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mahimabh 's review for:
Sons and Lovers
by D. H. Lawrence
Lawrence wrote in one of his letters:
“Nobody can have the soul of me. My mother has had it, and nobody can have it again. Nobody can come into my very self again, and breathe me like an atmosphere.”
‘Sons and Lovers’ has many strands it is made up of, and this quote describes the most important one of them. Lawrence’s own unparalleled love for his mother translates in the novel as Paul Morel’s love for his mother, the portrayal of which gives rise to a Freudian subtext. While Lawrence thought that the critics had carved a half lie from an honest portrayal of his childhood, he did admit in many of his letters that he had loved his mother like a lover. In a letter he said, “This has been a kind of bond between me and my mother. We have loved each other, almost with a husband and wife love, as well as filial and maternal.” This love is clearly visible in the novel. It seems to me, however, that the Freudian element, while part of an overarching theme, is not all that important when seen together with the other themes of the novel. At least it doesn’t seem like an intended element. There might be a Freudian element to it, but the love seems like… just love.
The love for his mother gives rise to the most subtle, and sublime tensions in Paul’s life, and also in the novel as a whole. On the one hand is the will to live vitally, a will, which, according to Lawrence, was mixed up with a philosophy of sex. This will is represented by Paul’s relationship with first Miriam, then Clara. On the other hand is the desire to obey, almost a natural impulse in Paul’s case, which is represented by his relationship with his mother. ‘Sons and Lovers’ is an account of a man unable to choose which impulse to follow. The situation is picked up from Lawrence’s life itself, and as Jessie Chambers, the girl on whom Miriam was based, describes, it was simply that while loving his mother with an almost romantic passion, he had nothing left to give to a lover.
For Lawrence, sex was not something crude. “Sex and beauty are one thing, like flame and fire. If you hate sex, you hate beauty.” However, under the yoke of Victorian morels and their mothers’ hold over them, both the writer and the character cannot realize this definition of sex. Sex signified a physical as well as a spiritual union to Lawrence. However, how could he, or Paul, give himself, body and soul, to a lover when it wasn't he who held his own soul?
Be that as it may, it seems to me that both Miriam and Clara just became objects that were intended to be defeated from the very beginning. It seems as if a distorted picture was being portrayed of them, one that would merely serve to make Paul and the mother look like the only victims. I believe Lawrence could perhaps have provided a better picture of the two. I say that because even of Mr. Morel, whom the reader decides to loathe from the very beginning, Lawrence, with remarkable objectivity, presents the other side. There’s no sentimentality, but it does give rise to sympathy, which I feel Lawrence could have evoked with Miriam and Clara’s characters as well. There’s even an honest albeit tender portrayal of the friction between the mother and the son despite their love for each other.
Nonetheless, Lawrence’s writing is remarkable - his insight into character, his understanding of circumstance, and the scope and variety of life that he describes. His writing is also so very beautiful, and some passages, I think, are going to stay with me forever. What would also stay with me is the heart wrenching account of the mother’s death. At one point, it literally made me cry a bit. This was a sad, sad, sad book, and I cannot stress enough on the word sad, but I seem to have a thing for melancholic books.
“Nobody can have the soul of me. My mother has had it, and nobody can have it again. Nobody can come into my very self again, and breathe me like an atmosphere.”
‘Sons and Lovers’ has many strands it is made up of, and this quote describes the most important one of them. Lawrence’s own unparalleled love for his mother translates in the novel as Paul Morel’s love for his mother, the portrayal of which gives rise to a Freudian subtext. While Lawrence thought that the critics had carved a half lie from an honest portrayal of his childhood, he did admit in many of his letters that he had loved his mother like a lover. In a letter he said, “This has been a kind of bond between me and my mother. We have loved each other, almost with a husband and wife love, as well as filial and maternal.” This love is clearly visible in the novel. It seems to me, however, that the Freudian element, while part of an overarching theme, is not all that important when seen together with the other themes of the novel. At least it doesn’t seem like an intended element. There might be a Freudian element to it, but the love seems like… just love.
The love for his mother gives rise to the most subtle, and sublime tensions in Paul’s life, and also in the novel as a whole. On the one hand is the will to live vitally, a will, which, according to Lawrence, was mixed up with a philosophy of sex. This will is represented by Paul’s relationship with first Miriam, then Clara. On the other hand is the desire to obey, almost a natural impulse in Paul’s case, which is represented by his relationship with his mother. ‘Sons and Lovers’ is an account of a man unable to choose which impulse to follow. The situation is picked up from Lawrence’s life itself, and as Jessie Chambers, the girl on whom Miriam was based, describes, it was simply that while loving his mother with an almost romantic passion, he had nothing left to give to a lover.
For Lawrence, sex was not something crude. “Sex and beauty are one thing, like flame and fire. If you hate sex, you hate beauty.” However, under the yoke of Victorian morels and their mothers’ hold over them, both the writer and the character cannot realize this definition of sex. Sex signified a physical as well as a spiritual union to Lawrence. However, how could he, or Paul, give himself, body and soul, to a lover when it wasn't he who held his own soul?
Be that as it may, it seems to me that both Miriam and Clara just became objects that were intended to be defeated from the very beginning. It seems as if a distorted picture was being portrayed of them, one that would merely serve to make Paul and the mother look like the only victims. I believe Lawrence could perhaps have provided a better picture of the two. I say that because even of Mr. Morel, whom the reader decides to loathe from the very beginning, Lawrence, with remarkable objectivity, presents the other side. There’s no sentimentality, but it does give rise to sympathy, which I feel Lawrence could have evoked with Miriam and Clara’s characters as well. There’s even an honest albeit tender portrayal of the friction between the mother and the son despite their love for each other.
Nonetheless, Lawrence’s writing is remarkable - his insight into character, his understanding of circumstance, and the scope and variety of life that he describes. His writing is also so very beautiful, and some passages, I think, are going to stay with me forever. What would also stay with me is the heart wrenching account of the mother’s death. At one point, it literally made me cry a bit. This was a sad, sad, sad book, and I cannot stress enough on the word sad, but I seem to have a thing for melancholic books.