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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
This was the first 'classic' book I've read in a while and I quite enjoyed it. As usual the quite dense prose was hard to get through at times but overall the themes of this book and the characters and made it interesting. Any book that makes you want to go away and read about interpretations and critiques must have something going for it. I must admit that I missed some of the less obvious imagery and metaphors but even so this was a book that made me think about relationships and how it must have been in working class England at the start of the 20th century. Well worth reading and studying. My one criticism is that I didn't actually like Paul Morel and, whilst a valid point throughout, I found it repetitive how often one character was described as both loving yet almost hating another.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
I was a devout fan of D.H. Lawrence as a teenager, before reading Bertrand Russell's autobiography in high school turned me against him.
I am a practitioner of science and rationalism, a believer in democracy and the equality of the sexes, so my decision to take Russell's side in the philosophical war that he brewed up between himself and Lawrence was a no-brainer.
It is hard for me to speak out in praise of Lawrence when he wrote so much sexist tripe---for example, the passage in Lady Chatterley's Lover in which the hero describes his deteriorating sexual relations with his ex-wife Bertha thusly:
"She got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God, you think a woman's soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you the old rampers have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till you're sick. Like an old trull! She had to tear, tear, tear, as if she had no sensation in her except in the top of her beak, the very outside top tip, that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores used to be, so men used to say."
(Why must so many of the unfairly despised females in English literature be named Bertha, anyway?)
All that being said, nothing can sway me from my belief that Lawrence's Sons and Lovers is a perfect novel.
I first read it when I was fourteen or so. At that time, I identified strongly with the character of Miriam Leivers, Paul Morel's first girlfriend: a seethingly intense, brooding, grasping, needy teenage girl whose inwardness and whose capability for fervent obsessive love initially attract the protagonist Paul Morel but eventually drive him away.
Miriam still strikes me as one of the most vivid, three-dimensional, fully conceived characters in all of fiction. So does Gertrude Morel (Paul's controlling mother). The third major female character in the novel, Clara Dawes, is more of a cipher, but two out of three successes ain't bad. Paul Morel himself is a great protagonist, flawed but relatable, given to quintessentially Lawrentian articulations like "So long as life's full, it doesn't matter whether it's happy or not."
I sometimes think: there is no point in my attempting to write fiction, since it seems impossible that I will ever be able to create a character as lifelike as Miriam Leivers or Gertrude Morel.
Lawrence's later novels, e.g., Women in Love and The Lost Girl, have their fine moments, but when compared with an unforgettable novel like Sons and Lovers, they seem like mere polemics.
I am a practitioner of science and rationalism, a believer in democracy and the equality of the sexes, so my decision to take Russell's side in the philosophical war that he brewed up between himself and Lawrence was a no-brainer.
It is hard for me to speak out in praise of Lawrence when he wrote so much sexist tripe---for example, the passage in Lady Chatterley's Lover in which the hero describes his deteriorating sexual relations with his ex-wife Bertha thusly:
"She got harder and harder to bring off, and she'd sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God, you think a woman's soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you the old rampers have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till you're sick. Like an old trull! She had to tear, tear, tear, as if she had no sensation in her except in the top of her beak, the very outside top tip, that rubbed and tore. That's how old whores used to be, so men used to say."
(Why must so many of the unfairly despised females in English literature be named Bertha, anyway?)
All that being said, nothing can sway me from my belief that Lawrence's Sons and Lovers is a perfect novel.
I first read it when I was fourteen or so. At that time, I identified strongly with the character of Miriam Leivers, Paul Morel's first girlfriend: a seethingly intense, brooding, grasping, needy teenage girl whose inwardness and whose capability for fervent obsessive love initially attract the protagonist Paul Morel but eventually drive him away.
Miriam still strikes me as one of the most vivid, three-dimensional, fully conceived characters in all of fiction. So does Gertrude Morel (Paul's controlling mother). The third major female character in the novel, Clara Dawes, is more of a cipher, but two out of three successes ain't bad. Paul Morel himself is a great protagonist, flawed but relatable, given to quintessentially Lawrentian articulations like "So long as life's full, it doesn't matter whether it's happy or not."
I sometimes think: there is no point in my attempting to write fiction, since it seems impossible that I will ever be able to create a character as lifelike as Miriam Leivers or Gertrude Morel.
Lawrence's later novels, e.g., Women in Love and The Lost Girl, have their fine moments, but when compared with an unforgettable novel like Sons and Lovers, they seem like mere polemics.
Lawrence's books just give me a feeling like no other. Everything he writes is so gendered and it makes me miserable and I love it. The way he describes the undercurrent of violence in heterosexual relationships is masterful and horrifying.
Most notably to me, his understanding of the importance of the body is what I can't get enough of. Really beautiful and a refreshing reminder after spending so much of my time reading Victorian novels.
Most notably to me, his understanding of the importance of the body is what I can't get enough of. Really beautiful and a refreshing reminder after spending so much of my time reading Victorian novels.
One of those novels that is so well put together that I end up loving it despite the fact that on paper it's not my cup of tea. I think the key to this one is brilliantly crafted characters, particularly the protagonist Paul.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Sons and Lovers, the 1913 novel by D. H. Lawrence, is no. 9 on Modern Library's Top 100 Novels. I find myself at a bit of a loss on how to comment on it. I have a theory that the existence of redemption in a novel is necessary for it to be a great work; I cannot suffer a nihilistic worldview. I think there is something akin to redemption here. I want there to be, but the brokenness throughout is so all-encompassing that it is possible I just want it to be there.
Set in early 1900s England, the novel centers on the Morel family. The story is bleak from the beginning. It is hard to encounter characters who seem to have been born with the possibility of happiness only to find themselves in lives that seem fruitless. This becomes harder still when the personalities irrevocably alter into despair. Once the brokenness is passed on to the children, it is a bonafide tragedy.
Of course there is social commentary - the effects of industrialism, cheap labor, exploitation of class, and the like. But, while these are factors, there seems to be a more base human condition being interrogated. For me, at the center of the novel were the overarching questions concerning love. How much fear of solitude, abandonment, rejection can one person take? What manipulations, not just on others, but on ourselves, are we capable of committing to feel love? What are the effects on the essence of a person when they are loved unwell? What are we willing to sacrifice? How much grace do we give those who are doing the best they can with what they know? How can our stories be different when we commit to loving each other well?
I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I don't think Lawrence was real sure either. But I think this novel suggests he was at least trying to work it all out.
The drama was there. The gross parental/child relationship, sadly, was there. It was okay, but I just could not get over how nasty the mother was acting. Like she wanted to have actual relationships with the sons she birthed. She was so manipulative. It was an uncomfy read.
Really didn’t get why this is a classic. Very slow, very dreary, not a lot happens. No likeable characters, no well written lines either.
