di Rosanna Fico - Istituto Orazio Flacco di Castellaneta

1. David Herbert Lawrence

2.  He was born on 11 September 1885 in Eastwood.
 He became teacher and wrote stories: «The white
peacock» and «The trepasser».
 He met Frieda von Richthofen and got married.
 His last novel: «Lady Chatterley’s lover»
 He died in 1930 in France.

3.  It is a semi-autobiographical
work.
 It was published in 1913 and
talks about his claustrophobic
relationship with his mother.
 Paul Morel, the protagonist
feels something for Miriam and
this is based on the real
friendship with Jessie
Chambers.
 The book is set in a community
similar to the author’s
birthplace.

4.  Lawrence’s novel begins in
1885 and ends in 1911.
During that time british
miners tried to obtain a
better pay and safer
working conditions.

5.  The story talks about Morel’s family; Gertrude Coppard
(bourgeois woman) and Walter Morel (miner) met at a Christmas
party and a year after they were married. They had 4 children:
William, Arthur, Annie and Paul. Paul was similar to his mother,
he loved painting and worked in Nottingham. He had a close
relationship with his mother, infact he wanted that she lived
forever with him.

6.  One day Paul and Gertrude went to Willey’s farm and here Paul
met Miriam, a joung girl. They fell in love but sometimes he hated
her even if he felt to belong to her who wanted a «spiritual love» .
Thanks to Miriam he met Clara Dawes, a married woman who
broke off with her husband. Paul was attracted by Clara but she
advised him to go to Miriam. Paul and Miriam had a real love
story but after some time they broke off because he didn’t want
to get married and the day after he began a secret love story with
Clara. When their passion finished and Baxter discovered the
story they broke off and she retourned to her husband.

7.  While Paul was loving Clara his mother got ill, she had a cancer
and when she got worse Annie and Paul «killed» their mother
giving her the morphine so she died the day after.
Paul was alone and desperate because of his mother’s death so
he thought that Miriam could help him; they met for the last
time: she wanted to marry him but he refused so finally Paul
decided to face the situation with courage.

8.  Social differences: Mr. and Mrs. Morel.
 Oedipus complex: Freud.
 Social and romantic bondages.
 Contrast between body and mind.

9.  It was published only a
few years after the ideas
of S. Freud and the writers
began to be influenced by
Freud’s theory of Oedipus
complex. In this novel the
main character is the
mother who has a bad
marriage and she tries to
be happy by eating up her
son’s life.

10.  Lawrence rewrote the novel four times.
At the beginning the title was «Paul
Morel» but finally it was called «Sons
and lovers»

11.  It is written using Nottinghamshire
dialect, the author uses always the word
«nesh».
 Lawrence adoptes the omniscient
narrator.
 There is also the cinematic tecnique in
the descriptions.
 It is structured episodically.

12.  We can make a parallelism between
Dickens and Lawrence: Dickens in Hard
Times wrote a description of Coketown
that is similar to Lawrence description of
the industrial setting, Nottinghanshire
coal-fields, in the first chapter.

13.  «Sons ans lovers»
inspired also a
movie in 1960,
directed by Jack
Cardiff, with Dean
Stockwell as Paul
and Wendy Hiller as
Gertrude.

14. The
end