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

When Paul, always fragile, falls ill with bronchitis, all he wants is his mother; he can't bear his father's gentle attentiveness. Perhaps Paul feels that Mr. Morel is putting on an act, that he doesn't really care that his son is ill.

Now that you have a good idea of some family factors affecting Paul's deeply sensitive personality, the narrator gives you an example of his sensitivity. Paul dreads his Friday chore of picking up his father's pay at the mine office. He's so small and delicate he's a perfect target for adult teasing. Paul is sure that everyone there is watching and laughing at him. He also feels, as his mother does, that he's better than these ignorant, common folk.

After Paul returns with the week's pay, Mrs. Morel goes off to market. Here's a scene filled with rich gaiety. When Mrs. Morel comes home with a bundle of simple treasures, the narrator makes you feel that the smallest bouquet of daisies or the tiniest cornflower-decorated dish are as precious as a king's jewels to this poor mining family. Lawrence is concerned not merely with the hardships of poverty, but with the way it helps people to appreciate the small pleasures in life.

Now the story returns to the present, with William clerking in London. The coal pits have gone bad for a while and the Morels find themselves in dire economic straits. William sends home very little money these days. Life in London is more expensive than he had imagined. Still Gertrude holds tight to her faith in him. William is her young hero, performing all his valorous deeds just for her.

William comes home for Christmas, loaded with dazzling gifts, including a gold-handled umbrella for his mother. This umbrella, which Gertrude will keep to her dying day, takes on a greater significance in chapter 7.

NOTE: While an umbrella is an appropriately practical gift for a poor woman in the rainy Midlands, it also has symbolic meaning. Umbrellas shelter human beings from the severity of the natural elements. Similarly, William offers his mother the umbrella as a token of his protection. The umbrella can also be seen as a symbol of Mrs. Morel's sheltering of her children from life's many vicissitudes.

The whole Morel brood feels united by William's return. They even become sentimental about being one big, happy family.

NOTE: Family unity was considered the backbone of Victorian society. Every family strived toward this ideal and believed in it regardless of how poorly their own personal experience matched up. As a writer, Lawrence did much to dispel the myth of the sanctity of home and family so prevalent in Victorian literature.

With William home and the Christmas spirit in the air, the Morels seem to forget their family problems. But, as you'll soon find out, the scars of their constant domestic strife can never be erased.

William's love and loyalty, so often questioned by the insecure Mrs. Morel, are soon reaffirmed. That summer he forgoes a much needed vacation in the Mediterranean sun so he can spend his next holidays with his family. The price William pays for this filial devotion will be seen shortly.

^^^^^^^^^^SONS AND LOVERS: CHAPTER 5

This chapter concentrates on the teen-aged Paul as he begins to discover his individuality and freedom. Here, as he becomes a more mature individual, the story begins to follow a more chronological pattern with fewer flashbacks.

NOTE: In this chapter Paul grows from child to adolescent. The forward-moving, chronological writing style emphasizes that he now has a certain amount of control over his life. A chronological style also reflects the idea that adulthood seems more sequential and causal than childhood, for it implies a history of feelings and experiences to draw upon.

The chapter begins with Walter Morel's injury and confinement in the hospital. Paul takes on the role of "man of the house" with his father sick and away. Paul also starts to develop his painting skills in the family's newfound peace and quiet. The children and Gertrude are clearly happiest when Walter is out of the picture.

At first Paul's painting is mentioned casually, as something he does for fun. For artists who start young, their first creative experiences are often enjoyable, but not very serious. You'll have to wait to see how Paul's relationship to art deepens.

NOTE: Sons and Lovers can be classified in the literary genre of the bildungsroman, a German word meaning "development novel." Books like James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Sons and Lovers are bildungsromans--novels that trace the development and growth of the main character. Much of the time, the protagonist of such a tale, like Paul, will grow up to be an artist, and the story reveals all the psychological and social developments that prepare the hero or heroine for his or her life's calling. Bildungsroman heroes are often overly sensitive and melancholy. Paul certainly has these traits, but he also expresses a sincere gusto for living.

Paul turns fourteen, and in the days depicted in Sons and Lovers that was time to start earning a living. Many children began working in the mines at the age of six or seven. Paul, on the other hand, spent his early years enjoying the rare luxury of an education, which his mother hopes will help him escape the mining life. For the shy, sensitive Paul, job hunting is terrifying. Not only is he afraid to be in the public eye, but he's certain that his days of freedom are over forever. He's off to become a cog in the big, impersonal industrial machine.

Gertrude Morel may pamper her children, but her belief in the Protestant work ethic demands that each of them, for economic and moral reasons, must learn the virtues of hard work. To the puritanical Gertrude, laziness is a sin. But Paul feels so ill-qualified for the job market. Compared to the stellar William, his work is sloppy and his handwriting, so vital to landing a coveted clerking position, is nearly illegible. Mrs. Morel, always concerned with having her children reach their own well-reasoned conclusions, asks him what he wants to do. Paul says the job itself doesn't matter. He just wants to make enough money to support his mother, live with her in a small cottage in the woods, and perhaps paint a little.

NOTE: Does Paul's wish sound like a childhood fairy tale? Notice that Paul does not include his father in his dream of an isolated cottage in the woods. Whether or not Freud's Oedipus complex theory fits Paul, he's certainly unnaturally passionate over his mother and abnormally dependent upon her. He's fourteen--why do you think he's not dreaming of girls his own age yet?

Meanwhile, William is a spectacular professional and social success in London. He works all day, parties at night, and yet tries to study to advance his career. Mrs. Morel worries that her son is burning the candle at both ends. She's most concerned about the beautiful, extravagant young woman that he's dating, Louisa Lily Denys Western, nicknamed Gyp by William, because she's an exotic gypsy in his adoring eyes. Gyp comes from a good, middle-class family that lost all its money, as Gertrude's own family did. But unlike Gertrude, Gyp is emptyheaded and frivolous. William may be fulfilling his mother's dream that he marry into a higher social class, but Gyp hardly fills Gertrude's moral or financial expectations of a good match.

Paul's inquiries pay off and he gets an interview at Thomas Jordan's surgical appliances factory in Nottingham. What a morbid place for a youth with an overactive imagination to work!

NOTE: The narrator states that Paul "seemed to feel the business world, with its regulated system of values, and its impersonality, and he dreaded it. It seemed monstrous also that a business could be run on wooden legs." Lawrence may have chosen to have Paul work at a surgical appliances factory because he himself did so briefly as a youth. However, this particular factory setting has a symbolic purpose, too. It points to a world of man and nature maimed by industrialism and patched back together, all too insufficiently, with artificial mechanisms.

Jordan's is a dark, gloomy place that makes Paul feel he's on the executioner's block. Mrs. Morel however, views the factory in quite a different light. She's in awe of its spaciousness, neatness, and buzzing industry. She dreams of Paul becoming a great, respected businessman and elevating his whole family.

NOTE: WORKING CONDITIONS Jordan's is a typical factory of its time, perhaps a bit better in working conditions and cleanliness than most. Factory workers toiled twelve hours a day, and overtime wages were unheard of. There was little chance of escaping poverty as a factory slave. Factory workers' lives were ruled by the time clock and by heavy-handed supervisors determined to squeeze optimum efficiency out of the employees. In earlier times, makers of consumer goods worked at home with their whole families and regulated themselves. Many writers of the post-industrial revolution era were horrified by the depersonalization of the assembly-line factory system and believed it threatened not only the worker's individual rights but the Victorian ideal of the closely knit family.

It's a miracle that Mr. Jordan gives Paul a clerking job. His handwriting is unreadable and his translations of foreign orders are nearly as bad. Paul's haughtiness surfaces, too. He looks down on Mr. Jordan and sees him as an ill-educated, cloddish man, even though he owns this great, prosperous factory. At the same time, Paul is nervous and is intimidated by Jordan, who represents an authority figure. Young Morel is an interesting amalgam of insecure timidity and snobbish superiority.