analysis.

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.

First, I loved this edition and the charming and lovely cover, I was very happy with it.

Of course, Sons and Lovers is on one level, a tremendous story of life, of living up to our own desires, and those of our parents or those around us. On another level, its a story right from the case book of Freud, and the conflicts that a woman as a mother places on her son via on how she rears him.

Not everyone believes in Freud's theories, but none the less, Lawrence must have - as its his story in many ways.

But besides all of that, and as fascinating as that is, a book has to be well written to create a desire to read it. In this case, we are not let down, the book is a masterpiece.

Choose to read it as a man, trying to understand your mother and your lover, or choose to read it from the historical perspective, or to see how we see ourselves based on our profession & not as we really are, (as Mrs Morel is concerned for her husbands profession of coal miner), or, just read it for the absolute pleasure of the powerful words of DH Lawrence, who makes each page sing to us in the glory of his prose.

Whatever the reason, take the time to read his book, its simple wonderful!

Lawrence is a great novelist and seems to have told a tale no truer than in his autobiographical "Sons and Lovers." The primary characters all have some major defect of character, but I felt most pity for Paul Morel (the Lawrence character) and Miriam (his childhood semi-sweetheart). Momma Morel didn't like Miriam because Mom would then lose control over Paul. And Paul could never let go of Mom's strings even after she'd died.

A novel best illustrating the dangers of a parent frustrated in his/her own life and then attempting to control the life of his/her child such that the parent ruins the child's life too (not only in love but in career and in joy).

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence. Recommended.
Sons and Lovers is said to be the most autobiographical of D. H. Lawrence's novels; according to the introduction by Benjamin DeMott, some critics have found it too flatly so. Like the protagonist Paul Morel, Lawrence was born to a coal miner and a woman who has married beneath her class, and his older brother died young, DeMott notes. Many other details coincide as well.
Unlike some of Lawrence's other works, such as Women in Love, in which Lawrence explores lofty themes in a philosophical and often grim tone, Sons and Lovers is as down to earth as Paul's rough, violent, yet congenial father Walter. Despite his many apparent and iterated flaws, Walter Morel is shown as a whole person rather than a fictional creation, with a gentle, content, industrious side, at least when he's sober. Perhaps his "smallness" is a function of where he is and who he is expected to be rather than who he could be. He's so tied to his lot in life, the mining life, that it never occurs to him that his more gifted sons could aspire to more. That they achieve more is a source of both pride and derision for Walter Morel. Although Walter is a background character (to both reader and to the Morel family), it is he, "an outsider," who forges the bond between Gertrude Morel and her sons, first William, then Paul.
Gertrude Morel is not the first woman to try to live her life through her children, but her hold over her sons dooms their relationships with other women to failure and leaves them deeply unsatisfied and unhappy. Her motivations may be questionable, but she is sometimes right. William's fiancée Lily would have cost him dearly, emotionally and financially, had he lived to marry her, and Mrs. Morel sees her own mistake of a marriage in his future. Although she makes her beliefs known, she seems willing to let William make his decision and suffer the consequences.
Having learned from the experience with William, Mrs. Morel takes a different approach with Paul, who seems to be her last, best hope for justifying her own life. Her relationship with Paul becomes overtly sexual. When they go out together, they behave like lovers on a date. "He stroked his mother's hair, and his mouth was on her throat." When Paul tells his mother that he doesn't love Miriam (how can he?), she "kissed him in a long, fervent kiss. 'My boy!' she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love. Without knowing, he gently stroked her face."
It would be too easy to attribute all this to an Oedipal complex, but it is more complicated, as life is. Paul serves as Mrs. Morel's alter ego, pseudo-lover, and breadwinner. Everything she did not or cannot have must be Paul's. She is savvy enough to know who is a threat to her hold and who is not. She recognises in Miriam a woman much like herself-intelligent, thwarted, let down by men, hungry for a kindred spirit or soul mate. Paul, too, is aware of this and hates Miriam for it-and for the fact he does, indeed, love her, making him unfaithful to the woman to whom he owes his fidelity. There are spiritual overtones as well, as the religious Miriam tries to sacrifice herself for Paul, whom she sees as a "Walter Scott hero." This sacrifice repels Paul ever further.
Mrs. Morel rightly perceives that Clara Dawes is not a threat to her-she is fascinating, attractive, enigmatic, and sensual, but she lacks the ability to be more to Paul than a diversion from Miriam, Mom, and himself. Knowing that nothing of importance will come of this affair, Mrs. Morel even encourages it. It cannot divert Paul from her, and it fails as a result.
In the end, the only intimacy Paul is capable of is with his mother. She has come between him and his own consciousness-and he has allowed her. Everything is filtered through her. How she has achieved this is not always clear, as she uses more than rhetoric and conscious effort to mold Paul. When he wishes her dead, there is hope that then he would begin to live. "Mother!" he whimpered. "Mother!" Then: "He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her." With the past buried, there may be a future for him. Only Lawrence knew as he wrote this most human of his novels...

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.

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.

This is Lawrence's most autobiographical of novels, dealing with his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. It is terribly frank a portrayal of the relationship between a domineering mother and the younger and surviving son: it's a relationship that colors every aspect of the younger son's life, from his relationship with his father to his romantic relationships with two very different women. Lawrence paints this portrait so vividly: an attention to descriptive detail that is perhaps the best characterization in modern English literature.

Its one of the top 100 English books written, and while could be written for that sake alone, there are plenty of other reasons to read it, it is a fascinating story of life, love, pain, longing, and will totally engulf the reader. A book you will have said, `I wish I had read it before'.

And if you read it in school, read it again, I guarantee you will find it very different, because you will have seen more of life to appreciate its beauty.