"Sons & Lovers" by D.H. Lawrence

Author> 1885-1930, died of TB, books banned for sexuality

note> 1st great Freudian Oedipal allegory

intro> "While ever it lives, the fire of sex, which is the source of beauty & anger, burns in us beyond our understanding...Sex and beauty are on thing, like flame and fire....If you hate sex you hate beauty. Lawrence wanted through sex to understand beauty, through beauty, mystery, through mystery spirituality - Lawrence defined this as intuition, his talent for writing

p.xviii> "...the anvil on which I hammered myself out" - re: childhood friend

p.xix> Lawrence conceived the novel during his own mother's terminal illness

note> modernism - loosening plot constraints and character development, more emotional language, Joyce & Lawrence

note> Part One - Victorian social realism......Part Two - Romantic, sexual, symbolic

note> he aimed for sublime/spiritual....deep need of Brits as seen by Lawrence

p.8> "Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were, slurred over." Mrs. Morel

p.28> "...after a time the child too melted with her in the mixing pot of moonlight, and she rested with the hills, the lilies, and houses, all swum together in a kind of swoon." - Pregnant w/ Paul

p.15> "...he saw a drop of blood fall from the averted wound into the baby's fragile, glistening hair. Fascinated he watched the heavy dark drop hang in the glistening cloud pull down the gossamer. Another drop. He watched, fascinated, feeling it soak in - then finally his manhood broke."

p.71>" He was an outsider. He had denied the God in him..."

p.135> Visit to Leiver's farm, lush description of countryside, romantic, lover-like relationship between Paul and his mother

note> part one ends with William's death and the rebirth of mother's life and maternal love during Paul's illness....again, floral images for love in walk to Leivers, Paul/Wm/Lily in fields of flowers, and Father bringing tulips to Paul when he was ill, dying, then he recover............beauty/love/nature/life

PART TWO

p.159> "...such women as treasure religion inside of them, inclined to be mystical, breathe it in their nostrils, and see the whole of life in a mist thereof" - Miriam and her mother

p. 168> sexual innuendo, "thrusts" of the swing, "...in his hands"

p.169> spiritual reference - "...it's because there s scarcely any shadow in it, its more shimmery, as if I'd painted the shimmering protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer is inside really." - Paul, painting @ sunset, to Miriam

p.173> Miriam tempts Paul w/ apple....the Garden of Eden reference.....knowledge is evil

p.176-177> sexual tension - Paul & Miriam "into the wood"

p.183> "She could very rarely get into human relations with anyone, so her friend, her companion, her lover, was Nature." - Miriam

p.184> "annunciation", Miriam realizes her love

p.185> Easter excursion - "In that atmosphere Miriam's soul came into a glow. Paul was afraid of the things he mustn't do; he was sensitive to the feel of the place....Her soul expanded into prayer beside him. He felt the strange fascination of shadowy religious places. All his latent mysticism quivered into life. She was drawn to him...He was a prayer along with her."

p.208> "But there, it's autumn....everybody feels like a disembodied spirit then"

p.210> "Recklessness is almost a man's revenge on his woman. He feels he is not valued, so he will risk destroying himself to deprive her altogether."

p.223> "All his passion, all his wild blood went into this intercourse with her, when he talked and conceived his work. She brought forth to him his imaginations. She did not understand any more than a woman understands when she conceives a child in her womb. But this was life for her and him."

p.257> "You'll find you're always tumbling over the things left behind you."

p.269> "A son's a son 'til he takes him a wife , but a daughter's my daughter the whole of her life."

p.315> "To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort...to live effortless, a kind of curious sleep....that is very beautiful I think; that is our after life - our immortality."

p.341> Sexual innuendo - "cucumber"

note> conflict between spiritual & physical love

?> Is it enough to be loved? Does that engender love?