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

NOTE: Women's guilds were an important part of the industrial working-class life. They were the women's divisions of the cooperative societies, which were the lower classes' forums for trying to work together for social betterment. The women's guilds often dealt with the domestic problems of the poor as well as the prevalence of alcoholism among working-class men. The guilds were self-help groups that provided emotional, economic, and intellectual support to their members.

When William turns thirteen, Mrs. Morel, determined to keep him out of the coal mines, finds him a clerical job. Mr. Morel makes fun of William for taking such a sissy job. Besides, he could make much more money as a miner. But mining is a dead-end field, and Mrs. Morel wants her children to get as far away from the working-class life as possible. Clerking, though vastly underpaid, will offer William a chance at middle-class respectability in the future.

NOTE: Why doesn't Walter want his son to escape the mining life? It's possible he doesn't want his son to outclass him. It's also possible Walter is proud of his working-class background and its honest, arduous toil. Walter may also view the middle class with disdain. Many miners considered middle-class people such as clerks, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, and even preachers to be pretentious frauds, out of touch with nature and life.

William is an excellent clerk and progresses rapidly at his work. Do you get the feeling he's doing it all for his mother's approval?

William may be pragmatic and socially ambitious like Mrs. Morel, but he's also very much like his high-spirited father. He's a great athlete and, to his mother's chagrin, an expert at dancing and romancing. Some people consider parents the greatest influence on a child. Others think that environment is more important. Still others vote for education as being the most important factor. Which would you select and why?

The Morel children feel a deep conflict between the traits they picked up from their mother and those they got from their father. Why do you think they're so confused? It's possible that their ties to their stern, future-oriented mother are so strong that they feel guilty enjoying life vigorously, as their father always has.

William is very popular with the girls. Like his father in his heyday, he has many girls whom he doesn't care an ounce about. Mrs. Morel encourages his rudeness. She wants him to concentrate on his work and schooling, and fears he'll end up sidetracked. Is she reflecting on her own marital mismatch?

William receives a wonderful job offer in London. He's so excited that he doesn't realize how deserted his mother feels. She's happy William is embarking upon the road to success she primed him for. At the same time, however, she doesn't want him to leave her. For Gertrude, William, rather than Walter, is the indispensable "man of the house."

Have you ever loved someone and found yourself torn between what's best for them and what's best for yourself? Gertrude has problems letting go of her children. All parents, at one time or another, must decide how and when to "cut the apron strings." What do you consider a mature, healthy parent/child relationship?

^^^^^^^^^^SONS AND LOVERS: CHAPTER 4

Now that favorite son William is making his own way in the world, Paul begins to take center stage.

NOTE: CHANGE OF PERSPECTIVE This chapter goes back in time and concerns Paul's life while William was still at home. It's almost as if the narrator tells the family history all over again, but from a fresh perspective. Now you're seeing it through Paul's sensitive eyes. The chapter reads like a bright, colorful fairy tale, emphasizing the fact that the point of view is that of a young, sensitive child who will grow up to be an artist--an individual who uses the details of life to symbolize great universal themes. You'll also notice a series of vivid, disconnected fragments or highlights from Paul's childhood. This structure reflects the way children see things as well as the way adults selectively remember only certain aspects of their childhood.

Paul is a slight boy with reddish hair and gray eyes that seem to absorb everything they light on. He's terribly shy and is oversensitive to the way others see and treat him. Since he's often sickly, Mrs. Morel is even more protective of him than of the other children. He, in turn, follows her like a shadow. Paul is very different from the other boys in the village. Being less robust, he tends to spend most of his time playing with his sister Annie. But Paul's dependence on Annie is a formidable foreshadowing of the more serious dependence he'll have on his mother and his lovers when he becomes a man.

Paul does begin to assert himself in a strangely destructive incident. He accidentally breaks Annie's beloved doll and then suggests that he and Annie burn the battered doll like a sacrifice. He now hates the thing he mutilated.

NOTE: This scene helps you understand Paul's later cruelty to his sweethearts, Miriam Leivers and Clara Dawes. Even as a child, a part of Paul wants to obliterate or thoroughly erase those he's hurt. In what way is Paul like his father? You'll have to decide for yourself why Paul at times would rather reject and destroy than soothe those he has hurt.

Another remembrance from Paul's childhood flashes before you. Paul comes home one evening to find his mother with a black eye, his father looking ashamed, and teenaged William glaring. William threatens to beat up his father for hitting Gertrude. Morel dares him to try, and Paul, who hates his father even more than the other children, wishes his brother would hit Walter. Mrs. Morel stops father and son from fighting. After all her suffering, why do you think she makes William back off? It's possible she prefers to control their rivalry by keeping father and son mired in a war of words where she emerges looking like the ultimate peacemaker. It's also possible that she still feels some love for her husband and doesn't want him humiliated. What do you think her motives are and why?

Much of the time, Lawrence gives you brutal confrontations or facts and leaves you to decide the motivating forces. There are usually many forces at work at the same time. Lawrence creates characters with many dimensions. They're ruled by a combination of reason, instinct, love, fear, and hate. Would you say this is typical of many people?

The narrative now flashes back farther into the past, showing the family's move from the Bottoms to a cozy home atop a hill. What Paul remembers most about this house is the eerie wind that screams around it. The children are terrified by this strong natural element and identify it with their father's drunken violence. But what scares them even more than the wind is the stillness, the silence that follows the stormy battles that go on night after night between their parents.

NOTE: In this chapter, stillness denotes blood, destruction, even murder, Silence is associated with the aftermath of Morel's violence against his wife. Normally, you associate stillness with peace and tranquility. Later in the novel, stillness will take on such a meaning. But now, while Paul is a powerless child, silence takes on the dimensions of a frightening nightmare.

When you were a child and unable to control what was happening around you, did you ever wish grisly ends for certain adults and then become frightened that your wish might come true? Paul hates his father and even wishes him dead, but then takes it back in his very next breath.

Did you ever wait and wait for parents to come home from work and for some reason they were late? You may have been afraid they'd never come back and you'd be left to fend for yourself. The Morel children daily experienced this terrible uncertainty that their father may abandon them. It's no wonder Paul is so insecure and clings to his mother right into adulthood.

As the Morel children begin to live up to their mother's ambitions, Walter feels more and more like an outcast. He retaliates against his family's success the only way he knows--by becoming cruder and more brutal.

How have you felt about Walter Morel up to this point in the novel? It's likely you've come to dislike him almost as much as his own family does. But now that he's the lonely outsider, are your feelings toward him softening? If so, why? What could you say on his behalf?

The narrative suddenly changes from gloomy despair to lightheartedness. You see the bright side of the Morel children's relationship with their father. Morel is always at his best when he's working around the house. As Morel works away, he tells his children funny mining tales and sings folk ballads in his rich, beautiful voice.

Morel's vitality is like the explosives he uses in his work. It can hurt, even destroy. But it can also lead the way to joyful, carefree abandon. His ability to live in and enjoy the present moment is something the restrained, future-oriented Mrs. Morel lacks. Much of the children's passion for life's immediacy comes from their father.