Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Söhne und Liebende
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love close, honest portraits of family life, and anyone curious about class, work and love in industrial England.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Sons and Lovers is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, published in 1913. It follows a family in a Nottinghamshire coal mining village, from a marriage in the nineteenth century into the early years of the twentieth. Lawrence grew up in just such a place, the son of a miner and a former schoolteacher, and he drew on his own home, his own mother and his own early loves to write it. He finished it not long after his mother died, and it reads like a book written to settle accounts with the past.
At its center is Paul Morel, a quick, sensitive boy who loves to draw and who cannot stop watching his mother's moods. Around him are a rough, drinking father, a proud and disappointed mother, brothers and a sister, and two women who each want something different from him. The book asks plain questions that stay with you. What happens to a child who becomes the whole hope of a lonely parent? Can that child ever love someone else freely?
You will get a clear picture of the people, the places and the pressures of the story, and an idea of why readers have argued over it for more than a century. You will also learn how Lawrence builds the book and what to listen for. We begin where the story begins, in a house at the edge of the pits, with a marriage that has already started to go wrong.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A marriage begins in warmth and breaksFree
- 2A mother pours her hopes into her sons
- 3Paul grows up between two worlds
- 4Miriam and the farm offer a different life
- 5Love that cannot settle into peace
- 6Clara brings a new and harsher passion
- 7What the book says about possessive love
- 8Class, work and the pull of the body
- 9How Lawrence tells the story and why it feels so close
Punkt 1 von 9
A marriage begins in warmth and breaks
The story opens in a mining district called the Bottoms, a row of poor houses in the Nottinghamshire coalfield. Gertrude Coppard comes from a respectable, chapel-going family with some education behind it. She is a serious, quick-minded woman who once taught school. At a Christmas party she meets Walter Morel, a miner, warm and laughing, who dances and sings and lives wholly in his body.
She is drawn to that glow, so different from the stiff piety she grew up in. They marry quickly, and for a few months they are happy. Then the facts of the match appear one by one. Walter has debts he never mentioned, and he is not the man of settled habits she imagined.
The gap between them widens in small, hard scenes. Walter drinks with his friends after work and comes home late and rough. Gertrude, left in a small house with a baby on the way, feels the loss of the life she thought she was entering. Lawrence does not make either of them simply right or wrong, and he lets you feel the weight of the money, the work and the damp, crowded rooms.
One early scene shows how bad things can get. After a quarrel, Walter locks his wife out of the house on a moonlit night while she is pregnant. She stands among the white lilies in the garden, shaken and half dizzy with their scent. The picture of the woman, the flowers and the moon returns in other forms later in the book.
This opening matters because everything else grows from it. A woman with unused gifts and a man with no way to speak his feelings cannot give each other what they need. So each of them looks elsewhere, and the children inherit the gap. You should watch how Lawrence uses these early chapters to plant the question of where Gertrude will put her love once her husband has lost it.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Who’s who
- Paul Morel
- A sensitive young artist, Paul is Gertrude and Walter's second son, deeply attached to his mother.
- Gertrude Morel
- Paul's educated, ambitious mother finds her marriage to Walter disappointing and invests her hopes in her children.
- Walter Morel
- Gertrude's husband and the children's father, Walter is a coal miner whose drinking strains their household.
- William Morel
- The eldest Morel son, William carries his mother's ambitions as he pursues clerical work in London.
- Miriam Leivers
- A religious farmer's daughter, Miriam shares Paul's intellectual interests and develops a deeply serious attachment to him.
- Clara Dawes
- Separated from Baxter, Clara supports the women's movement and offers Paul a relationship unlike his bond with Miriam.
- Baxter Dawes
- Clara's estranged husband, Baxter is a factory worker whose resentment places him in conflict with Paul.
- Annie Morel
- The Morels' only daughter, Annie is Paul's sister and a lively ally of their mother.
- Arthur Morel
- The youngest of the four Morel children, Arthur is brother to William, Annie, and Paul.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 166,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 11 h 5 min
- Listening time18 h 25 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Söhne und Liebende
What is Sons and Lovers about?
It follows the Morel family in a Nottinghamshire mining village, focusing on Paul Morel, whose close bond with his mother shapes his love affairs with two very different women. It is about family, class, desire and growing up.
Is Sons and Lovers a true story?
It is a novel, but it draws heavily on Lawrence's own youth in Eastwood, his miner father, his mother and his early romance. Published in 1913, it is often called autobiographical fiction.
What does the title Sons and Lovers mean?
It points to the two roles Paul and his brother must play. They are their mother's sons and they are also lovers of other women, and the book shows how hard it is to be both.
Who are Miriam and Clara in Sons and Lovers?
Miriam Leivers is a shy, devout farm girl who shares Paul's love of books and nature. Clara Dawes is an older, independent woman separated from her husband. Each offers Paul a different kind of love.
Is Sons and Lovers hard to read?
The language is clear and the story is easy to follow. Most readers manage well.