Sons and Lovers D.H.
Lawrence
The first part of the novel focuses on Mrs. Morel and her unhappy marriage to a drinking miner. She has many
arguments with her husband, some of which have painful results: on separate occasions, she is locked out of the
house and hit in the head with a drawer. Estranged from her husband, Mrs. Morel takes comfort in her four children,
especially her sons. Her oldest son, William, is her favorite, and she is very upset when he takes a job in London and
moves away from the family. When William sickens and dies a few years later, she is crushed, not even noticing the
rest of her children until she almost loses Paul, her second son, as well. From that point on, Paul becomes the focus of
her life, and the two seem to live for each other.
Paul falls in love with Miriam Leivers, who lives on a farm not too far from the Morel family. They carry on a very
intimate, but purely platonic, relationship for many years. Mrs. Morel does not approve of Miriam, and this may be
the main reason that Paul does not marry her. He constantly wavers in his feelings toward her.
Paul meets Clara Dawes, a suffragette who is separated from her husband, through Miriam. As he becomes closer
with Clara and they begin to discuss his relationship with Miriam, she tells him that he should consider
consummating their love and he returns to Miriam to see how she feels.
Paul and Miriam sleep together and are briefly happy, but shortly afterward Paul decides that he does not want to
marry Miriam, and so he breaks off with her. She still feels that his soul belongs to her, and, in part agrees reluctantly.
He realizes that he loves his mother most, however.
After breaking off his relationship with Miriam, Paul begins to spend more time with Clara and they begin an
extremely passionate affair. However, she does not want to divorce her husband Baxter, and so they can never be
married. Paul’s mother falls ill and he devotes much of his time to caring for her. When she finally dies, he is broken-
hearted and, after a final plea from Miriam, goes off alone at the end of the novel.
Sons and Lovers Study Guide
Though D. H. Lawrence's third published novel, Sons and Lovers (1913) is largely autobiographical. The novel,
which began as "Paul Morel," was sparked by the death of Lawrence's mother, Lydia. Lawrence reexamined his
childhood, his relationship with his mother, and her psychological effect on his sexuality.
The roots of Sons and Lovers are clearly located in Lawrence's life. His childhood coal-mining town of Eastwood
was changed, with a sardonic twist, to Bestwood. Walter Morel was modeled on Lawrence's hard-drinking,
irresponsible collier father, Arthur. Lydia became Gertrude Morel, the intellectually stifled, unhappy mother who
lives through her sons. The death by erysipelas of one of Lawrence's elder brothers, Ernest, and Lydia's grief and
eventual obsession with Lawrence, seems hardly changed in the novel. (Both Ernest and his fictional counterpart,
William, were engaged to London stenographers named Louisa "Gipsy" Denys.)
Filling out the cast of important characters was Jessie Chambers, a neighbor with whom Lawrence developed an
intense friendship, and who would become Miriam Leiver in the novel. His mother and family disapproved of their
relationship, which always seemed on the brink of romance. Nevertheless, Chambers was Lawrence's greatest literary
supporter in his early years, and he frequently showed her drafts of what he was working on, including Sons and
Lovers (she disliked her depiction, and it led to the dissolution of their relationship). Lawrence's future wife, Frieda
von Richtofen Weekly, partially inspired the portrait of Clara Dawes, the older, sensual woman with whom Paul has
an affair. To be fair, Lawrence met Frieda only in 1912 at Nottingham University College, and he started "Paul
Morel" in 1910.
Considered Lawrence's first masterpiece, most critics of the day praised Sons and Lovers for its authentic treatment
of industrial life and sexuality. There is evidence that Lawrence was aware of Sigmund Freud's early theories on
sexuality, and Sons and Lovers deeply explores and revises of one of Freud's major theories, the Oedipus complex.
(Lawrence would go on to write more works on psychoanalysis in the 1920s.) Still, the book received some criticism
from those who felt the author had gone too far in his description of Paul's confused sexuality. Compared to his later
works, however, such as The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and Lovers seems quite
modest.
The Rainbow Study Guide
The Rainbow is a novel as difficult as it is rewarding. At times, the intergenerational saga of the Brangwen family
may seem tedious and over-stuffed with characters, many of whom share the same names. Yet in equal measure,
Lawrence presents characters with serious depth and relatable aspirations as he masterfully tackles complex subject
matter like love, devotion, and belonging. In moving and vivid descriptions of the natural world surrounding the
Brangwen’s Marsh Farms, Lawrence demonstrates precisely why The Rainbow is still so highly regarded over a
century after its publication.
Lawrence was born in 1885 to a poor family in the mining village of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. A talented student,
Lawrence won a scholarship to attend a nearby high school and later trained as a teacher at Nottingham College. In
1908, Lawrence relocated to London where his first poems were published.
Lawrence was a remarkably prolific writer, publishing three novels between 1911 and 1914. While living in Italy in
1913, Lawrence began work on a piece titled “The Sisters” which would form the basis of his two subsequent novels,
The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920). By 1914, “The Sisters” had been renamed the “The Wedding Ring”
and in September of 1915 it was published in its final version as The Rainbow.
The novel’s depictions of desire, pre-marital sex, and lesbianism may not appear entirely scandalous to contemporary
readers; however, upon its release, The Rainbow was deemed obscene in the United Kingdom and over a thousand
copies were burnt. The novel would not be released in the country for the following decade.
During this time, Lawrence traveled widely to places such as Australia, New Mexico, and across Europe—all while
publishing novels, short story collections, and essays. In 1927, Lawrence published what would become his most
widely known novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. Due to its explicit content, Lawrence was not originally able to secure
a publisher for the work before dying from tuberculosis in 1930. When the novel was finally published in 1960, it
became the subject of a widely-publicized obscenity trial. The victory of Lady Chatterley's Lover against charges of
obscenity was seen as a major moment in the fight for artistic freedoms, and has ensured Lawrence’s legacy as a
provocative and forward-thinking writer.
While Lawrence might still be best known as a risqué and erotic writer, these descriptions alone do not do justice to
The Rainbow. The novel, set close to where Lawrence was born and raised, follows three generations of the
Brangwen family. In the process, Lawrence pays keen attention to the rapid changes in English life and society
during and after the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the novel begins on the quaint fields of the Marsh Farms and ends
in a world criss-crossed by trains and marked by the “brittle corruption of houses and factories” (459).
Throughout the novel, Lawrence writes in a language infused by religion. Characters routinely encounter “lightness”
and “darkness” as they navigate the difficulties of faith in a changing world. He dedicates considerable attention to
the natural world of seas, skies, and fauna—all of which come to be threatened by the development of capitalist
modernity traced in the novel.
Perhaps most importantly, The Rainbow patiently and meticulously follows characters as they strive to make lives for
themselves in the world around them. In the case of Ursula, Lawrence’s final and most-fully realized protagonist, this
involves standing up against a sexist and patriarchal society so as to “take her place in the world” (381). Because
Lawrence never rushes his prose, characters like Ursula become fully-realized and are afforded incredible
psychological depth.
Although writer Frances Wilson notes in a recent New Yorker profile that Lawrence’s reputation has experienced a
“headlong fall” since his death, The Rainbow is nonetheless a rich and compassionate novel that pays off the very
investments it demands
The Rainbow follows the intergenerational development of the Brangwens—a family of farmers living near Ilkeston
in the East Midland region of England—from the 1840s to the early twentieth century. Through the Bragnwen’s,
Lawrence traces the broader social, cultural, and technological changes happening in England at the same time.
The novel begins on the Brangwen’s Marsh Farm and first follows Tom Brangwen as he courts and marries a Polish
widow named Lydia. The marriage between Tom and Lydia is marked by the feeling that “they were so foreign to
each other,” as Tom struggles to make sense of the life that Lydia lived before immigrating to England. Still, he
grows close to Anna, the daughter she had from her previous marriage. While much of the start of the novel is
dedicated to depicting the anger shared between Tom and Lydia, they proceed to have two of their own children:
Tom and Fred.
In the third chapter, the focus of the novel shifts to Anna. She is described as being a fiercely independent and hearty
young girl who adores her step-father and feels distant from her mother. As Anna ages, she remains headstrong and
solitary until she meets William, the nephew of Tom. Despite Tom’s disapproval, the two begin a courtship and
marry in a big ceremony at the Brangwen’s farm.
Although Will and Anna share an idyllic honeymoon in their cottage, their relationship quickly sours and soon they
are fighting like Tom and Lydia before them. In this way, Lawrence demonstrates that the ideals of perfect love and
actual relationships are two very different things. His commitment to portraying the difficulties of life and love makes
The Rainbow a work of realism.
Despite the animosity between them, Will and Anna go on to have a family of nine children (one of whom dies in
childbirth). Their eldest, Ursula, becomes the protagonist of the third and final generation depicted in the novel. Like
her mother, Ursula is a fiercely independent child. Indeed, through the many similarities shared between the
generations of the Brangwen family, Lawrence demonstrates that our personalities are shaped to a large extent by our
families and the way in which we are raised.
Yet, Ursula is in some ways quite different from her forebearers. She is a distinctly modern woman, who desires “to
take her place in the world” (381). She is the first Brangwen woman to find work outside of the home, she
participates in the suffragette movement, and she has a lesbian relationship with one of her teachers. Through Ursula,
Lawrence demonstrates both the progress that has been made for women’s rights and the incredible difficulty that
women still face in a “tyrannical man-world” (381).
As a young woman, Ursula engages in a relationship with the son of her parents' friends, Anton Skrebensky. Anton is
a soldier who, in his fervent support of the state, is a representation of British colonialism. Over several years, Ursula
and Anton share a passionate romance filled with scenes so steamy that the novel was deemed a scandal and banned
in Britain for a decade. Yet unlike her mother and grandmother, Ursula prioritizes her personal freedom and rejects
proposals from both Anton and from another man named Anthony.
As the novel draws to a conclusion, Ursula fears that she is pregnant with Anton’s child. In a state of panic, she writes
to Anton, now stationed in India, and finally agrees to marry him. He reveals that he has married another woman,
causing Ursula to fall into a state of depression. The novel then ends on an optimistic note as Ursula sees a rainbow
forming and is granted a renewed hope in “new growth, rising to the light and the wind and the clean rain of heaven”
(459). Many of the themes and characters in The Rainbow are developed further in the sequel to the novel, Women in
Love, which was published in 1920.
Women in Love Summary
The novel opens with the sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen chatting about marriage one morning at their father’s
house in Beldover. Gudrun has recently returned home from art school in London. The two later decide to drop by a
local wedding, where they first see Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin, the two men with whom they will develop affairs
that drive the action of the novel. Birkin is a school inspector with extremely unconventional attitudes about life, and
Gerald is the heir to the local mining operation that is the central industry of Beldover. Birkin and Gerald hate each
other passionately at the beginning of the novel, but after a chance encounter on the way to London they begin to
become friends.
Rupert is haunted by his lingering attachment to Hermione Roddice, an aristocratic woman whom he loathes but finds
difficult to abandon. Hermione wants to marry Birkin and have him dominate her completely. This situation
complicates Birkin’s growing fondness for Ursula, and Hermione and Ursula become enemies. During a weekend
gathering at Hermione’s estate, Breadalby, she becomes enraged and smashes a paperweight against the back of
Birkin’s head with the intention of killing him. He escapes and considers it the end of their relationship.
Birkin decides to move into a mill house on Willey Water Lake, and Ursula begins visiting him there. The two slowly
start to fall in love. One evening, the Crich family hosts their annual public party by the lake, and the Brangwen
sisters attend. They meet Gerald and Birkin there and romantic sparks fly, but this is interrupted by the tragic
drowning death of Gerald’s sister, Diana Crich, and a young doctor who attempts to rescue her. After the tragedy,
Birkin falls ill again and Gerald visits him. He realizes that he loves Gerald, and asks him to exchange a vow of
lasting commitment between them. Gerald hesitates to do so although he also loves Birkin.
Gerald’s father Thomas Crich falls ill and is near death. He and Gerald decide to hire Gudrun to tutor Gerald’s
youngest sister, Winifred, in art. Gudrun begins visiting their home, Shortlands, nearly every day to teach Winifred.
Mr. Crich builds an artist’s studio for Gudrun to use, and she and Gerald grow closer. Meanwhile, Birkin is frustrated
with Ursula's indecision and leaves for a vacation in the south of France. Ursula hears nothing for some time, and one
evening during a walk sees Birkin in front of his home. They talk and exchange promises of love. The next day
Birkin goes to Ursula’s house, intending to propose. He meets her father Tom Brangwen instead, and asks the man
for his daughter's hand. Ursula is enraged and refuses him. Birkin stomps away and goes to see Gerald at Shortlands,
where the two engage in a violently eroticized wrestling match.
Meanwhile, after a few days Ursula decides she is deeply in love with Birkin and must fight to transform his passion
to match hers. Time passes, and one afternoon Birkin surprises Ursula at her school, offering to take her on a car ride.
She agrees and he gives her a gift of three rings. This leads to an argument, and Ursula abandons him on the side of
the road. Only moments later she returns to make peace, and the two decide to go into town to take tea. Their bond is
solidified that night when they sleep together on the ground of Sherwood Forest. Meanwhile, Gerald struggles with
his father’s illness, and Mr. Crich finally succumbs to death. Several nights pass, and Gerald finds himself wandering
alone night, and eventually makes his way to Gudrun’s house. He sneaks inside and upstairs, and wakes Gudrun up in
her bedroom. He spends the night there, asleep while Gudrun watches him.
After a violent argument with her father, Ursula decides to move in with Birkin. The two marry soon thereafter, and
Gerald proposes a winter holiday in Europe for the two couples. He talks at length with Ursula and Birkin about the
trip, hoping it will be an occasion to develop the romance between him and Gudrun. Gerald and Gudrun leave first,
and stop for a night in London where Gudrun meets Gerald’s former mistress Minette Darrington at the Café
Pompadour. Ursula and Birkin eventually join Gerald and Gudrun at Innsbruck, a picturesque Austrian retreat town.
Things are lovely at first, but soon sour. The group lodges in a small hostel outside of Innsbruck and friction develops
between them, in part due to a German artist named Herr Loerke who takes an interest in Gudrun. Ursula begins to
loathe the cold and convinces Birkin to leave.
Gerald and Gudrun remain, and Loerke continues to pursue Gudrun. One afternoon she and Loerke are on a picnic
that Gerald violently interrupts. Gerald knocks Loerke to the ground and strangles Gudrun nearly to death. He stomps
away deeper into the mountains as the sun falls. He freezes to death and his body is brought back to the hostel the
next morning by a rescue team. Gudrun sends a telegram to Birkin and Ursula, who return immediately. Birkin is
devastated, and the novel ends with him insisting to Ursula that he believes a lasting and intimate bond with Gerald
was possible, even while remaining married to Ursula.
Lady Chatterley's Lover Summary
Lady Chatterley's Lover opens around two years after World War I, when the country of England was recovering
both mentally and physically from the war. It focuses on the marriage between two characters, which has occurred
prior to the events of the novel: Lady Chatterley, Constance née Reid, and her husband, Clifford Chatterley. Clifford
Chatterley is an aristocrat who has inherited Wragby Hall, an estate in the East Midlands of England, near Tevershall.
This area is known for its coal mining industry. Constance is also highborn, and has been educated in Germany,
where she learned to discuss matters philosophically. We are told that she married Clifford in 1917 because she found
talking with him intellectually stimulating. However, after their marriage, he is sent back to the war, where is ends up
paralyzed from the waist down. He recovers for two years in a hospital, after which he and his wife travel to the
Wragby Estate.
Lady Chatterley's sexual history is given to us. She has not thought much about the sexual act ever before. She is
much more interested in men for their intellectual conversations, although she has had sex prior to her marriage. As
Constance lives for a longer time at Wragby, she becomes restless. Clifford is a writer and is interested in success and
fame. He invites many other intellectuals over to their home. He is not capable of having sex, but he does hint to her
that he would like a child, so long as he does not know who the real father is. One of these guests is another writer
named Michaelis. Michaelis and Constance Chatterley begin having an affair. Constance learns to hold Michaelis
inside of her after he climaxes, and to climax herself after he has finished. Michaelis though, she finds, is also after
success. He is an outsider, however, and was not born into the aristocracy like Clifford. Constance still finds that she
feels empty with Michaelis.
Constance begins to take walks in the wood on the Wragby Estate. She finds a hut where the gamekeeper, Oliver
Mellors, breeds pheasants. She asks the gamekeeper for a key, and he is initially reluctant. One day, she accidentally
sees the gamekeeper half-naked. This excites her. She goes back home and examines her own naked body.
Constance's sister comes to visit her and notices that she does not look well. Her sister, Hilda, insists that Clifford
obtain a nurse so that Constance is not as burdened with helping him get around the house. Clifford reluctantly
agrees, and they hire a woman named Mrs. Bolton. Mrs. Bolton ends up inadvertently supplying Clifford with plenty
of material for his writing, because she likes to gossip about the townspeople. Mrs. Bolton is aware of Clifford's
aristocratic status and does everything he wants her to do.
Constance continues her walks. One day while she is at the hut in the wood, she is watching the hens with the keeper
(i.e., the gamekeeper). He sees a tear fall from her eye and he brings her into the hut and seduces her. This re-
energizes Constance; she begins to feel much more connected to the trees and flowers of the wood. Initially,
Constance also avoids going back to the hut, trying to distract herself. However, she bumps into the keeper again, and
he takes her into the wood and seduces her. She has an entirely new experience: climaxing at the same time that the
man does.
Mrs. Bolton, meanwhile, begins to suspect that Constance has a lover. Constance begins to realize that she hates
Clifford, and she starts to think of the whole world as insane. She criticizes the way the world works: she thinks it is
all devoted to some mechanistic functioning that has no real purpose other than the attainment of more money and
industry. Constance continues to return to the wood and the hut to have sex with Mellors. It is a learning experience
because sometimes she is too distracted with herself to enjoy it. She has to learn to put away her individuality to
engage in this animal act.
One day, Constance and Clifford are going for a walk in the wood when Clifford's wheelchair malfunctions. Clifford
makes Mellors push him up a hill, and Constance is furious. Meanwhile Constance decides to go to Italy with her
sister and father, where she will pretend to have taken a lover. She knows that Clifford would be upset if her lover
were from a lower class, as the keeper is. Constance gets pregnant by Mellors before she leaves for Italy.
Constance spends several weeks in Italy. At Wragby Estate, Mellors' wife returns because Mellors has asked for a
divorce. She starts accusing Mellors of infidelity. Clifford ends up letting Mellors go, because he does not want this
scandalous wife to be spreading more malicious rumors. Mellors moves to London. Constance meets up with him in
London on her return from Italy. There, she writes to Clifford that she is pregnant and would like a divorce.
Clifford demands that Constance return at least once to Wragby Hall. She tells him the father is a man named
Duncan, but he does not believe she is really in love with Duncan. Constance finally admits that she had an affair
with the gamekeeper. Clifford is incredibly offended and refuses to divorce her. Constance points out that her child
will inherit Wragby Hall. This does not bother Clifford. Constance leaves without divorcing Clifford. Mellors,
meanwhile, is entangled in his own divorce, and cannot be immediately with Constance. Instead, he goes and works
on a farm. The novel ends with them still apart, but anticipating being together in the near future.
