قصة الكتاب :
Sons and Lovers is a book by D.H. Lawrence published in 1913. Although the author published two other books prior to this, it is this almost autobiographical work that remains his most widely read and appreciated. Although this wasn’t the case immediately after its publication, it gained a wider audience in the years that followed and subsequently the privilege of being viewed as a story way ahead of its time. The protagonist is Paul, the second son of Gertrude Morel. Paul’s mother is a strong, intelligent and domineering woman who marries a miner, of lower stature and intellect after a hasty youthful romance. Her marriage is an unhappy one which brings her little satisfaction, as a result of which she pours all her affection and focus on her two sons. She loses the eldest one and then almost loses Paul to an illness, which makes her intensely attached to him. As an adolescent and a budding artist whose talent his mother nurtures, Paul is torn between an almost passionate love that he feels towards his mother and those that he has towards his lovers, Miriam and Clara.\r\n
\r\nSet in the Nottinghamshire coalfields, where Lawrence himself spent his younger years, the book explores childhood and adolescence in a fresh manner, along with all the emotions that characterize it viz. the fear, the shame, the self-consciousness, the hypersensitivity, the sexual awakening and that passionate feeling that every youth possesses of being sure of changing the world in some way or the other. As an author, Lawrence presents the Morel family with an intensity and focus that is unique and admirable – a family where the parents can’t seem to get along, the father is an alcoholic, the mother does not approve of her son’s girlfriends, where finances often run short and where expressions vide literature and art are often sources of refuge. \r\n
\r\nThe book has been acclaimed as the first genuine working class novel that was written in England. It is also noted as the first post-Freudian Oedipal novel, as Paul seems to be more in love with his own mother than he is to either of the two women he gets into relationships with. Love is examined in its many forms at different stages of life and in different circumstances, with all its intensity and inherent complications. The story is a portrayal of life itself, told from the honest heart of a person who had partly lived the detailed circumstances it depicts, and looks at the trials and errors encountered in life – in this instance, the life of Paul Morel. Sons and Lovers has been adapted for the screen several times over the years, most recently in 2003.\r\n