Sons and Lovers as an Autobiographical Novel free essay sample

The Rain bow sons and lovers by D. Lawrence as an autobiographical novel the label, ‘autobiographical’ can safely be attributed to this superb specimen of fiction, bearing the mark of Lawrence’s genius. The most salient characteristic of the characters portrayed by Lawrence is according to Albert, â€Å"the resemblance they bear to their creator. In fact Sons and lovers is one of the most autobiographical of English novels. D. H. Lawrence is one of those great artists who write because of internal compulsion, and in this way seek relief for their inner problems by externalizing them in fiction. He had to endure great emotion stresses in youth and face many urgent personal problems. He was a tortured soul for full forty five years of himself and his writings are an expression of his inner suffering, frustrations and emotional complexes. They are all in the nature of personal revelations, some more, some less, but the autobiographical note runs through them all. We will write a custom essay sample on Sons and Lovers as an Autobiographical Novel or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The most striking feature of Lawrence’s characters is that they are projections of the novelist’s personalities, Paul morel in Sons and Lovers, is clearly a projection of him. It is a story of Midland miner’s son, Paul Morel, who is Lawrence himself; Walter morel and Mrs. Morel are the father and mother of Paul, Lawrence’s alter ego. The father is an unrefined miner and the mother with refinement and culture, â€Å"a superior woman. † The conflict between Mr. and Mrs. Morel and the reactions of children are all transcripts from life. Miriam is Jessie Chambers whom Lawrence met early in life, where he loved but with whom he failed to establish satisfactory relations, owing largely to the influence of his mother on him. His mother, too died of cancer like Mrs. Morel, the mother of Paul, and his brother Earnest Lawrence, too died early in life as William in the story. However, facts of life-reality has undergone a press of imaginative selection and ordering and the whole experience has been reorganized and shaped for the purpose of art. And that is what Lawrence has done in his most autobiographical of his novels. It was for this reason that Jessie Chambers was shocked when Sons and lovers were published in its final form. She complained that justice had not been done to her, that the whole Paul-Miriam affair presented her in an unfavorable light and that the laurels of victory had been given to Mrs. Morel. She gave her own version of the whole affair. She might be factually true, but she was certainly mistaken in taking the novel to be an autobiography. Lawrence had created a work of art and he as well within this rights to organize and interpret the facts in accordance with the requirements of art. Besides this, he has departed from reality in other respects too. While Lawrence married Frieda Weekly, the other woman, after the death of his mother and lived with her subsequently became a great writer, Paul fails to reach a satisfactory adjustment even with Clare the other woman in the novel and does not marry her. However, through often false as to actual fact, Lawrence is undeviating true to emotional reality. Lawrence was never able to make a happy emotional adjustment with other woman. The novelist was a tortured soul through out the full forty five years of his life, and what he suffered, and what he through and served under the stimulus of suffering can very well be guessed from a study of Sons and Lover. The novel faithful presents all his passions and frustrations. Owing to the mother fixation which was acute, the novelist could not make an agreeable and happy emotional adjustment with the other specimens of the fair sex. The soul-corroding experience has been transmuted into the novel. His intense suffering, his passions and emotions, his deprivations have found an artist and vivifying expression in the novel. The Oedipus complex with which was affected with in his private life in manifested in the novel also. The mother image or mother substitute marred his own life also. Although he married Frieda Weekly after the demise of his mother, Lawrence was never happy, failed to derive a real complacency and satisfaction in his married life. Paul moral, his prototype also suffered from similar emotional complexes. His relationship with both Miriam and Clara is inadequate. Sons and Lovers is thus an imaginative representation of the facts of his life. E. Baker has observed that the novel â€Å"is of cardinal importance as a key to his intricate and often paradoxical nature. † 2222 The opening of the book introduces us to Mr. and Mrs. Morel whose marital discord sets the underlying cause of the unnatural bonding between Mrs. Morel and her sons William and Paul More l . Mr. morel’s untamed temper and his wife’s condemnation for his excessive drinking and idle nature create an unhealthy environment for their children who grow up despising their father. Lawrence himself described his father as someone who â€Å"lacked principle as my mother would have said. † â€Å"Their married life has been a carnal bloody fight. † The growing hated of the sons and the mother towards Mr. Morel brings them together into a close relationship which has sexual undertones to it. Both sons are so emotionally bonded to their mother that they find it difficult to maintain normal relationships with the women in their lives. It’s as if their mother possesses their soul due to which they are split between their love for their mother and their love for the women they are involved with. In the case of William, his relationship with Louisa Western comes to and ends when he senses his mother’s inherent disapproval for her. This is followed by his illness and consequent death . Infect he eludes to his death several times post his break up which shows that he is unable to deal with his emotional turmoil in relation to his mother. After William’s death the mother’s fondness for her second son, Paul increases. Problems crop up in Paul’s life when he enters into adolescence. Again in his case the split occurs. He is full of a feeling of guilt when he starts dating Miriam, who again is disliked by Mrs. Morel because she feels that Miriam is responsible for her son’s upset state of mind. But the fact is that Paul’s underlying sexual desires; owing to his adolescence do not get an outlet because he’s deeply attached to his mother and because Miriam confines their relationship to chaste love. Therefore, he is never able to be his true self and give his best to the relationship. Later he does consummate his love affair but it leaves him dissatisfied and his earlier disturbed self returns. He then ends his relationship with Miriam. Source: http://www. shvoong. com/books/1758990-sons-lovers/#ixzz2TZGXuvye Sons and Lovers is in some ways so directly autobiographical as to make it almost a confession. In both the book and in the story of Lawrence’s life, childhood is spent in the poorer parts of a Nottingham mining town. In both the book and Lawrence’s life, the mother and father are at odds socially and intellectually. In both the book and Lawrence’s life, the father drinks too much, distancing himself from his wife, whom he no longer understands. In both, the mother in turn invests all her emotional life into her children – but especially her sons. In both, an older brother dies of erysipelas after being engaged to a stenographer called Louisa. In both, the mother is overwhelmed by grief, but finds herself emotionally alive again when the younger brother becomes ill and she can focus her love on him. In both, there is a strongly sexual element behind the relationship between mother and son, and a bitter and poisoned relationship with the father. In both, the development of a mature sexual life for the son is hampered by his affection for his mother, with two significant women being the possible means to adult freedom, yet ultimately failing because of that maternal attachment. In both, the hero works in a surgical appliance factory. In both, there is an idyllic farm where the protagonist finds intellectual and emotional respite as well as stimulus. In both, the mother’s death is assisted by an overdose administered by the son. In terms of places, the only differences are in the spelling, with Lawrence’s home town Eastwood being given a sarcastic recasting as Bestwood, or – slightly more disguised – Jessie Chambers from Lawrence’s own life being turned into Miriam Leivers. And there is much more that speaks directly from Lawrence’s own experiences with his parents, his background and his early relationships. The book is the story of a family, the Morels; and in particular the relationship between Paul Morel and his mother Gertrude (a name deliberately recalling Hamlet’s mother). She marries Walter, who at first is a vital and powerful man for whom she has a genuine passion. But she is intellectually far stronger than he, socially more ambitious; and as she retreats from him, so he becomes boorish and drunk. Instead, the mother finds solace in her children, who in turn are devoted to her. The elder, William, can hardly enjoy himself without his mother’s approval. Perhaps sensing this, he goes to take up a job in London. But an infection kills him and leaves his mother bereft. Shortly afterwards, her second son Paul falls seriously ill (as Lawrence did) and is near death himself. This crisis brings the mother out of mourning, and she devotes herself to Paul. This relationship is at the heart of the novel. Paul is a sensitive, artistic, slightly effeminate child – another close echo of Lawrence, who was so weak as a child that he could not play with the other boys at school – who shares every aspect of his life with his mother. When he becomes attached to a girl at a nearby farm, his mother’s disapproval is as significant a factor in his relinquishing her as his own indecision, which is itself a product of his feelings for his mother. But Paul finds himself attracted to another woman and continues his struggle to – as Lawrence puts it – ‘realise’ himself as a man independent of his mother. The friction created between the many conflicting desires of the characters is explored with Lawrence’s habitual combination of candour, depth and a vigorous mysticism about the relationships between the mind and the body, sex and love, religion and the soul, industrialisation and humanity, instinct and intellect. Lawrence examines these both overtly and covertly. There are whole passages discussing the nature of a relationship; elsewhere issues are hinted at in symbolic set-pieces (Walter cutting the hair of one of his children; Paul and Miriam going to look at a rose-bush). Lawrence’s philosophy can also be seen in the structure of the work as a whole – Mrs Morel cannot find deep enough satisfaction from her husband, so the children become a conduit for her love; but this damages the growth of the child. The immediacy of the autobiographical aspects of the book gives it the impression of having been written quickly – there are sudden, unclear shifts of time or perspective, for example – but this is misleading. Its descriptions of the scenery in the area are suffused with an almost ecstatic sense of the power of nature, allowing the characters inspired insights, or reflecting elements of their emotional state. Throughout the book, Lawrence uses the characters’ responses to lowers and plants to illustrate aspects of their nature. He also uses events in ways that may be directly symbolic (such as picking cherries) or allows sensuality to seep into the descriptions of actions that are not specifically sexual. The characters themselves are painted with an honesty that early readers found unsympathetic. They did not recognise that this was a means to greater understanding of the characters than could be afforded by the over-simplification and emotional manipulation of other writers. This extends to portraying Paul – a cipher for Lawrence himself – as pompous, misogynistic and mother- ixated; and managing to make Walter – the drunken, violent, fearful father – movingly real. Lawrence started the book when his mother was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1910, but it went through several rewrites and revisions; and even then he had a troubled time getting it published (something Lawrence would get used to). His editor, friend and dedicatee of the novel Edward Garnett cut some eighty passages, and the book, Lawrence’s third, was published in 1913. Despite these excisions, the book deals with several topics that the critics of the day found repellent – mother / son lust (however repressed), descriptions of sex (however symbolic or tangentially expressed) and an unapologetic setting of the book among the working classes, dialect and all. Lawrence may have escaped England for much of his life, but he could never find relief from the attacks on his works for their directness, their bold attempt to bring to literature what had never been examined in it before, and for their portrayal of the realties of life outside the literary, cosmopolitan or establishment circles who were responsible for censorship. David Herbert Richards Lawrence (known in the family as Bert) was born in 1885, and was a studious if sickly child. He became a teacher and started to write short stories and poems, several of which were accepted by Ford Maddox Hueffer for publication in The English Review. Hueffer also recommended Lawrence’s first novel The White Peacock for publication, and his career as a writer could be said to have begun in 1912, when, with one novel out, another being published, a play completed and poems in print, he resigned his teaching post. His lived life – rather than his written one – also stems from that year. He had been engaged, but had fallen in love with the married mother-of-three Frieda Weekley (the wife of a professor under whom Lawrence had studied, and the cousin of Baron von Richthofen, a German air ace). They eloped, later to marry after her divorce. The marriage survived a difficult and peripatetic life, but was not without its crises. Lawrence’s sexuality was not always fixed. He had a homosexual affair when he was sixteen (something that he described as the nearest thing to perfect love in his life), and a brief affair with a farmer in Cornwall some years later. Frieda also had a long affair with Angelo Ravagli, who lived with her after Lawrence’s death. But through all this, a pattern for Lawrence’s life was established. They travelled, he wrote, they had very little money, he was often ill (tuberculosis haunted him and finally killed him in 1930). His books were rarely successful and sometimes only published in small, private editions because they fell foul of the censors. Their travels were seldom straightforward, and he and Frieda were twice arrested for spying: once in Germany just before the First World War, and once in Cornwall during it, when her ancestry was a cause for much suspicion (the fact that they used to sing German songs when on walks probably didn’t help). But despite this questing (sometimes enforced) wandering, Lawrence produced novels that changed the genre forever, as well as over 800 poems, several volumes of short stories, and literary, psychological and historical works. His travel writing is so highly regarded that Sardinia offers an international prize for it in his name. Lawrence managed to become one of the greatest names in twentieth-century English literature by refusing to allow himself to be cowed despite extraordinary pressure, both socially and financially. He produced works that remolded the imaginative life of anyone who can read English, from The Rainbow to Sons and Lovers to Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. He released into fiction a kind of reality about life that had never been properly explored, and did so with an emotional fearlessness and a muscular language that occasionally belied its philosophical undertones. He became and remains notorious for the explicit nature of some of his works (Sons and Lovers is relatively restrained, in part thanks to Garnett, though the pulse of sexuality runs through many passages), but this prurience again overlooks the depth of his thinking about the characters, and the complex, conflicting needs of humans in their physical, emotional and spiritual lives. Sons and Lovers as an Autobiographical Novel free essay sample Novel gained immense popularity during the 20th century. In the history of English novel D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers is a typical 20th century novel. The 20th century novels bear the characteristics of realism, romanticism, modernism, impressionism, expressionism etc. It was a time of complex human psychology. A contiguous overflow of a thought, which is happening in human psychology become the theme of the novel of the time. After the havoc and destruction of the First and the Second World Wars a great change in human psychology took place. Prominent psychological writers like- Sigmund Freud, Jung and Lucka came forward with their stimulating psychoanalytical theory. Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex and Lacka’s theory of child’s life or self-development greatly influenced the Novelists of The 20th century. Son’s and lovers by D. H. Lawrence is also a psychological novel where Lawrence as a psychoanalyst brings into focus the subtle and intricate happening in the minds of his characters, like Gertrude Morel , Paul Morel , Miriam and others. We will write a custom essay sample on Sons and Lovers as an Autobiographical Novel or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Sons and Lovers deal with the psychology of the characters. Lawrence examines human life minutely and represents the complexity of human mind in his novel, Sons and Lovers. He brings out the deepest and subtle psychological aspect of his characters specially of Gertrud Morel and Paul Morel. According to the psychologists’ theory, there are three levels of human thought: conscious, subconscious and unconscious. Most of the thoughts lie dominant in subconscious and unconscious level. Sometimes it comes out into surface. Oedipus complex is one of such instinct. A psychological novelist like Lawrence externalizes the hidden and inner recondite thoughts of subconscious and unconscious mind. The theme of Oedipus complex is a dominant theme of Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Gertrude morel is a lady of delicate and refined taste and she married a miner named Walter Morel. Though it was a love marriage, within a few months of their marriage she discovered him as a stranger, a gambler, drunkard and an agitated person. Besides the poverty of Morels family disillusioned her. In spite of remaining as his wife, she lost all the interests for him. Morel’s rude and aggressive behavior with her and their children made her burdened with life with him. But nevertheless she remains with him because she had loving children as- Annie and William. All her love and affection was transferred to her children specially to her eldest son William who also loves his mother very much. When William came into maturity he managed to earn for family and it made her happy but gradually Mr. Morel becomes an outsider of the family. Because of the crude and vulgarity of his manner his children William and Annie also began to despise him. Mrs. Morel’s extreme love for her son William made the father jealous. In a state of conflict between husband and wife, both of them felt dreary and lonely. So all the love and affection of a disappointed soul like Gertrud Morel find place in her lovely children especially in the sons- first in William then in Paul. The sons gave hope and spirit in Mrs. Morel’s life. Her heart filled with love and affection first for William then for Paul, her second son. Lawrence in a letter to his friend Edward Garnett said about the relation between mother and son: â€Å"But as her sons grew up, she settles them as lovers. This is the kind of love Sigmund Freud mentions as Oedipus complex. According to the theory, if the marriage between the mother and father is not happy and loving, the parents become interested in love for the child of opposite sex. The child functions as the substitute of husband or wife. Lawrence as a psychologist brings out the innermost psychology of his characters , Mrs. Gertrud Morel and her son Paul Morel. Mrs. Morel prevented her sons making love with other woman except her. She prevented William from getting intimate with the gipsy girl Lily. After the death of William she was slowly transforming her possessive feelings to Paul. Lawrence showed them wandering along the street of Nottingham with joy and excitement just like two lovers. She is a victim of an unhappy marriage. Her failure in life with Morel paved the way of Oedipus complex in her life. She gets attracted to her sons’ manhood. Nothing except Paul is valuable in her life. Paul also knew her passion for him. He loved his mother from his very childhood and could not break her heart. So he remained passive with any relationship with other women like Miriam and Clara. Miriam loved him intensely. He also had love for her but an unknown hand prevented him from the fulfillment of their relationship. He thought that he is only for his mother. His mother also knows that her only means of life on earth is Paul. What is the horrible consequence of an unhappy marriage, she knows it well. That’s why she says William, â€Å"Nothing is as bad as marriage that is a hopeless failure. † The relation between Paul and Miriam is a kind of spiritual love, yet nothing but his Oedipus feeling prevented him from marrying her. Both Mrs. Morel and Miriam desired Paul’s love and affection and it eats up the self of Paul. Mrs. Morel knew that Miriam is not like an ordinary woman who can leave her the share she desires in Paul. So she felt awfully worried about Paul. She could not bear it. She could let another woman have Paul but not Miriam. The tormented soul of Mrs. Morel says: â€Å"she’d leave me no room, not a bit of room. † Then she piteously utters: â€Å"And I’ve never- You know Paul- I’ve never had a husband- not really. † Paul helplessly comes forward to console his mother by asserting that he did not love Miriam. He strokes his mother’s hair and placed his mouth on her throat. Before parting for the night Mrs. Morel kissed him a long fervent kiss. Thus physical intimacy between mother and son become more explicit in the novel. Paul fells disturbed with Miriam as he thinks her foe between him and his mother. Nothing should disturb their relationship. Paul was aware of his helplessness. He frankly admits that he could only give Miriam his friendship- nothing more. Paul’s passion for his mother is also seen when in a railways carriage he noticed that his mother’s body looks frail, he thought that his mother is slipping away from him. Again in climbing the Cathedral hill, when she was out of breath and had to take rest Paul regrets that his mother is aging. He frankly says his mother: â€Å"Why can’t a man have a young mother? What is she old for? † He regrets for not being her eldest son to find her younger. After Annie’s marriage, Paul realized his mother’s loneliness. So, he asserts to Mrs. Morel that he would never marry and leave her alone. Another woman Clara came in Paul’s life. She aroused the long repressed and over-refined sexual instinct of Paul who is a man of twenty-three. But yet sex remained complicated in him. Clara’s physical attraction also failed to bring Paul out of his psychological complexity. He thinks that only an over strong virginity in him and Miriam prevented them from physical contact. Paul realizes that the deepest of his love belongs to his mother. The clear sexual over tone of their relationship is seen during their excursion to Lincoln where Paul behaves almost like a lover when he tells his mother, â€Å"You forget I am a fellow taking his girl for an outing. † Mrs. Morel also accepts this sexual aspect in a pleasant mood. Mrs. Morel disapproved not only Miriam but also Clara saying hat he had not yet met the right woman. Paul could understand his mother’s passion for him as well as his weakness for her. So he felt that he would not meet that right woman during her lifetime. Even Clara too realized that Paul cannot come out of himself, so she leaves him and returned to Baxter. Mrs. Morel’s pangs and miseries of life and Paul’s emotional crisis ended with the tragic death of Mrs. Morel. Being unable to carry the psychological torture any more, Paul fed her a heavy dose of morphia with her night milk and next morning at about twelve eternal rest and peace came to the agonized soul. Paul knelt down by her death-bed and put his face to hers and his arms round her and whispered mournfully, â€Å"My love, my love- oh, my love. ’ And after the death of his mother he often moved aimlessly from one place to another, drinking, knocking about with men he knew. The real agony was that he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to say and was nothing himself. According to Lucka’s theory there are three stages of self-development: imaginary stage, mirror stage and symbolic stage. In the imaginary stage a child often birth thinks its mother as self. It finds itself in it mother. In the mirror stage he starts to think it differently. In the symbolic stage a child gets the name of his father. In Sons and Lovers Paul first identifies himself with his mother. He then finds his own self and then is identified with his father. But as he found his father, Walter Morel, unattractive and complex he again seeks place in his mother. So he could not found his own self-identity and could not come out of his mother. Lawrence employed the stream of consciousness technique which means a continuous overflow of a thought what is happening in human psychology. It saves his plot from the bondage of time and chronology. As a modern writer, Lawrence writes from the subjective point of view in order to share his own personal experience with the readers. He tactfully delineates the psychology of the perturbed souls of Gertrude Morel and her son Paul Morel. How psychological complexity destroys a man or woman is seen in the character of Mrs. Morel. As a frustrated wife she failed to enjoy properly the life of a woman and goes through a great complexity and psychological breakdown. She took shelter in a loving male person to make good of an unhappy young lady. The man also loves her deeply as she expect yet she could not satisfy her mind completely because the loving male person is none but her own loving son to whom all sexual aspects are forbidden for her as his mother. Obsessed with the mix emotional and passionate feelings her mind is completely shattered down. Side by side as a victim of her passionate love her son Paul also lost himself in her and goes through the same psychological complexity. Thus the emotional and sensual crisis of human psychology dominates the plot of Lawrence novel Sons and Lovers. So it is a great psychological novel in the history of English literature.