Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

I identified with almost every single character in this story. Lawrence gets to the heart of our emotions and intents with jaw-dropping honesty. The story offers very little in the way of happiness and much in desolation, but I couldn't put it down. Parts that roused me --

The father comes home:

"Morel, at these times, came in churlish and hateful.
'This is a nice time to come home,' said Mrs. Morel.
'Wha's it matter to yo', what time I come whoam,' he shouted.

And everybody in the house was still, because he was dangerous. He ate his food in the most brutal manner possible, and when he had done, pushed all the pots in a heap away from him, to lay his arms on the table. Then, he went to sleep.

Paul hated his father so. [...] If anyone entered suddenly, or a noise were made, the man looked up and shouted:

'I'll lay my fist about thy y'ead, I'm tellin' thee, if tha doesna stop that clatter. Dost hear!'

And the two last words, shouted in a bullying fashion, usually at Annie, made the family writhe with hate of the man.

He was shut out from all family affairs. No one told him anything. The children, alone with their mother, told her all about the day's happenings, everything. Nothing had really taken place in them, until it was told to their mother. But as soon as the father came in, everything stopped. He was like the scotch in the smooth, happy machinery of the home. And he was always aware of this fall of silence on his entry, the shutting off of life, the unwelcome. But now it was gone too far to alter." (87)

Feelings of protection towards the mother:

"He [the son], in his semi-conscious sleep, was vaguely aware of the clatter of the iron on the iron-stand, of the faint thud, thud on the ironing-board. Once, roused, he opened his eyes to see his mother standing on the hearthrug with the hot iron near her cheek, listening as it were to the heat. Her still face, with the mouth closed tight from suffering and disillusion and self-denial, and her nose the smallest bit on one side, and her blue eyes so young, quick, and warm, made his heart contract with love. When she was quiet, so, she looked brave and rich with life, but as if she had been done out of her rights. It hurt the boy keely, this feeling about her, that she had never had her life's fulfillment: and his own incapablility to make up to her hurt him with a sense of impotence..." (90-91)

other:

"There was warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge it. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see." (260)


(1913. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)