Sons and Lovers (Barnes & Noble Classics - D. H. Lawrence [226]
—from the Manchester Guardian (July 2, 1913)
The New York Times
There is probably no phrase much more hackneyed than that of “human document,” yet it is the only one which at all describes this very unusual book. It is hardly a story; rather the first part of a man’s life, from his birth until his 25th year, the conditions surrounding him, his strength and his numerous weaknesses, put before us in a manner which misses no subtlest effect either of emotion or environment. And the heroine of the book is not sweetheart, but mother; the mother with whose marriage the novel begins, with whose pathetic death it reaches its climax. The love for each other of the mother and her son, Paul Morel, is the mainspring of both their lives; it is portrayed tenderly, yet with a truthfulness which slurs nothing even of that friction which is unavoidable between members of two different generations.... It is wonderfully real, this daily life of the Morel family and the village wherein they lived as reflected in Mr. Lawrence’s pages; the more real because he never flaunts his knowledge of the intimate details of the existence led by these households whose men folk toil underground. They slip from his pen so unobtrusively that it is only when we pause and consider that we recognize how full and complete is the background against which he projects his principal characters—Mr. and Mrs. Morel, Paul, Miriam, and Clara.
Paul himself is a person who awakens interest rather than sympathy ; it is difficult not to despise him a little for his weakness, his constant need—of that strengthening he sought from two other women, but which only his splendid, indomitable little mother could give him—a fact of which he was constantly aware, though he acknowledged it only at the very end. And it is not easy upon any grounds to excuse his treatment of Miriam, even though it was a spiritual self-defense which urged him to disloyalty. Mr. Lawrence has small regard for what we term conventional morality; nevertheless, though plain spoken to a degree, his book is not in the least offensive.... Although this is a novel of over 500 closely printed pages the style is terse—so terse that at times it produces an effect as of short, sharp hammer strokes. Yet it is flexible, too, as shown by its success in depicting varying shades of mood, in expressing those more intimate emotions which are so very nearly inexpressible. Yet, when all is said, it is the complex character of Miriam, she who was only Paul’s “conscience, not his mate,” and the beautiful bond between the restless son and the mother whom “his soul could not leave” even when she slept and “dreamed her young dream” which makes this book one of rare excellence.
—September 21, 1913
John Galsworthy
I’ve finished Sons and Lovers. I’ve nothing but praise for all the part that deals with the Mother, the Father and the sons; but I’ve a lot besides praise for the love part. Neither of the women, Miriam nor Clara, convince me a bit; they are only material out of which to run wild on the thesis that this kind of man does not want the woman, only a woman. And that kind of revelling in the shades of sex emotions seems to me anaemic. Contrasted with Maupassant‘s—a frank sensualist’s—dealing with such emotions, it has a queer indecency; it doesn’t see the essentials, it revels in the unessentials. It