Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Sons and Lovers
    Sons and Lovers
    Sons and Lovers
    Ebook1,009 pages20 hours

    Sons and Lovers

    By D.H. Lawrence

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    From the author of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, his dramatic masterpiece on the complex relationships within a working-class family.

    Gertrude Morel married beneath her status and now loathes her drunken, working-class husband. She instead focuses her passion on her son, Paul, who returns her love and equally despises his father. As Paul matures into a young artist, this relationship strains his attempts at connecting with other women, including the lovely Miriam Leivers. The emotional battle for his love and his soul between his mother and Miriam sets the scene for D. H. Lawrence’s celebrated exploration into human relationships and sexuality—controversial themes which he would explore in much of his writing.

    Sons and Lovers is D. H. Lawrence’s most widely read novel and one of the great works of twentieth-century literature. Originally published with certain passages removed, it is presented here in the restored form as originally intended.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 20, 2019
    ISBN9780795351587
    Author

    D.H. Lawrence

    D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) was an English novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet remembered as one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers. His novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover garnered controversy for its graphic sexual content and was banned in the United States until 1959. Lawrence’s works, including Women in Love and Sons and Lovers, are now considered to be classics of English literature. He died in Vence, France, from complications of tuberculosis. 

    Read more from D.H. Lawrence

    Related to Sons and Lovers

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Duke Of Lennox, 1574-1624

      Dec 10, 2022

      The Duke Of Lennox, 1574-1624
      13 min read

    • Article

      A Room Of One’s Own

      Mar 16, 2020

      A Room Of One’s Own
      2 min read

    • Article

      “Caroline Was Besotted With Byron. But, Ungrateful Love Rat That He Was, He Set Off Chasing Others”

      Jun 8, 2023

      Ellie Cawthorne: Why did you want to write a biography of Lamb? What was it about her that intrigued you? Lady Antonia Fraser: During lockdown, I dusted a room that I haven’t dusted for years, which is full of books, like every room in this house. A

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Scottish Incident

      Jun 19, 2020

      The Scottish Incident
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Tormented Childhood

      May 1, 2023

      A Tormented Childhood
      9 min read

    • Article

      Bob Newhart (1929–2024)

      Aug 1, 2024

      Bob Newhart (1929–2024)
      2 min read

    • Article

      Charles Manson Grandson Wins Legal Battle Over Cult Leader's Body

      Mar 13, 2018

      At least three people claimed that they had a legal right to dispose of Manson's body. His remains have been stored in California's Kern County since his death in November.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Age Of Legends

      Mar 21, 2024

      Age Of Legends
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Wars That Divided A Nation

      Sep 30, 2021

      The nine-month-old Henry VI ascends the throne after the death of his father, Henry V. A regency council will rule England until he comes of age, in 1437. A rebellion against the king’s government, widely seen as corrupt, is suppressed, but Richard,

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jonathan Escoffery

      Dec 15, 2021

      This year, perhaps more than any other in my adult life, I’ve yearned for narratives that promise big things will happen in the lives of the characters they feature. The post A Year in Reading: Jonathan Escoffery appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Woman's World

      Aug 31, 2023

      A Woman's World
      2 min read

    • Article

      The day I met Princess Anne

      Oct 28, 2022

      The day I met Princess Anne
      4 min read

    • Article

      Poetic Postage

      Apr 10, 2020

      Poetic Postage
      4 min read

    • Article

      Fit For A Queen

      Oct 29, 2020

      Fit For A Queen
      6 min read

    • Article

      The CORONATION

      Mar 3, 2023

      The CORONATION
      3 min read

    • Article

      Character Study

      Jun 27, 2021

      Character Study
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Country & the Country

      Mar 1, 2022

      The Country & the Country
      4 min read

    • Article

      Valentine’s way AN WILSON Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life

      Jun 2, 2021

      Handheld Press £15.99 One old reviewer found a tear rolling round his cheek towards the end of this book. When the poet Valentine Ackland went into hospital with breast cancer, she wrote to her lover of 38 years, novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, ‘You

      3 min read

    • Article

      The UNHAPPY COUPLE

      Aug 13, 2021

      The UNHAPPY COUPLE
      4 min read

    • Article

      HISTORY’S Strangest Pets

      Oct 31, 2024

      HISTORY’S Strangest Pets
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Torture Box: A Critical Look at Flannery O’Connor and Her Disproportionate Retributions

      Aug 3, 2018

      In a word cloud of writing about Flannery O’Connor’s stories, “grotesque” would be central, medium-large. The word is typically applied to the characters in her stories, whose spiritual deformities are often represented—in problematic authorial short

      5 min read

    • Article

      Dazzling Duchess

      May 5, 2020

      Dazzling Duchess
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lady Hester Stanhope

      Nov 23, 2023

      Lady Hester Stanhope
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Sons and Lovers

    3.5/5

    1,404 ratings43 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I'm not a student of Lawrence and can get annoyed with his talkiness especially about the dynamics of love and sex. However, I loved this book for many reasons. First, the description of the coal mining society of England in the early 20th century, which is vivid and particular. Second, for the depiction of the relationships between Paul's mother and her children, including her grief at one event and Paul's grief at her loss. And finally for Lawrence's really wonderful ability to describe natural beauty with such passion that the reader can feel, see and almost smell the trees, grass and flowers he obviously loves so much. I believe this is one of his most personal books and I found it a great introduction to his other works.
    • 1/5
      This book...

      Ugh, I can't really think of enough bad things to say about it.

      It was boring. It was insanely sexist. The main character was a selfish jerk with very few redeeming qualities. There was no plot. Women were used as plot devices at best, plot devices that were generally responsible for all the ills in the world. Abusive men were forgiven and the women blamed in their place. The main character used women for mindless sex and then got angry at the women when they didn't want to "belong" to him. In addition, I wasn't overly impressed with the writing style, blah. It was flowery and stupid at some points, while being repetitive and banal in other places.

      A terrible, terrible book.
    • 4/5
      Fairly interesting, although I admit a tad dry at times.
    • 4/5
      Love it. I have to say, I've never been a big D.H. Lawrence fan, but this had me so caught up I was almost embarrassed to read it in public (but I did anyway)!
    • 3/5
      A story about love, relationships, and disappointments, told in rich language, evoking a time and a place in British history that is at once foreign and familiar. That specific way of life, the grinding life of a miner and the ways in which mining communities rubbed along, has disappeared. The experience of people struggling to exist through low paid jobs, the tensions within families under that sort of economic stress, are still present. Although set in a different era, there is much that is relevant to modern life. Lawrence writes about people, and the way in which they deal with life. He has great insight into human nature and motivations behind behaviour. He writes fairly about both men and women, recognising that both genders are just people, and there is good and bad in both. I was at times transported by his writing, there with the Morel family in every moment Lawrence describes. He understands the dynamics of family life. He also understands the hopes and disappointments of love. At other times, when he indulged himself too much in ruminating on his own personality through the guise of Paul Morel, he bored me.
    • 5/5
      indulgent and personal and true. but in a good way. I really loved this one.
    • 2/5
      A very long piece of literature. I found this quite hard work to finish. Worth a read if you are interested in Freudian ideals. I prefered Lady Chatterley's lover.
    • 3/5
      It took me approximately 500 years to read this book. Partly because it was long, partly because it was slow in places, but mostly because my copy of the book (where did I get it? and why did I bother?) was full of underlines and notes in the margin. Clearly, it was an assigned text, I'm going to guess high school (really? what were they thinking?), and whoever was forced to read this book found it as tedious as I found their notations. I kept telling myself not to read them, but couldn't help it, and they were SO INSIPID that I would have to put the book down in disgust. (Real life example: "hyper-sensitiveness" is underlined -- in the margin it says "sensitivity to an extreme degree.")

      Really, I should have ditched this copy and found another, because it's hard for me to differentiate my impatience with the text from my impatience with the notes. But I kept plodding slowly on. And I did find things to admire. Lawrence's sentences and descriptions are skilled and often beautiful. But for all the descriptiveness and detail in just how the relationships between people get so tortured and complicated, I never really felt like I understood or could empathize with any individual character directly. Maybe Mr. Morel I understood the best, which is odd, because he clearly seemed designed to be the least sympathetic.

      I don't know. Towards the end I found myself moved by the book, but now, a few weeks later, I feel very meh about it all.
    • 4/5
      Loved it. Mrs. Morel is such a lovely, wonderful character. She's realistic in her perception of her children, yet she adores them unfailingly. The sons themselves are all interesting (and infuriating) in their own ways. The book seems to focus predominantly on the relationship between Mrs. Morel and her second son, Paul. Sadly, the only daughter, Anne seems to be very neglected in the novel.
    • 5/5
      The dominant presence of Mrs Morel in the lives of her sons felt incredible real and when ignoring the setting could have been written today. Truly great capture of human relationships.
    • 4/5
      The use of language was novel at the time of writing. It's since become a part of the English language canon. A highly autobiographical novel but in the third person so the inner lives of the characters are a little more accessible. I liked it more than I thought I might as I am not a big D.H. Lawrence fan.
    • 3/5
      In Sons and Lovers a mother raises three sons and a daughter. Two of her sons, William and Paul grow up but have trouble with women and their mother struggles with their choices but are those choices because of the mother's strong personality and her focused, one could say all-encompassing love? Too much angst for me to love this book. But we'll written.
    • 1/5
      I tried to read another Lawrence book. What was I thinking? Go away Lawrence, leave me alone!

    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book when I didn't expect to at all. I expected it to be highly political when all it was was social history which was very interesting indeed. None the characters were very likeable and the main character Paul Morel was not very moral at all. Very interesting and a very nice read indeed. One that I couldn't put down in the end !
    • 4/5
      I read this book as I had enjoyed Lady Chatterley's Lover. I found this book a little disappointing. At its centre is the stiflng relationship between Paul Morel and his mother. The first half of the book concerns the marriage of Paul's mother to his father, and how she is disappointed with domestic life married to a miner who drinks heavily. The second half explores Paul's attempts to form romantic liaisons whilst still being a mummy's boy. It is beautifully written, desperately sad, and about 200 pages too long. It moves too slowly for modern tastes.
    • 5/5
      What an amazing book this is! The character is one which we can all relate to in the beautiful coming of age story. The plot is indicative of the time it was written but the themes go far beyond that.
    • 3/5
      Interesting recreation of Lawrence's youth, excellent portayal of his mother. Women characters lamentably stereotyped, except mother. Protagonist disagreeable, a user. Lawrence probably reveals himself unintentionally in this. But well-written and engrossing.
    • 4/5
      A book where not much happens, it's more of a study on interpersonal relationships and how we stumble our way through misguided ideals of love and romance. I actually liked this book more than I thought I was going to.
    • 2/5
      Disappointing.
    • 5/5
      I didn't like Lawrence when I was a youngin, but now that I am a little older, I totally get it--the sexes cannot live in harmony, but we are drawn to the the "otherness" of, well, the other. Superb prose. Superb conjuring of nature, and that most illusive of all things--the mother/son relationship.
    • 3/5
      Published in 1913, this was surely schocking to society, describing an affair between a married woman and a younger man, as part of a larger saga of a working family in the outskirts of Nottingham, England, before the first world war. The novel coalesces around the loves of Paul Morel, an aspiring artist, who loves his mother most of all, and finds his adoring girlfriend from his youth too stifling, but her friend, an older married woman living apart from her husband, enticing. His story is told at length, beginning with his mother’s story, his father’s rough ways as a coal miner, and his childhood. At the end, his married lover returns to her husband, who hd been befriended by Paul after an accident, and Paul rejects the desparate plea of Miriam, his girlfriend, to end on a very existentialist note, with Paul feeling as though he is nothing, longing for his mother, but vowing to go on after her death. The landscape and society evoked in the descriptions is beautiful, and now foreign and lost, with the local towns connected by trains, and dispersed among walking paths and fields. I was slow in reading this, not interested in parts, but I had to see how the relationships would end.
    • 4/5
      This is my first D.H. Lawrence book, if you don’t count Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which I read in my early teens. I plunged in without doing any research first, and was therefore unaware that the story was autobiographical, though I doubt this would have ultimately altered my impression of it. Among the things I found appealing in this book are the descriptions of working class conditions and the struggle of Mrs. Morel to make the best out of difficult circumstances. I also enjoyed the way Lawrence delves into the minds of each of the characters, which seems to give the story multiple layers. However I had a hard time understanding the Nottinghamshire Dialect or why Clara—who is presented to us as a man-hating suffragette—would so easily accept to become Paul’s mistress. Some passages describing the scenery and the flora were a little bit tedious to my liking but ultimately this novel has so much substance that I was willing to pause and read about the local vegetation once in a while.
    • 4/5
      I thought I had read this book but I hope to heaven that I didn't because I didn't remember a single thing from it. In pure Lawrence style, sometimes achingly lyrical, sometimes achingly annoying and embarrassing, it is still a good read as well as an intense portrait of the oedipal relationship between mother and son.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully-written account of love, the lack of it, motherly love and a son breaking away from home and trying to overcome his upbringing. Extremely human, ever so contemporary.
    • 5/5
      eBook

      Quite simply, this is a gorgeous book, and I'm more than a little ashamed that it's taken me this long to get around to reading it. Although, honestly, I never really bought into all the oedipal stuff, which seems to be the aspect of the book for which it is most revered.

      It's a simple story, really, of a woman, her son, and the two women he pursues and rejects (often simultaneously), but it's the characters, rather than the plot (of which there isn't much), that are truly compelling. I found myself bookmarking so many pages, less because of what they were saying than the fact that so much of what they said sounded like an echo of things I've said or thought.

      I'm always confused by books wherein I have such a strong sense of personal identification with the characters. Am I responding to the book or to some sick mixture of egotism and self-loathing. I suppose it doesn't much matter, nor do the two have to be mutually exclusive.

      Anyway, Paul is such a great character. His struggles to navigate the murky and treacherous waters of his own conflicted desires are profoundly epic, despite their small scale, and in his treatment of Miriam, especially, Lawrence has painted the definitive portrait of the atrocities a profoundly self-involved douchebag can commit, even when he's fighting futilely to do what he sees as "the right thing."
    • 5/5
      This was my first D. H. Lawrence. I was, simply put, charmed. His detailed descriptions of places, characters, personalities, situations, feelings, are very grasping in their own smooth ways. It seems all classics hold that very descriptive factor that will eventually bore you or put you to sleep. Not this one.
    • 5/5
      No one looks deeper into nature and human nature than D.H. Lawrence.
    • 4/5
      What a wonderful book! Really, really great - written beautifully, with a simple but at the same time complex storyline. The story itself, though spread over so many years, didn't have a lot of action, but in terms of themes & revelations I thought it was incredibly compelling. The ending was very sad, & I liked that it didn't come to the conclusion I thought it would. For the time it was written its surprising how racy it is, & how relevant a lot of it still is. I did feel it was a shame that for all their prominence in the story & in Paul's life, the women involved all seem quite weak both in terms of character development & in terms of themselves when it comes to Paul. Even though one is a suffragette, another quite independent & all fairly strong, they are still rendered second to the main, and at times quite dislikeable, character.
    • 4/5
      Another of Lawrence's gems.
      Not as good as Women in Love, but still worth reading.
      In this work you can easily notice one of Lawrence's obsessions. The love for his mother.
    • 1/5
      This book...

      Ugh, I can't really think of enough bad things to say about it.

      It was boring. It was insanely sexist. The main character was a selfish jerk with very few redeeming qualities. There was no plot. Women were used as plot devices at best, plot devices that were generally responsible for all the ills in the world. Abusive men were forgiven and the women blamed in their place. The main character used women for mindless sex and then got angry at the women when they didn't want to "belong" to him. In addition, I wasn't overly impressed with the writing style, blah. It was flowery and stupid at some points, while being repetitive and banal in other places.

      A terrible, terrible book.

    Book preview

    Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence

    THE

    CAMBRIDGE EDITION OF

    THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF

    D. H. LAWRENCE

    Sons and Lovers

    D. H. Lawrence

    Sons and Lovers

    Cambridge Edition of the text copyright © 1992, the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli Introduction and notes copyright © 1992, Cambridge University Press

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

    Cover design by Alexia Garaventa

    Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

    ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5158-7

    www.RosettaBooks.com

    THE WORKS OF D. H. LAWRENCE

    GENERAL EDITORS

    James T. Boulton

    † Warren Roberts

    CONTENTS

    General editors' preface

    Acknowledgements

    Chronology

    Cue-titles

    Introduction

    The composition of Sons and Lovers: origins

    'Paul Morel' (first version, October to November or December 1910)

    'Paul Morel' (second version, c. 13 March to mid-July 1911)

    'Paul Morel' (third version, 3–15 November 1911, February–April 1912, revised May–June 1912)

    Sons and Lovers (fourth version, July–November 1912)

    Edward Garnett's editing of the novel

    Lawrence's 'Foreword'

    The period of printing and proof revision (January–April 1913)

    Ernest Collings and the design of the dust-jacket

    The contract

    Jessie Chambers's novel

    The first edition

    The American edition

    Reception

    Text

    The surviving manuscripts

    The galley proofs

    The page proofs

    The Cambridge edition

    SONS AND LOVERS

    I Foreword to Sons and Lovers

    II Locations

    EXPLANATORY NOTES

    GLOSSARY

    A note on pounds, shillings and pence

    GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE

    D. H. Lawrence is one of the great writers of the twentieth century – yet the texts of his writings, whether published during his lifetime or since, are, for the most part, textually corrupt. The extent of the corruption is remarkable; it can derive from every stage of composition and publication. We know from study of his MSS that Lawrence was a careful writer, though not rigidly consistent in matters of minor convention. We know also that he revised at every possible stage. Yet he rarely if ever compared one stage with the previous one, and overlooked the errors of typists or copyists. He was forced to accept, as most authors are, the often stringent house-styling of his printers, which overrode his punctuation and even his sentence-structure and paragraphing. He sometimes overlooked plausible printing errors. More important, as a professional author living by his pen, he had to accept, with more or less good will, stringent editing by a publisher's reader in his early days, and at all times the results of his publishers' timidity. So the fear of Grundyish disapproval, or actual legal action, led to bowdlerisation or censorship from the very beginning of his career. Threats of libel suits produced other changes. Sometimes a publisher made more changes than he admitted to Lawrence. On a number of occasions in dealing with American and British publishers Lawrence produced texts for both which were not identical. Then there were extraordinary lapses like the occasion when a typist turned over two pages of MS at once, and the result happened to make sense. This whole story can be reconstructed from the introductions to the volumes in this edition; cumulatively they will form a history of Lawrence's writing career.

    The Cambridge edition aims to provide texts which are as close as can now be determined to those he would have wished to see printed. They have been established by a rigorous collation of extant manuscripts and typescripts, proofs and early printed versions; they restore the words, sentences, even whole pages omitted or falsified by editors or compositors; they are freed from printing-house conventions which were imposed on Lawrence's style; and interference on the part of frightened publishers has been eliminated. Far from doing violence to the texts Lawrence would have wished to see published, editorial intervention is essential to recover them. Though we have to accept that some cannot now be recovered in their entirety because early states have not survived, we must be glad that so much evidence remains. Paradoxical as it may seem, the outcome of this recension will be texts which differ, often radically and certainly frequently, from those seen by the author himself.

    Editors have adopted the principle that the most authoritative form of the text is to be followed, even if this leads sometimes to a 'spoken' or a 'manuscript' rather than a 'printed' style. We have not wanted to strip off one house-styling in order to impose another. Editorial discretion may be allowed in order to regularise Lawrence's sometimes wayward spelling and punctuation in accordance with his most frequent practice in a particular text. A detailed record of these and other decisions on textual matters, together with the evidence on which they are based, will be found in the textual apparatus which records variant readings in manuscripts, typescripts and proofs; and printed variants in forms of the text published in Lawrence's lifetime. We do not record posthumous corruptions, except where first publication was posthumous. Significant deleted MS readings may be found in the occasional explanatory note.

    In each volume, the editor's introduction relates the contents to Lawrence's life and to his other writings; it gives the history of composition of the text in some detail, for its intrinsic interest, and because this history is essential to the statement of editorial principles followed. It provides an account of publication and reception which will be found to contain a good deal of hitherto unknown information. Where appropriate, appendixes make available extended draft manuscript readings of significance, or important material, sometimes unpublished, associated with a particular work.

    Though Lawrence is a twentieth-century writer and in many respects remains our contemporary, the idiom of his day is not invariably intelligible now, especially to the many readers who are not native speakers of British English. His use of dialect is another difficulty, and further barriers to full understanding are created by now obscure literary, historical, political or other references and allusions. On these occasions explanatory notes or a dialect glossary is supplied by the editor; it is assumed that the reader has access to a good general dictionary and that the editor need not gloss words or expressions that may be found in it. Where Lawrence's letters are quoted in editorial matter, the reader should assume that his manuscript is alone the source of eccentricities of phrase or spelling. An edition of the letters is still in course of publication: for this reason only the date and recipient of a letter will be given if it has not so far been printed in the Cambridge edition.

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

    The first debt of gratitude, which we gladly acknowledge, is to Warren Roberts for his support and advice: we esteem him not only as a friend but also as the one who set the standard for serious modern scholarship on D. H. Lawrence.

    We are indebted also to the rest of the editorial board, Michael Black, James Boulton, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, who have fulfilled their function over and above the call of duty. We gratefully acknowledge hospitality and guidance from David and Carole Farmer, Elizabeth Mansfield and Pat Roberts. The work could not have been done without the help of many academic institutions: the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin; Cambridge University Library, especially its map room; Nottingham University Library; Nottingham County Libraries; the Library and the Department of Metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum; Laurence Pollinger Limited; the Records Department of Liberty Retail Limited; New York Public Library; the Newspaper Department of the British Library; the Department of Special Collections at the University of California at Los Angeles; the Manuscripts Department at the University of Indiana.

    We have been much encouraged along the way by help towards publishing some of the research material, from Fredson Bowers, Andrew Cooper and Dieter Mehl.

    We have also been grateful to be able to approach a number of experts for information and corrections: George Lazarus, George Hardy, Alan Griffin, Keith Sagar, Philip Gaskell, Barry Supple, Marie and Richard Axton, David Newmarch, David Kelley, Mara Kalnins, Anthony Rota, Andrew Robertson, Guy Collings, Paul Eggert, Andrew Brown.

    Finally, one of the pleasures of engaging in this overlong enterprise has been to draw on the knowledge and generosity of spirit of family and friends: Edward Baron, Joy and Eric Worstead, John Woolford, Sylvia Adamson, Julien Wynne, Desanka Rowell-Ozim, Harriet Crawford, Simonetta de Filippis, Christopher Ricks, Hans Schwarze, James Worstead, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, Stephen Parkin, Patrizia Fusella, Dorothy Armstrong, Angela Brewer, Annick and Michel Degrez, David Johnson-Davies, Allison Melville, Mary McCarthy.

    CHRONOLOGY

    CUE-TITLES

    A. Manuscript locations

    B. Printed works

    (The place of publication, here and throughout, is London unless otherwise stated.)

    INTRODUCTION

    INTRODUCTION

    The composition of Sons and Lovers: origins

    Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence's most widely read novel, has achieved a reputation for being at one and the same time a fictionalised account of his own personal history and a classic depiction of the mother–son relationship comparable in status with that of Sophocles' play Oedipus Tyrannus. Lawrence himself spoke of the novel both as 'autobiography' and as 'the tragedy of thousands of young men in England'.¹ In order to create a work which he felt was 'as art, a fairly complete truth' (ii. 665) Lawrence inextricably intermingled fiction and autobiography,² but the origins of the novel were rooted in his preoccupation with his mother's life.

    'What ever I wrote, it could not be so awful as to write a biography of my mother. But after this – which is enough – I am going to write romance – when I have finished Paul Morel, which belongs to this' (i. 195). So Lawrence wrote on 6 December 1910 as his mother lay dying. He was twenty-five and about to publish his first novel, The White Peacock. He had already drafted a second, and 'Paul Morel' was to be the third, eventually published as Sons and Lovers in May 1913, after he had written it four times. He called it 'Paul Morel' for the first two years, but in October 1912 decided upon a new title (i. 462), whose words, 'sons' and 'lovers', present in the manner of a conundrum the central role of the mother in the novel.

    Lawrence had sketched an outline of his mother's life on 3 December 1910, showing the ways in which he felt it to be fundamental to any account of his own:

    My mother was a clever, ironical delicately moulded woman, of good, old burgher descent. She married below her. My father was dark, ruddy, with a fine laugh. He is a coal miner. He was one of the sanguine temperament, warm and hearty, but unstable: he lacked principle, as my mother would have said. He deceived her and lied to her. She despised him – he drank.

    Their marriage life has been one carnal, bloody fight. I was born hating my father: as early as ever I can remember, I shivered with horror when he touched me. He was very bad before I was born.

    This has been a kind of bond between me and my mother. We have loved each other, almost with a husband and wife love, as well as filial and maternal. We knew each other by instinct. She said to my aunt – about me:

    'But it has been different with him. He has seemed to be part of me.' – and that is the real case. We have been like one, so sensitive to each other that we never needed words. It has been rather terrible, and has made me, in some respects, abnormal.

    I think this peculiar fusion of soul (don't think me high-falutin) never comes twice in a life-time – it doesn't seem natural. When it comes it seems to distribute one's consciousness far abroad from oneself, and one 'understands'. I think no one has got 'Understanding' except through love. Now my mother is nearly dead, and I don't quite know how I am. (i. 190)

    It was reflections such as these on her marriage and its consequences that Lawrence developed into a novel during the next two years, while at the same time grappling with the personal problems he intimates here. However, in his earliest attempts to put together a core of maternal biography Lawrence appears not to have been preoccupied with the embattled marriage but with a romantic relationship which preceded it. In the course of the protracted evolution of The White Peacock he 'crossed out nearly three pages of heavily revised text' containing 'two complete versions of Mrs Beardsall's life before marriage', which were probably written at some time between October 1908 and March 1910, and included the following:

    How old are you, mother? asked Lettie, who had continued to contemplate my mother.

    Fifty, nearly fifty one, replied my mother, in tones which said Yes—I'm creeping on—you'd better beware.

    Do you feel very old, Little Woman?

    Eh no. I am an elderly woman . . . It's not a question of years; it's merely being different people all in a lifetime.

    You were lovely when you were a girl, I know. Long brown ringlets, hadn't you, Dearie? And were you bright and witty? I know you were. Why didn't you have your portrait painted?

    I did once.

    Then where is it?

    My mother shook her head, then said:

    I was eighteen, when we lived in Kent. He began several sketches. I can remember the scent of the vines. He finished one, but he kept it.

    Who was he, mother?

    He was artistic; he used to tell me verses, hiding behind his easel.

    Did you like him, mother?

    Of course. I was a girl then. Now I am a woman rather more than middle-aged—another person.

    What became of him?

    We left Tonbridge. He was only a tutor. I am a middle aged woman.

    You are tantalising, dearie. But there isn't one man, is there?

    Several, for most people, replied mother calmly.

    Lettie was sitting on the hearthrug, leaning against my mother's knee, watching the fire.

    And you choose the best all round? queried Lettie.

    If you have the chance, was the cool reply: But, continued mother, suddenly becoming serious You have to determine whether you'll marry a husband, or the father of your children. I married the father of my children; a husband might eternally reproach me for it.³

    Lawrence may have had a number of reasons for taking this discussion out of The White Peacock, but its similarity to Gertrude Morel's fondly preserved, if more bitter, memory of John Field in Sons and Lovers retrospectively gives his removal of it the character of a postponed obligation to treat the subject more fully. He appears to have made his first extended attempt to explore it in fictional form some time before July 1910. For there survives an unfinished, unpublished manuscript relating the early life of a 'Matilda Wootton', whose characteristics, family relationships and main experiences are closely echoed by those of the young Gertrude Coppard in Sons and Lovers; and both seem to derive from the same fund of maternal material.⁴ The opening chapter introduces Matilda as a ten-year-old in 1860, and describes her family and forebears. In chapter two she is shown at the age of eighteen, employed as a teacher's assistant, and beginning to form a romantic attachment to a young man whom she meets on her morning walk to school.

    The 'Matilda' manuscript consists of a forty-page opening chapter in three sections, and eight pages of a second chapter: structural signposts which indicate it was to be a novel, as does the leisurely pace of the writing. But Lawrence broke it off and explained on 24 July 1910 to his friend, Louie Burrows: 'As to Matilda – when I looked at her I found her rather foolish: I'll write her again when I've a bit of time' (i. 172).

    'Paul Morel' (first version, October to November or December 1910)

    The unfinished novel 'Matilda' was an abandoned precursor of Sons and Lovers, but not an early version of it, for by the autumn of 1910 Lawrence had set his third novel on an overtly different course. He named it 'Paul Morel'. A shift of emphasis from the maternal to the filial had been precipitated by his mother's illness, which began in mid-August. Whether or not Lawrence realised at once that it would prove fatal, it must immediately have intensified his artistic preoccupation with her life – but in a new form, because he was now confronted with the problem of his future without her.

    At about the same time he found himself under obligation to write a new novel. On signing the contract for The White Peacock in June 1910 he had undertaken to send Heinemann his second novel by the end of August 1910 (i. 161, 182). He was keeping to this schedule and by 4 August had finished 'The Saga of Siegmund' (the first draft of The Trespasser). He sent it to Ford Madox Hueffer for comment; but the severity of the criticisms he received from Hueffer in early September made Lawrence reluctant to publish the novel and therefore he needed another with which to meet his contract (i. 175, 178). Hueffer forwarded 'The Saga of Siegmund' to Heinemann's office in October 1910 where it remained until December 1911. This left Lawrence free to work on 'Paul Morel', which he mentioned for the first time on 18 October 1910, when writing to the firm (i. 184):

    I am not anxious to publish ['The Saga of Siegmund'], and if you are of like mind, we can let the thing stay, and I will give you – with no intermediary this time – my third novel, Paul Morel, which is plotted out very interestingly (to me), and about one-eighth of which is written. Paul Morel will be a novel – not a florid prose poem, or a decorated idyll running to seed in realism: but a restrained, somewhat impersonal novel. It interests me very much. I wish I were not so agitated just now, and could do more.

    A chapter plan has survived in one of Lawrence's college notebooks⁵ which illuminates his expression 'plotted out':

    I.

    I.       Introduction – he pushes her out of the house before the birth of their son.

    V.      Return of Father – walks with Mabel – filling straws – visit to Aunt Ada

    VI.    Band of Hope – Fred strikes father – father blacks eye – Miss Wright – Fred in office – horse manuring – Mabel – painting

    VII.  Fred dancing – quarrels with father – Gertie teacher –

    Wm. learns from her – Flossie friends – Mabel jealous – Wm.

         at

    Mr Bate's school – painting .– visit Aunt Ada

    VIII.  Death of Fred – Wm. ill – Mabel – death

           of Walter Morel<.>– Aunt Ada superintends

    II.

    Wm.

    I.        begins at Haywoods.

    III.   Advance at Haywoods – Miss Haywood & painting (red-haired Pauline) – Newcome very jealous

    IV.   Flossie passes high – renewed attention of Wm. – great friendship after painting in Castle – death of Miss Wright

    V.     Flossie in College – death of Miss Wright

    Since few such plans have survived, little is known about Lawrence's practice in this respect, and it is impossible to tell whether this plan was one of many or precisely the plotting out that he referred to in his letter. It does not match any surviving draft of the novel, and there is no firm evidence of its date, but the fact that the father's name is already established as Walter Morel, while the character who later became Paul is as yet called William, points to c. September 1910, after Lawrence had sent off 'The Saga of Siegmund' sometime after 4 August and before he announced the novel as 'Paul Morel' on 18 October.

    Several episodes in the second manuscript, 'Paul Morel', correspond with items listed in the chapter plan, particularly under Part I. Some were retained as Lawrence rewrote the novel and occur in Sons and Lovers: notably 'he pushes her out of the house before the birth of their son', 'tears without cause', 'move from Breach', 'Father hospital', 'filling straws' and 'W[illia]m. begins at Haywoods'. These parallels with the second and fourth manuscripts indicate that the presence of the mother-figure is silently assumed throughout the chapter plan. Despite being mentioned only in the opening chapter, and indeed only as 'her', she is essential to 'young sister' and 'young brother' in chapters II and III and must thereafter be present since her death or departure would occasion comment.

    Several names in the plan are the same as those of people who are known to have been acquaintances of Lawrence in his youth. But the fiction that he intended to create out of this material cannot now be known. His Eastwood friend and contemporary, Flossie Cullen, was the nurse who attended Mrs Lawrence in her illness; her father was a superintendent at the local Sunday School. But since she was not a college girl, it seems possible that Lawrence took external characteristics from her but otherwise based the character on Louie Burrows, whom he met at University College, Nottingham, and described as 'my girl in Coll' (i. 193). Flossie Cullen's governess, Miss Wright, taught Lawrence French, and appears to be the model for the Miss Wright who teaches Paul to paint in the chapter plan, and for the Miss May who does so in the second manuscript.⁶ 'Aunt Ada' and 'Mrs Limb' were both the names of people whom Lawrence knew, but no character in the second manuscript appears to be based on either of them. Mrs Limb's daughter Mabel was a friend of Lawrence from childhood until her death in 1909, and it is possible that 'Mabel' may have been intended to have external characteristics of Mabel Limb. But the main features of William's relationship with Mabel in the chapter plan, 'walks' and 'neglect', are salient features of the relationship between Paul Morel and Miriam in both the second and the final manuscript. This suggests that 'Mabel' may also have been a forerunner of the character later called Miriam who was based in large part on Lawrence's childhood friend, Jessie Chambers. But it seems likely that Lawrence intended to make very complex use of these elements, for in chapter III of the plan Lawrence wrote 'Floss' over at least 'Je', possibly 'Jess'; and in the second manuscript the character called Miriam belonged to a family modelled on the Cullen household.

    However, as this is a plan, possibly incomplete, of a novel that was never written to this shape, its chief interest lies in revealing the general direction of Lawrence's thoughts. They were moving towards dealing principally with the life and relationships of William (later, Paul) Morel, and away from sustained overt focus on the mother. They appear to have reached the point either of ending with, or being stuck at, the death of an evidently important character, Miss Wright.

    Clearly, a crucial shift in Lawrence's approach to his maternal material had begun during the latter half of 1910. The salience of the mother's youthful romance, and the leisurely exploration of her formative years in a context of stern mid-Victorian religion, were being replaced by an emphasis on the years of suffering caused by mismarriage. As in The White Peacock, it is the father-figure who dies. But Lawrence's inclusion of the 'death of Miss Wright', and his difficulty in placing it, may indicate the beginnings of an awareness that if he continued his novelistic exploration of family material he would face a choice. He could either emphasise the fictional, and permit himself to dispose of the father-figure, or he could allow the biographical reality to determine the shape of his plot – which would require the mother-figure to die. Some time was to elapse before he could bring himself to make this choice.

    Lawrence had probably left off writing the new novel before his mother died on 9 December 1910, and his intense grief disabled him from taking it up again during the bleak period that followed: 'The third novel Paul Morel, sticks where I left it four or five months ago, at the hundredth page' – he reported to his publisher on 11 February 1911 – 'I've no heart to tackle a serious work just now' (i. 230). None of the hundred pages has survived: this first draft of Sons and Lovers remained 'stuck', and he abandoned it in favour of a fresh start.

    'Paul Morel' (second version, c. 13 March to mid-July 1911)

    The fresh start came a month later, and was much more successful: he wrote about 355 pages between 13 March and mid-July before again abandoning it, perhaps unable to devise an ending. The bulk of this second manuscript has survived,⁷ revealing a plot similar in places to the above plan and very different from the final novel. The main features of the Morel family are already established, but the college boy Arthur has a larger role and the older brother William a smaller one than in Sons and Lovers. Miriam is placed in the refined Staynes household, but her relationship with Paul develops along similar lines to that of the finished novel. Again it is the father-figure who dies – of remorse in prison. At the climax of the story, Morel is roused to uncontrollable anger by an abusive tirade from his younger son, Arthur, and throws a steel at him which kills him. The incident was based on a similar manslaughter committed by the brother of Lawrence's father, which had been reported in the local newspaper.⁸ In the chapter that follows Walter Morel's death, a precursor of Clara Dawes named Frances Radford is introduced just as the surviving manuscript comes to a halt. It is not clear precisely where Lawrence abandoned this writing, because he later transferred some of the last pages into the next draft.

    From the first Lawrence was convinced that it would be an important work. 'I have begun Paul Morel again', he announced on 13 March 1911 to Louie Burrows, now his fiancée. 'I am afraid it will be a terrible novel. But, if I can keep it to my idea and feeling, it will be a great one' (i. 237). The next day he told Helen Corke, an intimate friend with whom he had collaborated on 'The Saga of Siegmund': 'I have begun Paul Morel again – glory, you should see it. The British public will stone me if ever it catches sight' (i. 239). And a day after this he brought Frederick Atkinson, Heinemann's reader, up to date: 'I've begun again Paul Morel. I swear it'll be a fine novel: no balderdash' (i. 240).

    His use of 'terrible' echoes the letter of 3 December 1910 about his relationship with his mother, and points to the tragic implications which he was eventually able to bring to the fore. But a month later, his pride in the new work's potential was battling with his reluctance to write: 'I have just done one folio, a dozen MSS pages, of Paul Morel. That great, terrible but unwritten novel, I am afraid it will die a mere conception' (i. 258). And after the Easter school holiday (14–24 April), his regular progress reports to Louie Burrows show that he was relying on her encouragement to urge himself forwards.⁹ By 26 May he could predict that the first two hundred pages would be ready to show her during the Whitsun holiday, 3–10 June (i. 272); but suddenly on 29 May he posted her a 'mass', saying: 'I'm afraid it's heterogeneous; since I have never read it through, very blemishy. Correct it and collect it will you, and tell me what you think. This is a quarter of the book.'¹⁰ Lawrence apparently envisaged a total of 800 manuscript pages, which seems very long, but in fact the paper was too small for more than two hundred words per page.¹¹ The surviving pages contain about a dozen alterations in Louie Burrows's hand.

    Were it not for the fact that pages 72 to 353 of this draft survive, it would be easy to conclude from Lawrence's letters that he lost interest in it after writing the first quarter. Although on 12 June he claimed to Martin Secker, a recently established publisher who had offered to take a volume of stories, 'I am in the midst of a novel, and bejungled in work . . . ' (i. 275), his progress reports to Louie show him working reluctantly or not at all and slowly grinding to a halt by mid-July.¹²

    The tone of Lawrence's letters suggests that he produced the second draft of 'Paul Morel' solely by effort of will: there is scarcely a hint of the pleasure in creative writing that he often voiced at other times. On the one hand, he knew that to succeed as a writer, he must publish another novel while the public still remembered The White Peacock (i. 276). On the other hand, virtually the only ambition which seems to have motivated him was the desire to publish a novel which would make enough money for him to marry Louie. Paradoxically, however, his letters to Louie during 1911 reveal the inexorable waning of whatever love he had felt for her.

    Lawrence's dilemmas crystallised in early October, when in rapid succession he had an uncomfortable meeting with his publisher (5 October); he renewed contact with Jessie Chambers (7 October); and he announced to Louie, 'I haven't done a stroke of Paul for months – don't want to touch it' (10 October; i. 310). Lawrence was evidently reluctant to let Louie know that he had arranged to see Jessie Chambers, to whom he had been unofficially engaged for six years before proposing to Louie in December 1910, and whose role in nursing his first novel into existence he had valued highly.¹³ Yet his relations with Jessie had become so strained that he had to contrive a meeting with the help of Helen Corke. On 7 October he took his brother George, who was visiting him for the weekend, to the Savoy Theatre – this he told Louie (i. 310) – and to the same performance Helen Corke took her weekend guest, Jessie Chambers. All four travelled back to Croydon together before Jessie and George returned by train to Nottingham.¹⁴ Jessie Chambers wrote a memoir of Lawrence twenty years later, which was published in 1935 under the title D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record, by E[unice] T[emple]. In it she did not recall that Lawrence talked to her about his current novel writing, but the outcome of their meeting was that he sent his unfinished manuscript to her for comment.¹⁵ Lawrence must have made these arrangements days or weeks before the interview with his publisher.

    Heinemann had remained silent even though Lawrence's proposed novel was more than a year overdue. Since August 1911, however, Lawrence had been in correspondence with Edward Garnett, who was literary adviser to the publishing firm Duckworth, and who had offered to secure magazine publication for some of his stories. When Lawrence and Garnett had their first meeting over lunch on Wednesday 4 October, by chance Frederick Atkinson, general editor for Heinemann, visited the same restaurant. Probably fearing that Lawrence was about to be enticed away by a rival firm, Atkinson pressed him to a meeting the next day, at which Lawrence was made to feel he had 'offended Heinemann's people mortally' by not finishing 'Paul Morel' (i. 310). A pleasanter meeting followed on 20 October. Heinemann tried to woo him back from Duckworth, first by offering to publish the volume of poems which Lawrence had promised (and in part already delivered) to Edward Garnett, and second by proposing an early date for the contracted novel, as Lawrence reported at once to Garnett: 'he wants me definitely to promise the next novel – the one that is half done – for March' (i. 317).

    He could not begin work on it until Jessie Chambers returned his second draft with her comments. She was probably predisposed against this manuscript because she had been replaced by Louie Burrows in the role of confidante during the writing of it. The description of it which she later wrote for her memoir is largely disparaging, and has for a long time been the only available account of this early version of the novel, but when compared with the surviving manuscript it is found to have certain limitations. She omitted from her summary of the plot almost everything which did not deal with Paul, Mrs Morel and Miriam Staynes (a character whom she perceived to be based on herself). She offered quotations which turn out to record the gist but not the actual words of the original. And her general criticism that: 'It was extremely tired writing. I was sure that Lawrence had had to force himself to do it',¹⁶ despite matching the tone of his reflections as he wrote it, overlooks the fact that this draft abounds in Lawrence's characteristic vitality.

    Notwithstanding these qualifications, her retrospective critique conveys not only her insights but probably also the conviction with which she articulated them to Lawrence at the time. Her chief recommendation was that 'what had really happened was much more poignant and interesting than the situations he had invented. In particular I was surprised that he had omitted the story of Ernest, which seemed to me vital enough to be worth telling as it actually happened. Finally I suggested that he should write the whole story again, and keep it true to life.'¹⁷ The comments she sent Lawrence must have struck home, for they enabled him not merely to start again, but entirely to recast his novel towards the shape it was eventually to have when published. The effect was to put the novel in a different fictional genre. As Lawrence rewrote it, it became both more personal and more general. It left behind the genre of naturalistic romance and moved into the less well charted borderland between tragedy, realism and psychological exploration.¹⁸

    'Paul Morel' (third version, 3–15 November 1911, February–April 1912, revised May–June 1912)

    Jessie Chambers had sent the manuscript back with her comments by 3 November 1911, when Lawrence wrote to Louie Burrows: 'Tonight I am going to begin Paul Morel again, for the third and last time. I shall need all your prayers if I'm to get it done. It is a book the thought of which weighs heavily upon me. Say a Misericordia . . . I really dread setting the pen to paper, to write the first word of Paul – which I'm going to do when I've written the last word of this' (i. 321–2).

    An abandoned opening to the novel has survived, written on seven unnumbered pages of the same poor-quality lined paper as this letter to Louie Burrows. It begins: 'The Breach took the place of Hell Row. It was a natural succession. Hell Row was a block of some half-dozen thatched, collapsing cottages . . . ' and ends 150 lines later, nearly half-way down the seventh page, with Gertrude Morel's discovery that the young man she had loved at twenty, 'a school teacher who was a good Latin scholar', had subsequently 'married his landlady, a woman of forty odd years, who had money'. This proved to be an abortive start, but when Lawrence copied it out again, expanding it, he was launched on his third manuscript. This time he wrote on a strong good-quality paper, watermarked 'Court Royal', which he also used for letters from Wednesday 15 November. That seems to be the last date at which he worked on the novel at this time, for thereafter his free time was filled with engagements until 19 November when he fell seriously ill with pneumonia. He had reached page 74.

    Lawrence remained ill at his lodgings in Croydon until 4 January 1912 when he left for convalescence in Bournemouth. During this period, helped by Edward Garnett's encouragement and detailed criticisms as well as by the prospect of publication by Duckworth, Lawrence took up 'The Saga of Siegmund' again and largely rewrote it as The Trespasser. So he did not return to 'Paul Morel' for some months.

    While confined to bed in Croydon, Lawrence had used up his supply of 'Court Royal' paper on correspondence between 21 November and 13 December. Thus it is certain that the surviving pages of the novel written on that distinctive paper, numbered 1–74 but now dispersed between the fourth manuscript and accompanying 'fragments' (sequences of discarded pages), are the first 74 pages of the third manuscript written in November 1911. Page 74 describes Walter Morel recovering from 'inflammation of the brain' and receiving a bedside visit from his friend Jerry. This is the scene found on the first surviving page (72) of the now-truncated second manuscript. The correlation between them explains why the beginning of the second manuscript is now lost: Lawrence had been writing his third draft with the second open before him, copying from and improving on it. He then discarded the first 71 pages of the earlier version, which he had already revised.

    When Lawrence arrived in Eastwood on 9 February 1912 after the crisis of his severe illness, his life was in the process of radical change. He had ended his engagement to Louie Burrows on 4 February (i. 361), and on 28 February he resigned from his teaching post (i. 369). He would make an attempt to live by his pen. 'At the bottom I am rather miserable', he had told Edward Garnett on 29 January, just before he left Bournemouth (i. 358–9); once back in Eastwood his descriptions of his social life as 'jolly', 'howling good fun' and 'awfully fast' bespeak a façade of brittle flippancy (i. 368–9). Jessie Chambers remembered him as 'spasmodic and restless, resentful of the need to be careful of his health'; he maintained in company a 'jaunty exterior, but below the surface was a hopelessness hardly to be distinguished from despair'.¹⁹ By 14 February he had decided that he would go abroad in May for the first time in his life, to visit some German relatives who had written in January inviting him (i. 350, 366). His primary motive seems to have been to get away from England for a while, and to try earning his living in the first instance by writing travel sketches.

    The choice of early May as the date for his departure entailed an obligation to send 'Paul Morel' to Heinemann first (i. 371), at the end of April, a month after it was originally promised. For more than three months the seed of Jessie Chambers's advice to keep the novel 'true to life' had been left to germinate in Lawrence's mind, while he concentrated on The Trespasser. Now, having just completed his full-scale revision of that novel in six weeks, he settled down to rewrite 'Paul Morel' in under seven. He worked single-mindedly, turning away almost all other offers of publication, but he made time for two trips to visit friends who had left Eastwood, and took his novel away with him to continue writing it.

    He resumed his third manuscript of 'Paul Morel' with the same kind of assistance and support from Jessie Chambers that he had sought from Louie Burrows while writing the previous version; but his relationship with Jessie also was soon to be at an end. None of his surviving correspondence of this period refers to her, and therefore her reminiscences are the sole source for some information about the writing of this draft. When in November 1911 Lawrence had received her criticisms and advice he had asked her to set down, for his use, some 'notes' on 'what I could remember of our early days'. He collected them from her in February, 'early in the week'²⁰ and took up the new draft at page 74, where he had left off in November, part way through the scene at Walter Morel's bedside. By 23 February he was able to report to Arthur McLeod, a former colleague at his Croydon school: 'Paul Morel is going pretty well, now I have once more tackled it' (i. 367). He delivered the pages of manuscript to Jessie Chambers as he wrote them, presumably so that she could 'correct it and collect it' for him, and give her opinion.²¹

    When she received chapter IX, 'First Love' (later rewritten as chapter VII, 'Lad-and-Girl Love', in Sons and Lovers) in which, following her own injunction to keep the plot 'true to life', Lawrence now placed Miriam in the context of the Leivers family at the farm, she read it as history rather than fiction and took exception to a great deal of it, writing her objections freely over the pages of Lawrence's manuscript. She also summarised her criticisms of this chapter on four separate pages which she later gave to Lawrence.²² In her memoir Jessie complained that once he had reached the 'treatment of Mrs. Morel and Miriam' he posted the pages of manuscript to her rather than bring them in person, because: 'he burked the real issue. It was his old inability to face his problem squarely. His mother had to be supreme, and for the sake of that supremacy every disloyalty was permissible.'²³ But she may have been mistaken about his motive for posting the ensuing pages to her, for between 3 and 8 March Lawrence took the first of his two week-long trips away from Eastwood. It included a visit to Shirebrook to see Alice Dax and her husband: Lawrence's intimate friendship with her was a source for many of the elements in the character 'Clara'.

    On 6 March Lawrence wrote to Edward Garnett from Shirebrook that he was 'very busy indeed at the colliery novel' of which he had written 'two thirds or more', and suggested Garnett might like to see it before it went to Heinemann (i. 371–2). Two coincidences make it possible to deduce which parts of the third manuscript he wrote in Shirebrook: he finished one block of writing-paper and began another, while continuing his practice of using the same paper for correspondence; and then he later transferred two sections of the novel written on these two blocks of paper into the final manuscript, where they have survived. The first section describes Paul's quarrel and reconciliation with Mrs Morel which end chapter VIII in the published novel. It was written on paper also used by Lawrence for letters on 1 March from Eastwood and 4 March from Shirebrook (i. 370–1, nos. 396–7). The second section contains Paul's twenty-first-birthday letter to Miriam, in which he called her a nun. This became the end of chapter IX in the final manuscript, and Lawrence wrote it on paper which he also used for letters of 6 March from Shirebrook and 8 March from Eastwood (i. 371–4, nos. 399–400). On one of these pages Jessie Chambers added in pencil a different description of how Miriam reacted to Paul's letter.²⁴

    At some point during this period Lawrence met and fell in love with Frieda Weekley, whom he was later to marry. In preparation for his planned stay in Germany, he had written to his former college Professor of Modern Languages, Ernest Weekley, for advice 'about a lectureship at a German University'.²⁵ He was invited to lunch on a Sunday early in March and while waiting for the professor to return home, engaged his German wife Frieda in conversation. She recalled in her memoir twenty years later that Lawrence talked of the disillusionment his series of failed relationships with women had brought him; this led to a discussion of Oedipus in which 'understanding leaped through our words'; and later she received a note from Lawrence, saying: 'You are the most wonderful woman in all England.'²⁶ He must soon thereafter have realised that if his trip to Germany coincided with Frieda's forthcoming visit to her family in Metz, he and she would have more freedom to let their new relationship develop – their hectically arranged departure on 3 May was not at the time conceived of as an elopement (i. 386, 391), although it was only a matter of days before Lawrence began to insist that the situation be made known to Frieda's husband (i. 392).

    Lawrence had been busy at the third manuscript of 'Paul Morel' for about a month when on 13 March he wrote to Walter de la Mare, the successor to Frederick Atkinson as Heinemann's reader, 'this novel – it won't be a great success, – wrong sort – should be finished in a month' (i. 375). This suggests he expected to finish it in mid-April. But on 25 March he went to Bradnop in Staffordshire to stay with his old school-friend George Henry Neville until 31 March and according to Jessie Chambers he delivered the last pages of the manuscript to her before leaving for Bradnop. It seems likely that Lawrence's estimate of mid-April was to allow for final revisions after collecting the manuscript on his return from Bradnop, rather than that Jessie had misremembered the date or was mistaken in her belief that the manuscript was complete.²⁷ For she asserts categorically that she read the novel's ending at the time, and her narrative is particularly full at this juncture, because she saw the novel almost exclusively as autobiographical writing and it was the outcome that mattered supremely to her. She hoped that as he wrote Lawrence would achieve such profound understanding of his mother's possessiveness and domination that he would be bound to liberate himself from them; and that this in turn would naturally free him to acknowledge his love for herself.²⁸ But she wrote of her bitter disappointment at Lawrence's betrayal of her in this draft of the novel, not least in its indecisive ending: 'Having utterly failed to come to grips with his problem in real life, he created the imaginary Clara as a compensation. Even in the novel the compensation is unreal and illusory, for at the end Paul Morel calmly hands her back to her husband, and remains suspended over the abyss of his despair.'²⁹

    She recorded in her memoir that she returned the manuscript to Lawrence on the Monday after his return (1 April), but refused to discuss it with him on the grounds that she still felt hurt and he seemed defensive. Instead she gave him 'some notes on minor points'.³⁰ A few documents in her handwriting have survived which may be the 'notes' to which she referred. As well as the marginalia to chapter IX 'First Love' and the associated critical commentary described above, there are some pages in which Jessie tried to drive her points home to Lawrence by the different tactic of writing out three short narratives. One of these, which she entitled 'Easter Monday', was certainly her rewritten version of an episode in Lawrence's third manuscript for she appended a note to her own version, explaining: 'Pages 284–294 really do Paul an injustice. The brutality was not true of that period. If it had been so, subsequent events must have been different. These pages merely suggest something nearer to the actual spirit of the time.' The other two scenes are untitled, but correspond to scenes that occur in the published novel immediately after the description of the Easter Monday hikes, which in the third manuscript had ended chapter IX.³¹ The two untitled scenes may therefore have been new material provided by Jessie at this time, or perhaps, like 'Easter Monday', her revision of Lawrence's text – in which case they would originally have been episodes in a later chapter of the third manuscript, now lost. The 'points' addressed by these three scenes could be described as 'minor' in comparison with Jessie's more radical judgement that: 'the entire structure of the story rested upon the attitude he had adopted. To do any kind of justice to our relationship would involve a change in his attitude towards his mother's influence, and of that I was now convinced he was incapable.'³²

    Lawrence's decision to pass the pages of manuscript on to Jessie Chambers as they were written meant that he had not yet surveyed the whole work and it is reasonable to assume that he now took the opportunity to read and check it. On 3 April he wrote to Garnett: 'I shall finish my Colliery novel this week – the first draft. It'll want a bit of revising. It's by far the best thing I've done' (i. 381). But on the evening of 4 April the first batch of proofs of The Trespasser arrived for correction, and Lawrence decided he must 'wage war on my adjectives' (i. 381). He seems to have made these proofs his priority during the next few days, for when some proofs of poems arrived from Walter de la Mare, who had placed them in the Saturday Westminster Gazette, Lawrence checked and returned them on 11 April, but excused himself from attending to them very closely 'because I am correcting just now the proofs of the Duckworth novel, and my mind is full of prose'. At the same time he took the opportunity to inform de la Mare: 'I have finished in its first form the colliery novel. Now I want to leave it for a month, when I shall go over it again. There are parts I want to change. Shall I send it to you for your opinion now at once, before I do any revising, or shall I pull it close together before you see it?' (i. 383)

    It appears unlikely that Lawrence had done much work on 'Paul Morel' since 4 April, and he evidently no longer felt there was any urgency to deliver the novel to Heinemann. However, if he could contemplate sending it to de la Mare at once he must have written out afresh some or all of the pages of chapter IX which Jessie Chambers had severely defaced. For she had revised the text in handwriting which was sufficiently similar to Lawrence's to be mistaken in places for his; and she had not only deleted whole paragraphs, but added counter-arguments and objections in the margins, several of which accused Lawrence of falsehood. It therefore seems likely that after he had recovered the manuscript from Jessie on 1 April Lawrence spent 2–4 April not merely reading it through but deciding how much more work remained to be done, and making it provisionally presentable. His main conclusion appears to have been that it needed revising more extensively than he could undertake at once. He would therefore have to take it to Germany in May. Despite his intention not to work on the novel for a month, he took it with him on a visit to London 25–8 April, probably in order to show it to Edward Garnett when he and Frieda visited Garnett's home, The Cearne, on Saturday 27 April. For he wrote anxiously to recover part of it from Garnett's home: 'I believe Mrs Weekley after all left those first chapters of my Heinemann novel Paul Morel in your book-room' (i. 388). Garnett may therefore have had an opportunity to read at least part of the novel at this time; he returned it to Lawrence by 1 May (i. 389).

    Lawrence's first week in Germany must have been one of the most extraordinary in his life, as he and Frieda began the process of bringing themselves – as well as her husband

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1