Lawrence, David Herbert - life, style and the novel

David Herbert Lawrence

Lawrence’s life: he was born in England in 1885, his father was a miner and his mother belongs to a higher social class. He married Lydia Beardsall, but their marriage soon ended up because he became a heavy drinker. But during that time Lawrence studied hard to become a teacher. When his brother Ernest died, David became the centre of his mother’s emotional life. The story of their love is told in the autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913). A crucial year for Lawrence was 1910 because his mother died. He continued teaching and he met and fell in love with Frieda von Richthoften, the German wife of a French professor at the University, and they married in 1914. During World War I, the couple was forced to remain in England, because he did not agree with the idea of the war. After the war he travelled the world: he went to Italy, Australia, Mexico and France. The censors banned several novels of Lawrence. When he was in France, he died of tuberculosis in 1930.
Sons and Lovers’ plot: it was the first philosophical modern novel. Lawrence is the young protagonist. The protagonists are the members of the Morel family. Mr and Mrs Morel do not get on with each other, and disputes and quarrels are the order of the day. The children are estranged from their father and strongly attached to their mother. Paul is the favourite, but the abnormally close relationship that he has with his mother cause some problems. In fact, he is unable to sustain a relationship with any woman; he rejects Miriam, his first girlfriend. Later, he has an affair with Clara Dawes, a married woman and a supporter of women’s rights. At the end, after Mrs Morel’s death, Paul does not know what to choose between the wish to rejoin his mother in death or go on living. In the end, he decides to free himself of the past.
In fact it can be considered as a bildungsroman because of the gradual maturation of Paul.

Family and social context

his father is a miner and his mother belongs to a higher social class. Mr Morel’s estrangement from the emotional life of the family is due in part to this social difference, which alienates him from his own children and brings them closer to their mother. Mrs Morel is educated and determined; she symbolises what the young Paul hopes to achieve.
Social and romantic bondage: Lawrence believed that industrialised Western culture was dehumanizing because it emphasised intellectual attributes to the exclusion of natural or physical instincts. He thoughts, however, that this culture was in decline and that humanity would soon evolve into a new awareness of itself as being a part of nature.
Romantic bondage is given far more emphasis in the novel: Paul cannot imagine abandoning his mother or even marrying anyone else. Lawrence uses the opposition of the body and mind to expose the contradictory nature of desire. Of all the natural impulses, the sexual one is the strongest, so only a new relationship between men and women based on sensual passions and sexuality can save humanity from self-destruction. This created a scandal, because, at that time, sex was prohibited to talk.

Style: Sons and Lovers is told using a third-person narrator, but almost all the events are seen through the techniques of “showing” and “telling” and their feelings are revealed by the use of occasional rhymes, repetition, alliteration, and assonance which convey a musical effect.

The rose bush : here we can see the beginning of the first part of love relationship between Mariam and Paul.