This was not my favorite book by Lawrence, although it was more readable than Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover- there was less philosophizing. Although it contain elements of Lawrence's major themes such as the conflict between the life of the mind, body and spirit, this conflict plays out through the actions of the characters instead of through soliloquies as in his later novels. It also touches on the issue of euthanasia, and most importantly, parenting.
The story begins with a marriage between Gertrude and Walter Morel which quickly deteriorates into a battle of wills. Mrs. Morel puts all her energy and love into her son Paul.
"At last, Mrs. Morel despised her husband. She turned to the child, she turned from the father... There began a battle between the husband and wife- a fearful, bloody battle that ended only with the death of one."
Her death leaves Paul lost and alone, unable to truly give himself completely to any woman.

" 'Mother!" he whispered-'mother!'
She was the only thing that held him up, himself amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her."

Of course, the character Gertrude Morel is an extreme example of over parenting- or as we now call it- helicopter parenting, but Lawrence examines her inner life, as well as her son's, in a compassionate way.
( )

Calling Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud! There is nothing subtle about the Oedipus Complex at the center of this novel. What does contain subtlety and ambiguity is the characters response to it. This was a hard book to like because none of the characters were particularly likeable (and I wanted to bitchslap Paul Morel on more than one occasion and tell him to grow up!). I initially liked Gertrude Morel, Paul's mother, but as soon as she insinuated herself into her son's lives as a figurative lover, the bloom was off the rose. It is a beautifully written, very visual novel, but absolutely infuriating. The lone daughter, Annie, is the only character to escape the damage caused by this love of mother and hatred of father (so, of course, Annie is a very minor character). If Paul Morel fought half as much against his mother as he did with Miriam and Clara, he might have finally broken her stranglehold and become a man, instead of a mere shadow of a man. Miriam and Clara both turned into weak, needy creatures who clung to someone who never deserved their love. The healthiest relationship in the book was that between Paul and Baxter Dawes (and the only time the reader sees much in the way of selflessness on the part of Paul). I ended up having a love/hate relationship with the book. It really is beautifully written and the inner life of the characters is incredibly well drawn, but in the end, I just didn't care about any of them. I didn't care what happened to them. I didn't care about their problems or their desires or anything else. That is a shame. ( )

Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence
Lawrence drew on his own family life to write about the unhappy marriage between Morel, a miner, and his better-educated wife, and the intense relationship between the mother and her sons. As he grows older, one son Paul, forms a relationship with farmer’s daughter Miriam, then later with an older woman, Clara, a suffragette who is separated from her husband; but his emotional ties to his mother are not easily supplanted.

Published by the Folio Society to mark the centenary of the book, this edition is set from the unexpurgated text first published by Cambridge University Press in 1992.

I read some short stories and "A Boy in the Bush" by Lawrence before I read this books. It was a dissapointment. In this novel there is none of the sublime romantic darkness of his other works. It is still a pretty good novel, however, he can be so much better. I recommend you to read the Prussian Officer (one of his short stories) to see how just how good he can be. ( )

‘On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing.

“Mother!” he whimpered—“mother!”’

A little dull, sparkles of monistic brilliance underneath, the searing futility of the incommunicable found between people in relationships amply expressed throughout. England a land populated by beautiful flowers and abundant grey death. ( )