Sons and Lovers. Level 5

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright and literary critic, one of the key writers of the early twentieth century, most famous for his criticism of rationalism and industrialization. "St. Mawr" is a short novel about Lou Witt, who abandons her sterile marriage and leaved England. Her sense of alienation is associated with her encounter with a high-spirited stallion, the St. Mawr. She settles in a remote ranch set high in the mountains of New Mexico.

Soon after its publication Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working class man and an upper class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex, and its use of then-unprintable words. This last of Lawrence's novels reflects his belief that men and women must overcome the deadening restrictions of industrialized society.

Sons and Lovers is a wonderful novel on the complex nature of love in its many forms. We follow the lives of the Morel family who live in a coal mining community in Nottinghamshire at the turn of the twentieth century. Walter and Gertrude's marriage has problems and Gertrude concentrates her love and hopes on her sons. She becomes a dominating force to them and the life choices they make. The sons suffer with obsession, frustration and indecision about the women in their lives.

The novel tells of the relationships of two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, who live in a Midland colliery town in the years before the First World War. Ursula falls in love with Birkin (a thinly disguised portrait of Lawrence himself) and Gudrun has an intense but tragic affair with Gerald, the son of a local colliery owner.

This is the story of Lady Constance Chatterley, or 'Connie', her loveless marriage to Sir Clifford Chatterley, a man rendered both physically and emotionally crippled and impotent by the First World War, and her love affair with their gamekeeper, Mellors, a unique character who has deliberately retreated from opportunities for social and economic advancement and returned to his working class roots. The story is completely character-driven, which is why its grand themes of the immutability of the...

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright and literary critic, one of the key writers of the early twentieth century, most famous for his criticism of rationalism and industrialization. Set in the Nottinghamshire, England, The Rainbow follows three generations of the Brangwens, a strong and energetic family, deeply attached to the land they own. The book focuses on the individual's struggle against the confining rules and restrictions of social life.