Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

I am currently about one third of the way through this book, and just wanted to post some passages I liked so far.

This book is about a man who loves his mother and his wife.  The question is, can he love his wife wholeheartedly while at the same time holding a similar love for his mother?  The main character Paul develops an intense love for his mother as a result of empathizing with her situation as a hardworking mother who is in a loveless marriage with an uncouth miner.  In essence, he’s a mama’s boy.

The book begins with character development.  D.H. Lawrence explains how Paul’s mother and father met and got along as newlyweds, and then describes the family life.

Here are the passages I liked:

There was the halt, the wistfulness about the ensuing year, which is like autumn in a man’s life.  His wife was casting him off, half regretfully, but relentlessly; casting him off and turning now for love and life to the children.  Henceforward he was more or less a husk.  And he himself acquiesced, as so many men do, yielding their place to their children. (53)

And Morel [Paul's father] sitting there, quite alone, and having nothing to think about, would be feeling vaguely uncomfortable.  His soul would reach out in its blind way to her and find her gone.  he felt a sort of emptiness, almost like a vacuum in his soul.  He was unsettled and restless.  Soon he could not live in that atmosphere, and he affected his wife.  Both felt an oppression on their breathing when they were left together for some time.  Then he went to bed and she settled down to enjoy herself alone, working, thinking, living. (53)

Ordinary fold seemed shallow to them, trivial and inconsiderable.  And so they were unaccustomed, painfully uncouth in the simplest social intercourse, suffering, and yet insolent in their superiority.  Then beneath was the yearning for the soul-intimacy to which they could attain because they were too dumb, and every approach to close connection was blocked by their clumsy contempt of other people.  They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse. (165)

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