SONS AND LOVERS AS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL

1. Presentation:
Modern Novel
Topic:
“Sons and Lovers as an autobiographical novel”

2. Presented by:
Anam Abbas 14201502-013
Kiran Shahzadi 14201502-014
Aqsa Khadim 14201502-032
Noreen Fatima 14201502-047
Hajra Asif 14201502-052
Sana Mukhtar 14201502-5

3. A semi-autobiographical novel:
• In 1913, Lawrence produced his novel, Sons and Lovers which is
largely autobiographical novel.
• Paul Morel is, to a considerable extent D.H.Lawrence.
• Paul’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Morel are Lawrence own parents in quit
recognizable form.

4. • All the characters except Clara Dawes play much the same part in the story
as they did in Lawrence’s life.
• Paul’s mother despises her husband and seeks compensation in lavishing
love on her children.
• Paul’s love affairs also have been Lawrence’s own experiences.

5. • The circumstances of Mrs. Morel’s death resembles closely those of
the death of Lawrence’s own mother.
• Paul’s obsessive love for his mother resembles Lawrence’s love for his
mother.
• In fact, novel was written by Lawrence as a tribute to his mother; and
Paul, throughout the novel idealizes his mother and adores her.

6. • Paul’s last thought when the novel ends are about his mother and about
how he would face the future without her now that she is dead.
• The novel shows the difficulty when men and women have in
establishing completely satisfactory relationship.
• While they have a deep need of each other, they often stifle each
other’s individuality.

7. Lawrence’s parents and Paul’s parents;
• Lawrence’s father was married to the grand-daughter of a Nottingham
lace-manufacturer; and in the novel also Walter Morel marries the
grand-daughter of a Nottingham lace-manufacturer.
• The maternal grand-father of Lawrence’s mother worked in the lace
industry, as did the maternal grand-father of Paul’s mother.

8. • Lawrence’s mother hated dirt, drink and poverty; and so does Paul’s mother
in the novel.
• Lawrence’s father was irresponsible and poor; and so is the Paul’s father.
• Lawrence’s mother loved reading and talking more than anything, but she
could not have the real talk with her husband who could hardly write and
whose reading never went beyond the newspaper.

9. • Lawrence’s father often addresses his wife as “lass” and ask her the
meanings of certain words.
• In the novel, Paul’s father could hardly sign his name and Paul’s
mother hardly have intellectual talk with her husband.
• Before marriage, Lawrence’s father told Lawrence’s mother that he
was a mining contractor.

10. • Paul’s father had also told Paul’s mother that he was a well to do man.
• Lawrence’s parents had frequent quarrels.
• The friction and the tension caused by the quarrels are an outstanding
feature of the domestic life of Paul’s parents.
• Having no real understanding with her husband, Lawrence’s mother shared
the life of her children: and in the novel too Mrs. Morel liver in her
children.

11. • The children in the Lawrence family detested their father; and children in
the morel family likewise detested their father.
• Just opposite the house in which Lawrence’s family lived there grew an old
ash tree which became the focus of children’s games.
• In the novel too, there grows an ash tree outside the Morel home.

12. • Every Friday Lawrence had to collect his coal-mining father’s wages
from the cashier at the pit, likewise Paul in the novel has to go
everyday to collect his father’s wages.
• Just as Lawrence suffered a great mental torture in having to submit to
the cruel jokes of the cashier; so Paul in the novel tells his mother on
one occasion that he would no longer go to bring the wages.

13. • Lawrence found some consolation for this torture in the fact that in the
evening his mother used to go to Nottingham for the week’s shopping.
• In the novel too, Paul’s mother goes to Nottingham every Friday for
the week’s shopping.