Sons and Lovers: David Herbert Lawrence's Novel of Love, Sex, and Family Dynamics, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica Sons and Lovers: David Herbert Lawrence's Novel of Love, Sex, and Family Dynamics e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer, poet, playwright, essayist and painter, born in Eastwood in 1885. He was the son of an illiterate miner and a former religious teacher. The mother fought a lot with the father to get a good education and education for the children, because she did not want them to go to the mine. After his studies in Nottingham, he began to work but due to pneumonia he had to quit early. In 1907 he published in the Nottinghamshire Guardian. His mother died in 1910. In 1911 he published his first novel, "The white peacock", and in 1912 his second, "The trespasser". In the same year he fled to Italy with the wife of a professor at the University of Nottingham, Frieda von Richthofen, who contributed to the maturation of his personality and his art. The escape in Italy also represents the search for a type of life and an environment closer to nature. In Italy, Lawrence began a fruitful literary activity by writing many stories, poems and novels, including "Sons and lovers". Two years later, he was expelled from England on suspicion of treason because of his connection to a woman of an enemy nationality. In 1914 Lawrence returned to London and married Frieda, who in the meantime had obtained a divorce from her husband. The war period was marked by many difficulties. After the outbreak of the First World War he stayed with his wife in various English towns, including Cornwall, from where the couple was expelled in October 1917 for his pacifism and her German nationality. He wrote the work "The Rainbow" which is censored because it is considered disgusting for sexual references. In 1919 Frieda and Lawrence left England again and went to live first in Italy, then in Australia, Mexico and again in Italy. Here Lawrence wrote his most famous novel "Lady Chatterley’s Lover". He discovered that he had tuberculosis and was admitted to the sanatorium in Venice. He died on 2 March 1930. Lawrence is a revolutionary force in the English novel because of his view of life, his fight against the mechanical and artificial aspects of industrial civilisation and his penetrating analysis of relations between sexes. He was deeply concerned with emotional life and considered man as a mixture of culture and biology, of natural impulses and instincts. Of all the natural impulses, the sexual one is the strongest, so only a new type of relationship between men and women based on sensual passions and sexuality can save humanity from self-destruction. Sex and history are in Lawrence two different aspects of the same reality. He considered woman only as an instrument for mankind’s happiness, in fact his female characters are often sensitive girls who are aware of the essential “otherness” of their partners, whose intellectual and sexual supremacy they accept. «Those who go looking for love, manifest only their lack of love. And the person without love never finds love, only lovers find love. And they must never look for it». For Lawrence love is a mystical experience, a liberating force that transports from self-awareness to communion with the unknown and mysterious power that governs the universe. Lawrence was convinced that science and abstract knowledge were far from the true source of life (that dark world of the unconscious made of natural instincts, impulses and desires). His novels almost always reflect the dichotomy between realized and unrealized men, between a "blood consciousness", rooted in the unconscious, and the "mental consciousness", which divides the human being. Knowledge is an obscurely untranslatable certainty in words. Lawrence employed the traditional omniscient narrator, yet limiting the authorial interventions to the minimum. the point of view is generally the one of the characters. SONS AND LOVERS The book is divided into 4 parts: PART 1 "Hell Row" is a set of cottages where there are coal miners' houses because they work nearby. The Carston, Waite and Co. Company was established to expand operations and build more houses for miners. In one of these houses goes to live the Morel family: the miner Walter, his wife Gertrude (pregnant) and 2 children, William 7 years old and Anne 5 years old. Gertrude is unhappy with her married life because her husband also worked nights in a bar, but drank himself drunk, using all his salary money. Gertrude knew that she could not afford another child, even though her children were her only reason for life and happiness. Gertrude came from a good religious family, and her father was an engineer. She met Walter when she was 23, and she was attracted to the boy’s diversity from her father. They married the next Christmas and she was very happy for several months, until she discovered all the lies told by her husband. Gertrude quarreled a lot with her husband because he was irresponsible: for example, he mocked his employers and his salary was lowered. Once he even locked her out of the house after a fight. The third child is born. One night, Gertrude escapes to a cricket field for a walk with her children after her husband kicks William. At that moment the woman feels at peace and decides to call the baby The newborn Paul, swearing to love him even if born in a family not full of love. Walter finds out he has a disease, and the family helped him a lot. Another son was conceived: Arthur, who is very fond of his father. When William is 13 years old, Gertrude finds a job in an office, but Morel would like him to work in the mine. William also begins to dance and the mother is jealous of all the girls she knows. William later has a job proposal in London, which he accepts, thus showing a great estrangement from his mother. Paul and his mother begin to approach, especially when Paul becomes ill with bronchitis. Paul hated his father and often prayed for his death. At Christmas, William returns home to stay with his family. While Paul makes the connection with Clara’s habit of waiting and weaving, the name also recalls the theme of fidelity in the Odyssey. Penelope kept her suitors at bay for 20 years while waiting for her husband to return, while... Clara is separated from her husband but not legally divorced. -Paul’s reflections on love recall the complaints of his older brother William when he was engaged. Paul thinks he loves Clara when he is with her, is indifferent to her when he is not with her, and often tunes her in when she talks to him. -There is a reversal of the concept of Oedipus: when the mother is sick, Paul rather than kill his father, kills his mother. Although he still owes his mother, he is beginning to realize that he must live without her. -Morel shows his vulnerability after his wife dies, when he waits for Paul to come home, so he’s not alone in the house with the body. THEMES: OEDIPUS COMPLEX: Paul is hopelessly devoted to his mother, and that love often borders on romantic desire. Completing the Oedipal equation, Paul mortally hates his father and often fantasizes about his death. Paul calms his feelings of guilt and incestuous transferring them elsewhere, and the main recipients are Miriam and Clara. However, Paul cannot love either woman as much as he loves his mother, although he does not always realize that this is an impediment to his love life. At the end of the novel, Paul takes an important step to get rid of his Oedipus complex. He intentionally accelerated the death of his mother from an overdose, an act that reduces the mother’s suffering but at the same time frees him from his Oedipal destiny, since he does not kill his father, but his mother. SERVITUDE: Socially, Gertrude feels bound by her status as a woman and by the industrialized society. She complains of feeling "buried alive", a logical lament being married to a miner. Although she has a group of women, she must remain a housewife for a lifetime, and so she is jealous of Miriam, who can use her intellect to have several opportunities. Strangely enough, Paul feels free in his factory work, enjoying the work and company of working-class women, though he still feels that he would prefer to paint. In the novel, much more emphasis is placed on Romantic Slavery. Paul (and William, to a lesser extent) feels connected to his mother, and cannot imagine abandoning her or even marrying someone else. No woman could ever match their mother’s intensity and firmness. REQUEST: Gertrude is jealous of the lovers of her children, and Morel is jealous of his wife. DARKNESS: In the scene where William’s coffin was being carried, words such as: night, darkness, black, candle light are used.. that make an air of tragedy. CONTRADICTIONS AND OPPOSITIONS: Paul oscillates between hatred and love for all the women in his life, including his mother. She often loves and hates at the same time, especially with Miriam. Even Gertrude has some reserve of love for her husband even when she hates him. The characters mate with someone who is quite different from them... Gertrude initially likes the warm and vigorous Morel because he is so far from her, delicate, refined, and intellectual. Paul’s attraction to Miriam concerns her spiritual soulmate, but her desire for sensuality is less intense. Lawrence uses the opposition of the body and mind to expose the contradictory nature of desire. NATURE AND FLOWERS: The characters bond deeply while they are in nature, and the author uses flowers to symbolize the connection between them. However, flowers are sometimes divisive agents, as when Paul is rejected by Miriam’s flattering behavior. The admiration of nature is often in contrast with a deep fear of modern civilisation and of industrialism. STYLE: Sons and Lovers is narrated in third person, but almost all the events are seen through Paul’s eyes.