"Cliff Notes - Sons and Lovers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Sons and Lovers moves chronologically from before Paul's birth through his life as a young man and ends with his mourning the death of his mother. Flashbacks are often used, particularly in Part One, where Lawrence deals with the Morel parents' premarital backgrounds and Paul's early childhood memories.

Part Two involves a series of repeated attempts of male/female unions, exemplified by Paul's relationship first with Miriam, then with Clara. Many readers feel that these relationships take forever to resolve and that when they do, the result is quite unsatisfactory. Other readers believe that the monotonous repetition of the failed Miriam/Paul relationship theme is deliberate. They feel that Sons and Lovers is structured like ocean waves. There's a rhythmic return pattern to various themes, such as the decay of Mr. and Mrs. Morel's love after it has reached its climax. This serves to show that there are no clear-cut resolutions in life. People make the same mistakes again and again. Part Two can be considered a journey from the known, realistic world of Part One into the realm of the unknown, where there are no definitive solutions. Part Two explores the subconscious and mysterious forces that motivate people. Lawrence saw this sort of exploration as far more important than providing his audience with resolutions.

^^^^^^^^^^SONS AND LOVERS: CHAPTER 1

Sons and Lovers begins before the birth of its hero, Paul Morel, as his parents and brother and sister are moving into the dreary miners' lodgings known as the Bottoms. Walter Morel is a rugged miner whose small, deeply religious wife, Gertrude, is unhappily pregnant with their third child, Paul. Of all the Morels, you get the clearest picture of Gertrude in this chapter. A proud woman who has married beneath her own social class, she feels quite condescending toward the miners' world of which she is now a part. Her one joy in moving to the shabby Bottoms is that she has an end house in this low-income development, affording the Morels the luxury and status symbol of a side garden. You'll see as the story progresses how important a sense of social superiority is to the educated, refined Gertrude.

NOTE: In this chapter the narrator concentrates on Mrs. Morel. Most of the time, he strongly sympathizes with her feelings. Some readers think that Mrs. Morel's importance in the novel is reflected by the fact that Lawrence chose to begin the story with her, rather than with Paul. Other readers tend to believe that her overwhelming presence here signifies the immense power she'll exert over Paul's life.

The narrator makes a point to tell you that by moving into the Bottoms, the Morels have "descended" from Bestwood, a more prosperous town atop a nearby hill. You also learn that Mr. and Mrs. Morel's marriage is a shambles. Consider why Lawrence starts his story with the Morels' social, economic, and marital decline. How does it serve to color your impression of Walter and Gertrude's passionate courtship and early married bliss? Does the placing of the baby Paul in such a traumatic environment help you to understand his personal trials and tribulations as a boy and as a young man?

Gertrude Morel is miserable. She fears this new child will bring grave economic hardship to the family's strained finances. Even more important, she does not want to have the baby, because it was not conceived in love. She and her husband have grown to hate each other.

In contrast to the unhappiness of the Morel household, the village is caught up in the fun and festivities of the wakes, or local fair. Annie and William, the Morels' two young children, badger Gertrude to take them to the exciting event. She sends the impatient William off to the fair and promises to follow shortly with little Annie.

William is in heaven at the wakes, with its games and sideshows. He's even more delighted when his refined and graceful mother arrives. Unlike the other coal miners' (colliers') wives, she has refused to let poverty and drudgery affect her poise and pride. William proudly presents his mother with two eggcups he's won. The puritanical Mrs. Morel, however, disapproves of these vulgar local festivities, so she soon departs with Annie, leaving William at the fair.

NOTE: A puritanical person is one who is extremely strict in moral and sexual matters. As a practicing Congregationalist of her day, Mrs. Morel disapproves of dancing, frivolity, sexual license, and drink. Congregationalists believe in the value of hard work and good deeds, and feel that nothing should be done for pure pleasure, only for self-improvement. You'll see how strongly these beliefs vie with the freewheeling attitude of her husband later in this chapter.

William's happy mood changes abruptly after Gertrude leaves him at the fair. He's struck with guilt because he let her go home without him. This is the first sign you have of Mrs. Morel's power over her children. Here, too, you see a foreshadowing of the adult William's fatal conflict between staying with his mother and living his own life.

Mrs. Morel reflects on her misery once she's tucked her children in bed for the night. She feels trapped, nearly buried alive in her bleak existence, filled with demanding children, household drudgery, and a drunken, irresponsible husband.

Late that night the tipsy Mr. Morel returns home, speaking tenderly and offering his wife gifts of gingerbread and a coconut. Instead of being touched by his presents, she launches into a furious lecture on his drinking habits and his unfulfilled duties as head of the household. Think about how begrudgingly Gertrude takes Morel's gifts compared to her joyful appreciation of William's eggcups. Some readers see Mrs. Morel as intolerant of her husband. It's their view that she even encourages his bad points by expecting him to live up to her ideals rather than accepting him for himself. Other readers feel that Lawrence slants their sympathy toward Mrs. Morel because he truly believed his own mother suffered unjustly at the hands of her crude, unreliable husband.

Now the story flashes back to a portrait of Gertrude and Walter before they married. Gertrude grew up in a steady lower-middle-class family with a strong work ethic and a great deal of pride in their self-sufficiency. Her father never recovered from the disgrace of the family's financial losses. He was a stern, self-righteous, satirical man who was unyielding in his joyless morality. Gertrude, as you shall see, inherited most of her father's rigid moral and religious beliefs, though she also has her mother's gentle, humorous streak.

Walter and Gertrude meet at a local dance. To the prim, sheltered Gertrude, the strapping young miner is like a stranger from another planet. He comes from a rough, low-class mining family and speaks a lilting Midlands dialect, with "thee" and "thou" substituted for "you," and many archaic words in his speech. She sees him as mysterious, even noble, as he tells her stories of descending day after day into the bowels of the earth. Unlike Gertrude's father, Walter is lighthearted and sensuous. She herself is intellectual and reserved. She's attracted to Walter because he's so different from her or from anyone else in her life. He, in turn, is fascinated by Gertrude--a woman with class, culture, and education--someone he assumed was beyond his reach.

Walter arouses a passion in Gertrude that she never dreamed existed. Based on this animal magnetism, they marry and share a brief, happy union. Soon, however, the vast differences in their social backgrounds divide them. Gertrude finds she can't talk seriously with her nonintellectual husband. She begins to feel desperately isolated in his coarse working-class world, where there is little time for the luxury of trading ideas. Walter also becomes dissatisfied with his new home life. A man of action rather than words, he can't sit around the house every night and soon takes to staying out late and drinking with his old cronies. Gertrude, a teetotaler, hates his drinking. And she discovers in Walter another unforgivable fault to her puritanical mind: he's lied to her about their finances. She finds out they don't own their home or even their furniture. Like her father, Gertrude considers debt not only shameful but sinful. In her eyes, it's a Christian duty to be financially responsible and constantly striving to improve the social rank of one's family. Such concerns are very far from the mind of fun-loving Walter. The couple begins to battle viciously as Gertrude embarks on an almost religious mission to reform her husband.

The birth of their first child, William, regenerates the despondent Gertrude. Now she can put all her energy into this new life waiting to be molded into her ideal image. Walter feels left out and jealous of his son. As you read Sons and Lovers, you'll want to consider whether Mrs. Morel encourages the rivalry between her husband and sons and to what purpose.

The Morel family history flashback ends with Walter shearing off baby William's long curls. This act completely estranges husband and wife. Gertrude never forgives Walter for making their son a little man, even though she admits it's necessary. Why do you think she feels this way?

Now you return to the present. The Morels' love and passion has been totally transformed into a bitter, hateful ongoing war. It's a new day and Walter returns home very late and very drunk, as usual. This time, however, he's irritable and antagonistic. It's more than his pregnant, overworked wife can bear so she verbally attacks him. Being a simple, inarticulate man, Walter can't adequately combat his wife's tirade. He retaliates physically and shoves her out into the night.

Although locked out and feeling terribly alone in the world, Gertrude nevertheless finds herself refreshed by the glowing moonlight. She feels overwhelmed by nature's expansiveness after the claustrophobic torture of her small home and its domestic strife. Gertrude places her hand inside one of the pollen-filled white lilies in the garden. The scent of the flower almost makes her dizzy.

NOTE: This passage is a good example of Lawrence's use of poetic, or heightened, metaphoric language to elevate an ordinary scene. A pregnant woman, angry at her husband and sick to death with her difficult life, goes out into her garden and suddenly she "melted out like scent into the shiny, pale air. After a time the child, too, melted with her in the mixing-pot of moonlight, and she rested with the hills and lilies and houses, all swum together in a kind of swoon." The simple, struggling housewife whom Lawrence has depicted very realistically is also, as evidenced by the poetry of this passage, capable of communing with all of nature and humanity.

Soon the cold night air brings Gertrude back to her senses. She must get inside for the sake of her unborn child. Finally Morel wakes up from his drunken stupor and lets her in. As Gertrude returns to "the real world," her fury at Walter reestablishes itself. But she can't help smiling when she sees her golden pollen-smeared face in the mirror. Like the flowers, she is a fertile, procreative vessel of the life force. Nothing, not even her cruel husband or her humiliating life, can take this sense of the miraculous away from her.

^^^^^^^^^^SONS AND LOVERS: CHAPTER 2

Walter attempts to make up with his wife. He helps out around the house and tries to be a model, stay-at-home husband. But both of them are still happiest when they're apart. Why do you think this is?

While Gertrude is in labor with Paul, Morel is in the mine, working away at a difficult rock deposit. He curses and sweats and finally, exhausted, must give up the impossible task. There is one important difference between Walter's labor and that of his wife. While Morel struggles fruitlessly to break through a cold, lifeless rock formation, Gertrude's struggle produces a warm, living child.