Sons and Lovers -

Much of the comment on Lawrence's work surrounds his treatment of sexual relationships. Having never read Lawrence or any of the criticism of his work, in reading "Sons and Lovers", I was initially struck with his exploration of the results of an alcoholic, abusive, and absent father on the lives and identities of the rest of the family. Morel, the father, is the typically charismatic, charming rogue who sweeps the young, innocent girl off her feet on the dance floor. Mrs. Morel realizes her mistake when Morel's nights at the local pub grow longer and his returns become more angry. Mrs. Morel, hardened by life's demands and her hsuband's drunkeness, becomes the long-suffering martyr, turning to her children for emotional fulfillment. She uses the family guilt over Morel's condition and her constant wounds to control and maipulate the children, especially Paul, on whom she dotes. William, the oldest, is the over-responsible child, acheiving much in the business world while remaining emotionally icompetent. He chooses a girl for whom he feels no true love because of her appearance and the ease with which she fits into his life. Paul, over-sensitive and sheltered because of his mother's indulgence, is incapable of committed love and moves aimlessly between two women, destroying both of their lives. Neither William nor Paul are ever able to fill the gap created by their abusive and unsettled upbringings. The one girl child, Annie, is relegated to the position of servant, never important to the family dynamic except in her worth as a worker and when she is married.

I was surprised by the insight Lawrence was able to bring to the subject, identifying both the obvious and the subtle implications of an abusive parent. The book is also a useful social comment on class and socio-econmics of early 20th century England.

I found the book much more readable than I first expected, save for the intermittent dialect Lawrence's characters sometimes fell into.

3 bones!!!

Women in Love -

What do you get when you cross a bodice-ripping romance, dripping in euphemism, with a freshman Philosophy term paper? The answer is D.H. Lawrence’s [Women in Love].

Lawrence’s earlier novel [The Rainbow] provided Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen’s family background, and dealt with their early years, as Ursula became a school teacher in her small hometown of Beldover, and Gudrun traveled to London to become an artist. [Women in Love] begins with Gudrun back home and unhappy in the backwards, coal-mining town. At a wedding, both fall in love from afar, Ursula with Rupert Berkin, an anxious nihilist, and Gudrun with Gerald Crich, the coal mine owner’s son. Over the course of the novel, these four endlessly square-dance toward and away from each other, never completely in or out of love with their respective dance partner.

Lawrence watched as [The Rainbow] was suppressed by publishers and burned by readers as obscene. He never thought he’d see the publication of this novel for the same reason. Perhaps it is not fair to judge the language and writing after the passage of a nearly an additional one hundred years. But the endless euphemistic encounters between these characters read as so much silliness. Here’s an example describing Gudrun reaching to retrieve her sketch book from Gerald, who has just recovered it from the water:

“And as if in a spell, Gudrun was aware of his body, stretching and surging like the marsh-fire, stretching towards her, his hand coming straight forward like a stem. Her voluptuous, acute apprehension of him made the blood faint in her veins, her mind went dim and unconscious. And he rocked on the water perfectly, like the rocking of phosphorescence. He looked round at the boat. It was drifting off a little. He lifted the oar to bring it back. And the exquisite pleasure of slowly arresting the boat, in the heavy-soft water, was complete as a swoon.”

How is it possible to read that passage and not picture Fabio with his shirt open to the navel?

Lawrence explained that he was trying to explore what he saw as the most important problem of his day, “the establishment of a new relationship, or the readjustment of the old one, between man and woman.” Through Birkin, Lawrence describes this new relationship as “a strange conjunction … an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings: as the stars balance each other.” Though what comes across is more of a denial of value in love and nearly everything else the world has to offer. Birkin reads like a bored child, who condescends toward every pursuit in life as without value. Again, Lawrence’s message may suffer from a modern world reading, with infinitely more complexity and infinitely less tradition in its relationships and values. But his constant ruminations on the emptiness of traditional love and the beautiful inevitability of death are tiring, and they sound like the ravings of a Philosophy 101 student who is stuck on some ‘newly discovered’ kernel of truth that finally explains everything. Certainly, there is no all-encompassing definition of human relationships, but Lawrence seems to try to destroy that notion by creating his own universal definition.

Bottom Line: A bodice-ripper, as only Nietzsche would have written it. Buy the bodice-ripper if you are in the mood for romance.

2 bones!! ( )