Lawrence is one of those authors who I have labelled in my head as boring, wanky, and pretentious, and there is some truth to that. I enjoyed 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' far more than I expected to, but 'Sons and Lovers' is, in many ways, extremely dull. It is a semi-autobiographical examination of the characters' emotions and relationships over decades, written with a frenetic intensity and energy that can quickly become exhausting if you aren't in the mood for it. Took me quite a while to get through this one.
Paul Morel, our protagonist and Lawrence figure, is an Oedipal mess, whose close relationship with his mother impacts his attempts at romantic love. He could really have done with some counselling or therapy.
The characters and their relationships are very vivid and real, with immense depth - the novel is a success and has considerable merit in this regard. It is also interesting as a realistic portrayal of working class life in the early 20th century, made extra interesting for me because it is largely set around Nottingham - this is his most Nottinghammy novel.
However, I don't find familial and relationship drama in ordinary lives that exciting: the novel is, in many ways, extremely dull. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happens, but this goes some way to highlighting the depth and complexity in the emotions and relationships of ordinary people.
Here's an example to show how exhausting it can be:
'Miriam went on her knees before one cluster, took a wild-looking daffodil between her hands, turned up its face of gold to her, and bowed down, caressing it with her mouth and cheeks and brow. He stood aside, with his hands in his pockets, watching her. One after another she turned up to him the faces of the yellow, bursten flowers appealingly, fondling them lavishly all the while.
“Aren’t they magnificent?” she murmured.
“Magnificent! It’s a bit thick—they’re pretty!”
She bowed again to her flowers at his censure of her praise. He watched her crouching, sipping the flowers with fervid kisses.
“Why must you always be fondling things?” he said irritably.
“But I love to touch them,” she replied, hurt.
“Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted to pull the heart out of them? Why don’t you have a bit more restraint, or reserve, or something?”
She looked up at him full of pain, then continued slowly to stroke her lips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as she smelled it, was so much kinder than he; it almost made her cry.
“You wheedle the soul out of things,” he said. “I would never wheedle—at any rate, I’d go straight.”
He scarcely knew what he was saying. These things came from him mechanically. She looked at him. His body seemed one weapon, firm and hard against her.
“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—”
Rhythmically, Miriam was swaying and stroking the flower with her mouth, inhaling the scent which ever after made her shudder as it came to her nostrils.
“You don’t want to love—your eternal and abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren’t positive, you’re negative. You absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you’ve got a shortage somewhere.”
She was stunned by his cruelty, and did not hear. He had not the faintest notion of what he was saying. It was as if his fretted, tortured soul, run hot by thwarted passion, jetted off these sayings like sparks from electricity. She did not grasp anything he said. She only sat crouched beneath his cruelty and his hatred of her. She never realised in a flash. Over everything she brooded and brooded.'
Lawrence is interesting as a radical, boundary-pushing writer, most famously because of the Lady Chatterley Trial. In 'Sons and Lovers', Lawrence describes Paul's sexual feelings and sex life in ways that are sometimes quaint and sometimes still a bit shocking.
Paul and Clara go on a date to the theatre, where Paul is overwhelmed by Clara's proximate beauty, and her bare, naked arm:
'And he was to sit all the evening beside her beautiful naked arm, watching the strong throat rise from the strong chest, watching the breasts under the green stuff, the curve of her limbs in the tight dress. Something in him hated her again for submitting him to this torture of nearness. And he loved her as she balanced her head and stared straight in front of her, pouting, wistful, immobile, as if she yielded herself to her fate because it was too strong for her. She could not help herself; she was in the grip of something bigger than herself. A kind of eternal look about her, as if she were a wistful sphinx, made it necessary for him to kiss her. He dropped his programme, and crouched down on the floor to get it, so that he could kiss her hand and wrist. Her beauty was a torture to him. She sat immobile. Only, when the lights went down, she sank a little against him, and he caressed her hand and arm with his fingers. He could smell her faint perfume. All the time his blood kept sweeping up in great white-hot waves that killed his consciousness momentarily.'
Later, when their relationship is deteriorating, Paul and Clara try having sex in public places to re-invigorate their relationship, but it doesn't work:
Gradually they began to introduce novelties, to get back some of the feeling of satisfaction. They would be very near, almost dangerously near to the river, so that the black water ran not far from his face, and it gave a little thrill; or they loved sometimes in a little hollow below the fence of the path where people were passing occasionally, on the edge of the town, and they heard footsteps coming, almost felt the vibration of the tread, and they heard what the passers-by said—strange little things that were never intended to be heard. And afterwards each of them was rather ashamed, and these things caused a distance between the two of them.
Overall, I can't say I recommend 'Sons and Lovers', except for local historical interest - though I'm pleased I've got through it for what it is. I would, however, read more Lawrence, but probably not until next year.
