D. H. Lawrence The Dover Reader

D. H. Lawrence The Dover Reader (Sons and Lovers)
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Description:
"D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) created controversial works that explore the dehumanizing effects of modern life. But in his lifetime the novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist was regarded as little more than a pornographer. Today Lawrence is praised for his artistic vision as well as his integrity, and his books and other writings rank among the English literary canon. This anthology presents the complete text of Lawrence's masterpiece, Sons and Lovers. Additional features include an essay, "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious," and the short stories "The Prussian Officer," "Odour of Chrysanthemums," and "England, My England." Additional selections include "Snake" and other poems."

This anthology is part of The Dover Reader Series, a way of providing cheap, accessible access to popular and lesser known works by the author. Other authors in The Dover Reader Series include: Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton, Jack London, Edgar Allen Poe and G.K. Chesterton. Because there are so many elements to this anthology, I am only going to give a true review Sons and Lovers. However, overall, I really enjoyed D.H. Lawrence The Dover Reader – it has good accompaniments, and is good for someone who hasn’t read much of D.H. Lawrence.

Sons and Lovers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This story follows Paul Morel who has many ambivalent relationships. It follows Morel from his birth, which seems to be the standard format for 19th/early 20th century novels.

The main theme to this book, which is probably obvious, is relationships. Although Lawrence was lampooned as a ‘pervert’ there is not a lot of sex, it is mainly implied. Most of the ‘action’ tends to be in the psychological tensions, what is left unsaid and thoughts about the relationship from both the ‘insiders’ and the ‘outsiders’. Morel’s relationship with his mother is proto-Freudian and I am left wondering about the type of ‘kisses’ that Lawrence is referring to – certainly no one else in the book had such an ‘affectionate’ relationship with their parent.

When I read Wuthering Heights, the only thing I didn’t like are the passages with the Scottish dialect as it was hard to understand what he was saying. There is quite a bit of dialect in this book, but, for me at least, it was easier to understand. When I struggled I just read it aloud/mouthed it phonetically and it was OK. As a side note, “mater” is in Maurice by E.M. Forster so I am guessing it was common slang for ‘mother’ like ‘Mum’ is today?

I have to admit that Part 1 was better than Part 2. I found Part 2 hard to follow, it was unclear who the ‘she’ Morel was talking too. Chronologically, I found it hard to follow. Morel’s age goes back and forth, in one section he is 22 and another he is 24 and then later on he is 22 again. I think Lawrence focuses on a special aspect of Morel’s life and then goes to another aspect, going back in time.

Generally, the plot isn’t that predictable also looking back there is some foreshadowing. There are many lines that I enjoyed in this book. Some parts are quite witty (e.g. the part about people carving their name as a poor way of achieving immortality and "Love-tokens") and some parts are quite insightful. Having finished Sons and Lovers, I am left wandering what it was Morel was searching for in his relationships. I did enjoy the ending however, it is the kind that leaves way for a second book because we don’t know whether Morel’s future is happy or sad. Overall I enjoyed reading this book but it wasn’t as enjoyable as Of Human Bondage Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham and so for that reason it is a respectable 4 out of 5 stars.

Book Facts Publication Date: 2015 Pages: 512 Publisher: Dover Thrift Editions Cover:

D. H. Lawrence: The Dover Reader is an anthology of the writing of D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence was a writer of non-fiction, novels, short stories, and poetry. He also painted, translated, and was a literary critic. His writing shook post-Victorian England. He saw modernizing and industrial growth as dehumanizing and concentrated more on the human element. His most famous work Lady Chatterley's Lover was heavily censored when it was published in 1928. When it was released in 1946, uncensored, Penguin Books in Britain was brought up on obscenity charges. The charges were dismissed and today the book would not even have made a ripple in the moral fabric.

This Dover edition includes Sons and Lovers as its anchor which is a solid work and one that does not first come to mind when thinking of Lawrence. It is followed up with several excellent short stories. These seem complete in their format and do not leave the reader wanting closure or looking for the complete story. The poetry section is well done. Lawrence keeps with the more classical format. The poem “Snake” is a remarkable human experience with nature and regret when societal norms have the poet act outside of his personal feelings. The collection closes with writings on psychoanalysis. Not being a student of psychology, I found this section a bit beyond my interests, but it does show the well-roundedness of Lawrence’s work and education. In the modern world of specialization, Lawrence comes through as a man who explored and took in everything.

This anthology presents a broad look at Lawrence’s work. In the ebook edition, the index allows the reader to jump to different sections, chapters, and individual poems. Although free editions of these books exist, they are machine transferred and full of inaccuracies and odd characters. The Dover edition presents a properly formatted ebook that is error free and allows for the full feature functioning in your e-reader or reading application. Another outstanding anthology, and recommended for those needing an introduction of Lawrence or wanting to expand beyond a single novel.

Dover Thrift released the newest collection of D.H. Lawrence’s most prominent work in January of 2015 entitled D.H. Lawrence The Dover Reader. The compilation includes his full length novel: Sons and Lovers as well as a variety of short stories, poems and a work of nonfiction entitled Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.

Lawrence, known in his time for the perverse and, often, sexual nature of his writing incurred the descriptor of scandalous throughout his life. He is best known for his novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, though his other works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have come to receive great acclaim as well.

In this Dover Thrift Edition of D.H. Lawrence’s work, The Prussian Officer, published in 1914, is a pointed example of the scandalous themes and ideas that led Lawrence’s work to be banned throughout the world. The short story focuses on a military captain who has sexual feelings for his orderly, and treats him monstrously out of jealousy for the orderly’s relationship with his girlfriend, as well as out of spite and anger for the captain’s own feelings. An exemplar of Lawrence’s work, the story ends in revenge, tragedy and irony.

In his poem Snake, published in 1920, Lawrence moves on to discuss social and religious ideas. Delving into matters of social class, Lawrence focuses on the lack of reverence those in the upper echelon of society have for those in the middle and low classes. Those below, though, tend to look upon those above like gods, and Snake is a stark outcry against this perpetuated a system. Lawrence further draws in religious imagery to illustrate the eternal battle between good and evil that pervades existence from the Bible to our current state.

Finally, Lawrence’s Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, first published in 1921, is actually a critique of Freudian as well as contemporary scientific theory on the nature of sex. A fundamental work for understanding Lawrence’s philosophy and the backdrop for much of his fictional work, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious is a perfect conclusion to the Dover Thrift Edition.

I am a fan of the Dover Reader anthology series.

The Dover D. H. Lawrence Reader ($6) is an anthology including the complete text of one of my favorite novels, Sons and Lovers, the superb short stories, “The Prussian Officer,” “Odour of Chrysanthemums,” and “England, My England,” poems, and the essay, “Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.”

I recently reread Sons and Lovers, Lawrence’s elegant autobiographical third novel, a study of Lawrence’s parents’ marriage, of the too-strong bond between Lawrence and his mother, and his attempts to break away with other women.

Lawrence is one of the most brilliant, lyrical writers of the 20th century, and his explorations of the relationships between men and women are brilliant. I very much admire his sympathetic portraits of strong women characters: in this novel, there are Mrs. Morel, Paul’s mother; Miriam, Paul’s religious, thoughtful, bookish friend, and Clara, a suffragette who has left her husband. And of course Paul, a charming man with a sense of humor who is also a painter, fascinates all three.

In the first chapter, “The Early Married Life of the Morels,” we meet Mrs. Morel, the bright, quick, pretty middle-class woman who is 31 years old and has been married to a coarse, handsome coal miner for eight years. She loved him deeply, but he is unreliable, often takes a drinking holiday, and squanders their money. She is in charge of the house, but being alone with the children and housework is tedious. She is very attached to her oldest son, William, who is very excited about a local fair. She allows him to go alone, and later takes her toddler, Annie; he eagerly gives her a gift of egg cups painted with roses. She feels heavy and hot, because she is pregnant.

Marriage has not fulfilled her. Her sexy husband too often stays out late.

"She went indoors, wondering if things were never going to alter. She was beginning by now to realise that they would not. She seemed so far away from her girlhood, she wondered if it were the same person walking heavily up the back garden at the Bottoms, as had run so lightly on the breakwater at Sheerness, ten years before."

Despite her brooding, she is a great mother to her children. She has two more, the artistic Paul, and the cheerful youngest son, Arthur. The children dislike their father, who is unreliable and sometimes drunk. The intelligent William defends their mother against Morel’s violence. Mrs. Morel is proud of William, a clerk who studies Latin late at night and teaches at the night school. She is desolated when he moves to London and falls in love with a superficial, prettty young woman. After he dies of a sudden illness, Mrs. Morel transfers her affections to Paul.

Lawrence brilliantly describes Paul’s work day in his early teens as a junior clerk in Nottingham at “Jordan and Sons–Surgical appliances.” He soon enjoys his tasks, from writing invoices to wrapping up prosthetic limbs, and on his breaks likes to visit and sketch the women working downstairs. They are all fond of him, especially Fanny, the sweet hunchback who organizes the group purchase of paints for his birthday.

Paul loves women, but none can compare with Mrs. Morel, who very much dislikes his first girlfriend, Miriam, an intense, religious, farm girl who loves books a much as Paul does. Miriam is based on Lawrence’s first girlfriend, Jessie Chambers, who had a strong influence on his writing and gave suggestions for the early draft of Sons and Lovers.

Paul and Miriam meet once a week at the library, sometimes go to chapel together, intensely discuss books, and tramp through the fields and woods admiring beautiful flowers. Miriam and Paul are well-suited intellectually, but Miriam is afraid of sex (and, let’s face it, she is hardly fixed up for birth control). Ironically, years later, she loves him so much that she does have sex with him. After a few weeks of this, he drops her, and moves in on Miriam’s friend, Clara, a statuesque married young suffragette whose breasts and shoulders are beautiful. Clara is all sex, just as Miriam is all spirit. (Clara was based on Louie Barrows, to whom he was briefly engaged.)

It’s the old Madonna/whore thing, I know.

When Mrs. Morel is diagnosed with cancer, this is devastating to Paul, Annie, and their younger brother, Arthur. She is terribly ill, and she hangs on and on. The morphia does not really relax her. They cannot believe that she takes so long dying. Eventually Paul and Annie decide to dump a fatal dose of morphia into her drink. She complains that it tastes bitter; it still takes a few days for her to die. Mrs. Morel’s death enables Paul to break with Clara, who has already begun to bore him. She will go back to her husband. But what will the future hold for angry, lonely Paul?

Miriam thinks she might have a chance to win him back.

"Oh, why did he not take her? Her very soul belonged to him Why would not he take what was his. She had bourne so long the cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him."

But Paul does not want her much. He will not follow his mother to death; he will not follow Miraim to spirtituality; or Clara to sex gradually beoming humdrum.

The ending is ambiguous.

This is a brilliant, intense, poetic, often frustrating novel. Lawrence gets the difficult relationships just right. Paul does not know what he wants. The women do. (And isn’t it the way it is?)

Lawrence has an unfortunate reputation for sexism, but I don’t read it that way. Lawrence seems to me to draw characters both men and women who are fascinating, flawed, and sexually ambivalent. Who gets what he or she wants? Rupert and Ursula in Women in Love.

Meanwhile, Sons and Lovers is a masterpiece. He is also a masterly short story writer and poet.