Sons and Lovers
First published in 1913, ‘Sons and Lovers’ is a provocative semi-autobiographical novel by D.H. Lawrence, an English writer, and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. The work is based in part on his own family, his mother married a miner like the matriarch of the novel and consequently felt deprived by being relegated to working-class life. The story reflects the struggles of Paul Morel, an artist who cannot reciprocate love for other women while under the influence of his oppressive mother. Unconsciously taught to despise his father and eschew other women, Paul comes even further under his mother’s psychological grip after the death of his older brother. When he eventually does fall in love, the results of his confused affection and desire are painful for all concerned. What follows is a tragic struggle for Paul between the desire for a normal loving relationship and the inherent sense of love and fidelity he feels for his mother.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.
Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.