What I said then:
A refugee from Year 12 Literature. If I hated it enough to never finish it, why the hell have I kept it?
What I say now:
Year 12 (the last year of high school, for any non-Aussies who may be reading) was a long time ago now: 13 years, in fact. I found Sons and Lovers completely obtuse and impenetrable back then, and gave up on it with something close to joy. Over the course of these last 13 years, this book has become monstrous in my mind, my memory turning it from a kinda boring novel into the ultimate test in reading endurance, a test I had failed miserably. I probably kept the damn thing because, while it had won a battle with my seventeen year-old self, I didn't want to admit that it had won the war.
And honestly, it wasn't too bad. Sure, at times it's impenetrable and obtuse, and I can say with complete conviction that I'll never read another D.H. Lawrence novel, but Sons and Lovers isn't without its pleasures, either. You just have to dig for them.
Plot-wise, it's actually a very simple book. Gertrude Morel marries below her station, and quickly falls out of love with her coal-miner husband. She instead lavishes affection on her two eldest sons, who return her obsessive love in kind. Paul, the second son, finds his relationships with women poisoned by his relationship with his mother. His attempts to court first Miriam, a local farmer's daughter, then Clara, a suffragette, and his inevitable returns to his mother's embrace, form the bulk of the novel.
I'm very much a plot/narrative/story lover, and the moments in the book when things were actually happening were by far the highlights for me. The first few chapters, which give a potted history of the Morels' marriage and the childrens' early years, were very good. Unfortunately, the kids grow up to be insufferable bores, and once Paul (who really needs a smack in the head with a wet fish) takes over the novel, it degenerates into a windy, quasi-philosophical head-scratcher. Paul's budding relationship with Miriam, in particular, seems for long stretches to be constructed of nothing but pretentious conversations and air.
This paragraph comes just after Paul has lost his virginity: "To him now life seemed a shadow, a day, a white shadow, night, and death, and stillness, and inaction, this seemed like being. To be alive, to be urgent, and insistent, that was not-to-be. The highest of all was, to melt out into the darkness and sway there, identified with the great Being." I don't know about you, but that might as well be gibberish, for all the meaning I can take out of it.
For all that, though, even the second half of the novel can suddenly surprise you with a moment of wonderful clarity. Pretty much any conversation that Paul has with his mother falls into this category: her character is fairly plain-spoken, and she usually inspires Paul to finally just say what he bloody means in return. Their interactions, and the deftness with which Lawrence sketches the Oedipal perversity of their love for each other, work beautifully.
Another frustration I had was that Paul and Miriam live their lives with such intensity of feeling that they seem to be in a constant state of hysteria. A simple walk down a country lane will have Paul in radiant love with Miriam at one moment, for something as daft as the shape of her arms, then filled with hate for her, when she says something to him in the wrong tone of voice. Their emotions are never moderate, and they change at the drop of a hat, and God, Lawrence drastically overuses the word 'hate.' It's such a bizarre rollercoaster that you stop taking any of their feelings seriously, and their relationship devolves into a sludge of meaningless emotionality.
Also, Lawrence's gender politics, as evidenced by his treatment of Miriam and Clara, is pretty offensive. Yes, he was writing a long time ago, and it's probably not fair to judge him by modern standards, but he makes one of his characters a suffragette then makes her happiness completely dependent on serving a man. It's really kinda gross.
Cheers, JC.
about to read: The Untouchable by John Banville. I get to buy a book! I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy recently and thought it was a masterpiece, so I figured I'd continue with a 'repressed English spies' theme. Banville's novel is a fictionalised take on the Cambridge Five, and I've heard good things about it from several people.
books to go: still 91
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