Paul Morel grows up in The Bottoms, a community of coal miners in Nottinghamshire. His mother, Gertrude Coppard Morel--whose family were burghers until they went bankrupt, & father, Walter, have had a horrible marriage since she realized, six months into the marriage, that he was of a significantly different temperament than she:
There began a battle between the husband and wife-a
fearful, bloody battle that ended only with the
death of one. She fought to make him undertake his
own responsibilities, to make him fulfill his
obligations. But he was too different timber. His
nature was purely sensuous, and she strove to
make him moral, religious. She tried to force him
to face things. He could not endure it-it drove
him out of his mind.
Things came to a head when he cut off their oldest sons curls: "This
act of masculine clumsiness
was the spear through the side of her love for Morel."
And so, Paul grows up the mollycoddled son of a smothering Mother. As he grows to young manhood he becomes an artist and begins to have relationships with women: Miriam Leivers, a religious good girl, and Clara Dawes, married but estranged from her husband. Of course, his mother's looming presence overshadows these relationships and they end badly.
Meanwhile, when his mother contracts cancer, Paul murders her with morphine. The novel ends with him striding confidently towards a golden future, borne up by the continuing support of her love for him.
My, what a tower of crap hath Mr. Freud wrought.
At the time Lawrence was writing, it was tres chic to accept the ridiculous
prattling of the Freudians as gospel. And so, this semi-autobiographical
novel would have seemed to be an expression of a universal condition; of
course, he so loves his mother that it warps his development, it's the
same for everyone. But as we look back, we see that he in fact is depicting
a pathological condition. The best art should be timeless and universal.
Instead, Sons and Lovers is a tedious artifact of a moment in human
thought, when a pernicious philosophy, Freudianism, had won temporary ascendance.
(Reviewed:)
Grade: (D)
