“Paul was dissatisfied with himself and with everything. The deepest of his love belonged to his mother. When he felt he had hurt her, or wounded his love for her, he could not bear it. Now it was spring, and there was battle between him and Miriam. This year he had a good deal against her. She was vaguely aware of it. The old feeling that she was to be a sacrifice to this love, which she had had when she prayed, was mingled in all her emotions. She did not at the bottom believe she ever would have him. She did not believe in herself primarily: doubted whether she could ever be what he would demand of her. Certainly, she never saw herself living happily through a lifetime with him. She saw tragedy, sorrow, and sacrifice ahead. And in sacrifice she was proud, in renunciation she was strong, for she did not trust herself to support everyday life. She was prepared for the big things and the deep things, like tragedy. It was the sufficiency of the small day-life she could not trust.” — (Lawrence, D.H., Sons and Lovers, New York: Viking, 1913, 25^th Printing 1971, p.215-16)

Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence is one of those modern novels which took the world by storm and shook the very foundations of conventional thought and idea as the things came to just as a shock we could never think of and we looked back in disgust, bewilderment, shame, anger and astonishment, something of it seemed so psychological, something as fictional and pleasure-giving, something as sociological, dark and primitive, something as mystical and mythical which we could not refute from to be accepted.

The novel grapples with the inner dark space of man where the things lie in a crude form of sensations and impressions reeking from. The consciousness layers are like the pits of mining, the dark consciousness, the sub-consciousness stage and the unconscious state. When we speak, we try to weigh the words internally to put them down consciously, socially. What to say about the raw and crude things of delving? The problem lays with the title, changing the rough draft from Paul Morel to Sons and Lovers. Sons as lovers, how the hint and suggestion applied to? Is it not a fictional tribute to his mother? If the class conflict takes on the family, what to say about it? The conflict between the middle class and the labor class, uncouth and drunken behavior and middle-class delicacy and refinement took a toll upon. From the mother side he inherited his education but from the father’s side came drunkenness to make one see him awe-struck, but apart from something lay in robust humanism to be learnt from father. The author tried to see it all through the prism of psychology and man-woman relationship. Possessive love, male domination, labor class culture, sexual mysticism, psychological delving into the layers of consciousness, pull of flesh and blood contact and man-woman relationship take over the fiction and the narrative of the novel with a flowery prose and poetic diction never told so beautifully. The scent of blood, pure passion, hot breaths, roses singing, whiffs of fancy and imagination and mystical love strike us magically.

Lawrence wanted to be a poet but turned to fiction which was, but his sheer luck and the language of his poetry got shifted to his prose endowing it with sexual mysticism, the flowery language endowing with religious mysticism. Had the writers not given clue, we would have come to know. Though he refuses to accept but is Freudian no doubt and the influence of Greek tragedies cannot be ruled out as the time had been of Freud, Marx and Bergson. The critiques of F.R. Leavis, J.W. Beach and Keith Sagar help us in assessing him apart from many studies which have come up taking him biographically and personally. The extracts of the literary letters also shed a light on his ideas and drafts, the plans and schemes of things, the synopsis and the proposal.

The novel when it saw the light of the day or it went through rough drafts, it drew the criticism of the moral critics who termed it illicit, immoral, incestuous and devastating as for the Oedipus complex it dealt with, delving into the darker self of man, laying it bare, denoting our latent emotions and passions and was in the eye of the storm, the trouble brewing as for controversies it stoked, our ethics it debunked. The problem lies with the title, Sons and Lovers, how can it be that a mother will select her growing sons as lovers one by one? Labor class culture, abnormal mindscape, poverty and squalor all foreshadowed his career, brought on to a trail of ruin smoking life with the residues of burnt dreams. The novel was barbered and pruned to make it suitable, scissored and tailored, but the radar of the mind catches it when something passes over as a phenomenon, the screen of the heart sends waves. The electromagnetic field of love is so amazing and sensational that it becomes difficult to analyze it logically.

Man-woman relationship is the chief attraction of the novel and satisfaction in sex is the urge it deals with. How is our screen of consciousness? How do impressions and sensations keep going over we do not know it. The mother advises to love the sexually dissatisfied women and the widows rather than the unmarried women.

Sons and Lovers as a novel deals with sexual mysticism, possessive love, male domination, dark relationship in a very subjective way recording our impressions. Flesh and blood are wiser than intellect, this forms the basis, and our consciousness layers are repositories of emotions and feelings. A novel of the psychoanalytical trend, it is a plunge into the dark layers of consciousness. In a very flowery language, he describes the pull and counter-pull of consciousness, the story of our sexual attachment; the intricacies of man-woman relationship. But attraction and repulsion, love and hate spoil the drama as because the mother teaches him to love the body, not the soul, but the son wants to love the soul. Her mother meets him at a dance party where the father fakes his identity, which she comes to know later on that he is just somehow literate. But when social rift, drunken behavior, brawl, bout and quarrel disturb her life, children become a party to that and in the absence of the husband, the void created by, she starts choosing her sons one by one emotionally. She advises her sons not to love the unmarried women, but the married women, especially sexually dissatisfied women. Physical love is a true kind of love. Love is not a meeting of thirsty souls, but of hungry bodies. The flame of the soul will lick it up if one keeps thinking of love just and acts it not. To be a lover is to be a lover of the body, not the soul and if you have to love, love the body, not the soul, this is the message which Lawrence gives to, passes it on in his novels. Woman is a sucker of the soul.

Sons and Lovers, the problem is with the title, how can the sons be lovers? This is really awkward and disgusting to feel about. The actual thing is this that our basic things are so. As the men we are but animals and animal instincts are a part of our life. We live by passion, emotion and feeling. It is but intellect which differentiates us from animals. The other thing is this that poverty, squalor, scarcity of resources, scarcity of things and dissatisfaction in sex paint a different picture of life. The last and most important thing about this novel is that sexual dissatisfaction and its impact, how it can mar a family, has been herein this novel of emotional tribute.

Lawrence as a novelist is a disputed genius who is at once so controversial, so autobiographical the moment we sit to read and enjoy him as his is a flowery poetry coming down to us as the recording of one’s sentimental expressions, emotional letting out, laying the onion cover layer by layer. Sexual love and passion is the main thing he is concerned with, the love for the body and the pull of the soul as its inward yearning to possess to be seen in the form of a quiver to be felt, going as a sensation metamorphosing. The burning desire, thirst for love, we cannot negate. The love of the body is all, and life is but around sex. To love the body is to love the soul. Sexual satisfaction is the main and if one is dissatisfied, one will lose the pleasure of life as delight comes from sex. As a miner’s son he is concerned with class consciousness and has written about the fall of middle-class society so engrossed in intellectuality and hypocrisy which, but he abhors it most, for debunking the hollow ethics. He even goes to the extent of questioning marriage, for a savage and primitive life free from social inhibitions. Even though he likes the father for his robust humanism, contact with earth and healthy habits, but cannot side with as often he comes home drunk and engages in scuffles and this is the bone of contention.

As a writer he can be credited with infusing with sexual mysticism which is but another aspect which does he so marvelously well through the use and application of poetic flowery language. One of male domination and possessive love, he describes man-woman relationship, dark consciousness and love for the body. To say it otherwise, Sambhoga to Samadhi, from sex to consummation is the theory of Lawrence who knows nothing but sex and such a thing it is in Osho, we mean in Acharya Rajneesh, the cult man. To talk of Lawrence is to talk of Sigmund Freud and his dream interpretation, to talk of Vatsyayana. Most of the heroines he chooses are either sexually dissatisfied men or widows and his heroes miner heroes, the men of physical prowess, earthly contact, live humor and gossips. Gypsies, hippies, but take center space away from him and he longs for living breast to breast with the cosmos which is but a numen divine. Sculptures in love, sex and contact, had he seen at Ajanta and Ellora and in Konark temple, he would have definitely admired and appreciated.

A novelist he is of the trend of Keats and Hardy, one who goes after love, beauty and sex. To him, bliss comes from sex. Beautiful girls and their appearances, he converts them into the imagery of his characters, shepherd girls, idyllic pastoral romances he loves and likes them, hippies, gypsy lovers he talks of promising fulfillment. Sons and Lovers, the dream book of love, sex, joy and fulfillment, myth and mysticism, man-woman relationship, flesh-blood contact and love-hate theme, how to take it the attraction-repulsion story met in human bonding? How much poetic, lucid, magical, flowery, dreamy, lovely, sensitive, sentimental and mystical is he the writer here in this work of the myth and mysticism of love and sex and dream! A lover of girls, he is but a sucker of the soul; he is but spiritually sick. A lover of Clara and Miriam, he has only known the body of flesh and bones. But dissatisfaction in sex and illicit love-story attach to it otherwise making it controversial and erotic.

The mother advises him to love Clara, who is pure body, love of the physique, but not Miriam as because she is .like a priestess in love, a worshipper and for whom love is simple and innocent, pure and undefiled, just like the Blakian lamb, not the tiger, but on the contrary even he likes her, he fails in going against his mother who rather suggests to take on Clara as because she is not legally separated and is sexually dissatisfied. Clara as a woman is voluptuous and it is that portion where all of his philosophies get consumed. As for Clara chapter, he may be obscene, pornographic and physical and here one can mark the coming of Lady Chatterley. But in the end of the drama, Paul is but a frustrated man who has nowhere to go, so bewildered and at a loss as for taking to the roads of life. Where to go, what to do, crisscross him and leaving it all, he wants to move away. After the death of his mother and the weaning of Clara from him, Paul is but a changed man.

In Miriam, the portrayal of her character lies in the pictures and images of many a girl whom Lawrence took to his liking and felt the attachment for, but the pull of the mother drew him back. In Clara, one may find pictures of the wife of the language teacher with whom he eloped with. His savage pilgrimage, gypsy living with a latent desire to live breast to breast with the cosmos, delving into the dark psyche of man, belief in primitive gods, add a new dimension to his fiction and narrative realms told so lucidly, poetically and magically. The novel has come as a reaction to over intellectualization, over mechanization, over industrialization which he comes to mark it and thinks it about, where will it lead to ultimately? If Hardy is concerned with Essex and it is the locale of his novels, that of Lawrence is Nottinghamshire abuzz with the mines and the miners. The body so full of thrill and sensation is the main point of attraction.

The Defeat of Miriam is one of the most important chapters in the understanding of the novel because it is here where the writer explains why he was drawn to Miriam and why did he abandon her. In her defeat was the defeat of mind, the defeat of intellect, but in the victory of mother was the victory of his mother and Paul.

Sons and Lovers as a novel is about the Oedipus complex, the mother-son fixation, flesh as being wiser than intellect, the gap between labor class culture and refinement and man-woman relationship and at the same time it is so autobiographical, psychological and controversial. The drama of love he has narrated in a novel format using lucid prose. The correspondence he has done with speak about the scheme of things and the plan of his literary work. The mistresses he had in love and relationship too could shed light on his ideas with regard to love and marriage.

It may be that Paul finally sides with the refinement of the mother who is above his father in status and prestige, but he does not fall short of praising his good behaviors, earthly contact and hearty jokes.

“Miriam brooded over his split with her. There was something else he wanted. He could not be satisfied; he could give her no peace. There was between them now always a ground for strife. She wanted to prove him. She believed that his chief need in life was herself. If she could prove it, both to herself and to him, the rest might go; she could simply trust to the future.

So, in May she asked him to come to Willey Farm and meet Mrs. Dawes. There was something he hankered after. She saw him, whenever they spoke of Clara Dawes, rouse and get slightly angry. He said he did not like her. Yet he was keen to know about her. Well, he should put himself to the test. She believed that there were in him desires for higher things, and desires for lower, and that the desire for the higher would conquer. At any rate, he should try. She forgot that her "higher" and "lower" were arbitrary.

He was rather excited at the idea of meeting Clara at Willey Farm. Mrs. Dawes came for the day. Her heavy, dun-colored hair was coiled on top of her head. She wore a white blouse and navy skirt, and somehow, wherever she was, seemed to make things look paltry and insignificant. When she was in the room, the kitchen seemed too small and mean altogether. Miriam's beautiful twilighty parlor looked stiff and stupid. All the Leivers were eclipsed like candles. They found her rather hard to put up with. Yet she was perfectly amiable, but indifferent, and rather hard.”  -- (Ibid, p.228-9)

Let us see how the incidents and occasions make up for the breakup and the tie up with Clara, coming events cast their shadows before. Lawrence in the character of Paul wants it not Miriam a lover of the soul, a priestess of love, but Cara who is but a lover of the body as love is in sex satisfaction. A soul lit with the fire of sex burning his within can never be at peace with him and his self.

“Clara sat in the cool parlor reading. He saw the nape of her white neck, and the fine hair lifted from it. She rose, looking at him indifferently. To shake hands, she lifted her arm straight, in a manner that seemed at once to keep him at a distance, and yet to fling something to him. He noticed how her breasts swelled inside her blouse, and how her shoulder curved handsomely under the thin muslin at the top of her arm.” - (Ibid, p.229-30)

“Clara's hat lay on the grass not far off. She was kneeling, bending forward still to smell the flowers. Her neck gave him a sharp pang, such a beautiful thing, yet not proud of itself just now. Her breasts swung slightly in her blouse. The arching curve of her back was beautiful and strong; she wore no stays. Suddenly, without knowing, he was scattering a handful of cowslips over her hair and neck, saying :

"Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.
If the Lord won't have you the devil must."
The chill flowers fell on her neck. She looked up at him, with almost pitiful, scared grey eyes, wondering what he was doing. Flowers fell on her face, and she shut her eyes.
Suddenly, standing there above her, he felt awkward.
"I thought you wanted a funeral," he said, ill at ease.
Clara laughed strangely, and rose, picking the cowslips from her hair. She took up her hat and pinned it on. One flower had remained tangled in her hair. He saw, but would not tell her. He gathered up the flowers he had sprinkled over her.
At the edge of the wood the bluebells had flowed over into the field and stood there like floodwater. But they were fading now. Clara strayed up to them. He wandered after her. The bluebells pleased him.
"Look how they've come out of the wood!" he said.
Then she turned with a flash of warmth and of gratitude.
"Yes," she smiled.
His blood beat up.
"It makes me think of the wild men of the woods, how terrified they would be when they got breast to breast with the open space."
"Do you think they were?" she asked.
"I wonder which was more frightened among old tribes — those bursting out of their darkness of woods upon all the space of light, or those from the open tiptoeing into the forests."
"I should think the second," she answered.
"Yes, you do feel like one of the open space sort, trying to force yourself into the dark, don't you?"
"How should I know?" she answered queerly.
The conversation ended there.”  (Ibid, 238-9)

The Release tells up about the emancipation Paul needed when his mother too would be gone and counting her sick days and this happened to with him and as for her he could not enter into a lasting relationship with Clara as because the pull of mother was so strong and he liked it not to let him go out of her hands and that Paul too was so close to her emotionally. The relationship with Miriam too could not flourish to fruition as she was an unmarried girl and so had moved away from him after a great tryst with, coming to grapple with emotionally.

“Paul felt crumpled up and lonely. His mother had really supported his life. He had loved her; they two had, in fact, faced the world together. Now she was gone, and forever behind him was the gap in life, the tear in the veil, through which his life seemed to drift slowly, as if he were drawn towards death. He wanted someone of their own free initiative to help him. The lesser things he began to let go from him, for fear of this big thing, the lapse towards death, following in the wake of his beloved. Clara could not stand for him to hold on to. She wanted him, but not to understand him. He felt she wanted the man on top, not the real him that was in trouble. That would be too much trouble to her; he dared not give it her. She could not cope with him. It made him ashamed. So, secretly ashamed because he was in such a mess, because his own hold on life was so unsure, because nobody held him, feeling unsubstantial, shadowy, as if he did not count for much in this concrete world, he drew himself together smaller and smaller. He did not want to die; he would not give in. But he was not afraid of death. If nobody would help, he would go on alone.” - (Ibid, p.367-8)

The chapter named Clara is given to the voluptuous, amorous character under discussion because she is that character to whom the hero is attracted and his mother suggests him to be with her, but the situation worsens when a fight begins with her husband and his mother wants it not to consummate it into a deeper relationship of some longer intimacy. It is also a fact that Clara is not legally divorced from her husband. Would it be good to take her for a liking? Would it be correct to take her along?

“Paul and his mother now had long discussions about life. Religion was fading into the background. He had shovelled away all the beliefs that would hamper him, had cleared the ground, and come more or less to the bedrock of belief that one should feel inside oneself for right and wrong, and should have the patience to gradually realize one's God. Now life interested him more.” - (Ibid, p.256)

“He was like so many young men of his own age. Sex had become so complicated in him that he would have denied that he ever could want Clara or Miriam or any woman whom he knew. Sex desire was a sort of detached thing, that did not belong to a woman. He loved Miriam with his soul. He grew warm at the thought of Clara, he battled with her, he knew the curves of her breast and shoulders as if they had been molded inside him; and yet he did not positively desire her. He would have denied it forever. He believed himself really bound to Miriam. If ever he should marry, sometime in the far future, it would be his duty to marry Miriam. That he gave Clara to understand, and she said nothing, but left him to his courses. He came to her, Mrs. Dawes, whenever he could. Then he wrote frequently to Miriam and visited the girl occasionally. So, he went on through the winter; but he seemed not so fretted. His mother was easier about him. She thought he was getting away from Miriam.

Miriam knew now how strong was the attraction of Clara for him; but still she was certain that the best in him would triumph. His feeling for Mrs. Dawes — who, moreover, was a married woman — was shallow and temporal, compared with his love for herself. He would come back to her, she was sure; with some of his young freshness gone, perhaps, but cured of his desire for the lesser things which other women than herself could give him. She could bear all if he were inwardly true to her and must come back.

He saw none of the anomaly of his position. Miriam was his old friend, lover, and she belonged to Bestwood and home and his youth. Clara was a newer friend, and she belonged to Nottingham, to life, to the world. It seemed to him quite plain.” - (Ibid, 276)

At the end of the novel Paul is but a frustrated man raked by internal crisis as had no option left with, he felt it miserable and hopeless as had nowhere to go after the death of his mother.

The concluding stanza of the novel presents him in a pitiable state with nowhere to go. Let us pick it up from Derelict:

“ "Mother!" he whispered — "mother!"

She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her.

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.” - (Ibid, p.420)

Of the novelists whom we read and study, peruse and analyze for pleasure and profit, reading and appraisal, D.H. Lawrence is a single one who is so controversial and disputed, autobiographical and sociological, psychological and primitive, mystical and penetrating at the time we sit to go by, telling about the emotional crisis he suffered, the life he saw, came to view taking to subjectivity and personality in art with a recording of sensations and impressions and telling what it goes at the consciousness levels. A writer of pulls and counter pulls of consciousness, he tries to delve deep into the consciousness layers to find the fictional truths stitching which he has woven the tales of life and the textures of his novels so privately and so personally in a very psychological way for which he is famous for. The dark layers of consciousness; it is difficult to dip into the pits of it, it is also difficult to deal with the emotional crisis arising out of familial intricacies and complexities of relationship. What we think at the psychic level, what it goes psychologically, what the mind wants, what it the heart wants, it is troublesome to penetrate deep into. Man-woman relationship so passionate and complex is it all to tell it about.

A master artist of flesh and blood contact, attraction and repulsion, love and hate theme, give and take syndrome, he is earthly, physical and worldly rooted in soil. To read him to feel the scent of blood, bodily contact; things draped in blood smell and lustrous contact. The scent of rose, how sensuous and sensual is it! Possessive love, male domination and masculine vindication, this is the ultimate of Lawrentine studies, a mind steeped in sexuality, primitive consciousness, psychological space and labor class syndrome with a special impetus on bodily relationship and sex satisfaction.

After reading it we can feel that he is heavily under Freud, Marx and Bergson whether he accepts it or not. Contextual to mention, traces of abnormal psychology can also be marked as these can be related to psychological and sociological disorders to be felt abounding in our personal lives and whose instances lie in a plenty. An adorer of gypsy life and living he has not left it at all with a view to living with the cosmos breast-to-breast, a sunworshipper he is a lover of the dark primitive gods and that his life is a savage pilgrimage we cannot negate, deny it all. To him, woman is a sucker of soul as she wants to suck it out. The burn-out of love can never be bandaged if satisfaction comes to not, but where does it come from? Satisfaction comes from sex. Delight comes from it not from material pleasures.

What is in it that he wrote about that he jolted with? A novel of the modern age he saw the transitional time, the social and industrial movements, disparities in society, just as a tender boy perceiving it all with his utter sensibility and sensitivity, taking in his way normally or abnormally, going by instincts and impulses as his is a very, very instinctual and impulsive living. He goes at the dictates of impulses and instincts; what do they suggest ?

Sons and Lovers, the dream book of love, sex, joy and fulfillment, myth and mysticism, man-woman relationship, flesh-blood contact and love-hate theme, how to take to it the attraction-repulsion story met in human bonding? How much poetic, lucid, magical, flowery, dreamy, loving, sensitive, sentimental and mystical is the writer here in this work of the myth and mysticism of love and sex and dream! A lover of girls, for him, she is but a sucker of the soul. The other side too is that he is spiritually sick. A lover of Clara and Miriam, he has only known the body of flesh and bones. But dissatisfaction in sex and illicit love-story attach to it otherwise making it controversial and erotic. He is immoral too when he coaxes to love the sexually dissatisfied women and the widows.

The myth of love, how to narrate it? How is the folklore of it? Lawrence seeks to know where is this mechanization, intellectualization leading to, where are we reaching to going ultimately? Sons as lovers repels us as and when we sit to take it up because how can it be that a mother choosing her sons for emotional fulfilment?