Sons and Lovers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1913

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 2, Chapters 7-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-15

Character Analysis

Themes

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Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Early Married Life of the Morels”

Content Warning: This section refers to alcohol addiction, domestic violence, death, and involuntary euthanasia.

Sons and Lovers begins in the late 19th century. The Bottoms is the name of a neighborhood in Bestwood, Derbyshire, in the north of England. The Bottoms is largely populated by a community of miners and their families. Walter Morel is one such miner. He is married to Gertrude Morel, who is pregnant with their third child. Seven-year-old William, their eldest son, is excited to visit a local fair. Annie, the younger sibling, attends with her mother, while William buys a set of flowered eggcups for his mother. Annie clings to Gertrude as they move through the busy crowd. That evening, Gertrude thinks about the difficulties of raising children amid such “poverty and ugliness and meanness” (11). During this time, Walter is drinking in a bar. He does not return home until just before midnight.

Gertrude’s father was an engineer. Growing up, Gertrude was an intelligent young girl. She befriended John Field, a well-mannered boy from a good family who once gave her a Bible. John wanted to become a priest rather than inherit his father’s business. Gertrude counseled John to follow his dreams, as she would have done if she were a man. Gertrude met Walter when she was 23 and he was 27. The quiet, intellectual, and religious Gertrude was drawn to the “soft, non-intellectual, warm” Walter (14). She inherited her Puritan beliefs from her father, though Walter had little interest in religion. Instead, he preferred to dance. Walter had worked in a mine since the age of 10; Gertrude was fascinated by the courage Walter showed in such a dangerous profession. A year after they married, Gertrude noticed that Walter struggled to be in her company. He invented “little jobs” to distract himself while also driving them into debt to his mother (16), who—Gertrude was shocked to learn—owned their house. William was born nearly a year after the marriage. Gertrude loved William deeply, in contrast to the growing animosity she felt toward Walter. Over the course of their marriage, this animosity grew into a decades-long feud. Gertrude wanted Walter to behave in a more moral fashion, while he began to drink heavily and unleash his anger on his wife. During one incident, Walter cut William’s hair. Gertrude, who loved her son’s long beautiful curls, was deeply upset. She was never able to love Walter again after this “act of masculine clumsiness” (20).

Now, Walter and Gertrude are still locked in their feud. They are married but refer to each other as “liar” (26), such as when Walter spends the day drinking with his friend Jerry. Gertrude blames her husband for spending their meagre earnings on beer. Their hatred for one another is seemingly all they have. One night, they argue so fiercely that Walter throws Gertrude out of the house. He locks the door, forcing his pregnant wife to wander the cold streets. She bangs on the window until he stirs from his drunken slumber and unlocks the door. As he returns to bed, Gertrude diligently lays out Walter’s work clothes for the next day, as she always does.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Birth of Paul, and Another Battle”

As the baby’s due date nears, Walter drinks less. He tries to help Gertrude with her daily chores. When the baby boy is born, they name him Paul. The birth makes Gertrude very sick, as had happened following the birth of the other children. Walter learns that his wife has given birth (and that she is sick) as he returns from a day in the mine. The news means “nothing” to him (35), so he drinks beer and eats his dinner before visiting his sickly wife.

Gertrude is friends with the local priest, Mr. Heaton. She asks him to be the godfather to baby Paul. During one of Heaton’s visits, Walter returns home and complains that there is no beer in the house. Gertrude is deeply angry and embarrassed by the scene. On one occasion, Walter kicks William, and Gertrude can “never forgive him” (38). William watches the way his father acts toward his mother. He hates his father’s behavior. Shortly after Paul’s birth, Gertrude comes to the realization that she had “dreaded” another child due to her hatred for her husband (39). When she holds Paul, however, she is overwhelmed by love for her new son. She promises to love him “all the more” (39).

One night, Walter comes home drunk. Trying to cut a slice of bread, he pulls a knife from the drawer. He drops the knife, slashing open his shin. Amid the chaos and confusion, he pulls the drawer from its holding and throws it across the room. The drawer hits Gertrude on the forehead, causing blood to pour down her face. Gertrude steadfastly retains her balance since she has Paul in her arms. The blood drips on the baby’s face as Walter seems “sickened with feebleness and hopelessness of spirit” (42). The next day, however, Walter refuses to apologize. Instead, he blames Gertrude for what happened. William and Annie sense the animosity between their parents. Some days later, Walter scours the house for money to buy beer. He takes sixpence from Gertrude’s purse without her knowledge. When Gertrude confronts her husband and demands that he return the money, he denies her accusation. He pretends to leave home but returns, as she knew he would, some hours later. The incident is exhausting for Gertrude, whose heart is bitter “because she had loved him” (46).

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Casting Off of Morel—the Taking On of William

Amid his ongoing struggles with anger and alcohol addiction, Walter becomes sick. Gertrude spends several weeks caring for “one of the worst patients imaginable” (47). Even after he recovers, however, he continues to “feign sickness” so that she will continue to dote on him (48). This calm period is the first armistice in the war between the spouses for many years. During this time, Gertrude becomes pregnant again. Arthur is born 17 months after Paul. By this time, William is excelling in school. At age 11, he gets into a fight with a boy at school. When the boy’s mother complains about a ripped collar, William tries to explain his innocence to his mother. Walter is angered by the incident. He tries to hit William, but Gertrude stops him. When he halts, she knows that he is “afraid of her” (53).

Gertrude begins to attend meetings of the Women’s Guild each Monday evening. William turns 13, and Gertrude finds him a job in the Women’s Guild offices. Walter does not agree with this. He believes that William should be working in the mine, as he was at William’s age. Gertrude prefers for William to attend night school and learn skills like shorthand. William earns a small wage. He gives most to his mother and then spends some on entertainment, making friends with the so-called “bourgeois of Bestwood” (54). They play billiards and attend dances, where they meet girls their age. Gertrude does not approve when some of these girls seek out William in the family home. When William turns 19, he finds an office job in Nottingham. The pay is 30 shillings a week, almost double his previous wage. This makes his parents proud. Annie, by this time, wants to be a teacher. Mr. Heaton is teaching Paul to speak German and French, while Arthur is now in school.

During his time in Nottingham, William attends classes and learns Latin. He goes to parties and dances. Unlike Walter, none of the Morel children touch alcohol. Gertrude is concerned, however, that William is staying out late and disrupting his studies. She advises him to slow down and not overexert himself. A firm in London approaches William with a high-paying job offer. William is eager to accept. When he moves to London, however, Gertrude misses her son. She is upset that she can no longer perform small gestures to help him.

Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

Sons and Lovers is set in a small mining community named Bestwood. The poverty associated with this small community is an essential part of its story. The close bond between Gertrude and William (and, later, Paul) is born out of their bleak situation, and this section of the book begins to explore the Relationship Dynamics Between Mothers and Sons. With so little in the way of support, Gertrude and William come to rely on one another to provide meaning in their lives. While Walter goes down every day into the deep, dark, intimidating pit, the family stays on the surface. They are alone, together, and their closeness is born out of their co-dependence in the most difficult of circumstances. Soon after her marriage to Walter, Gertrude feels trapped in her poverty. She does not enjoy life in Bestwood, which presents her with a moral conundrum: Each child she brings into the world is another person whom she condemns to poverty, yet each child helps to alleviate her struggle in some small way. William becomes the focal point for Gertrude’s affection because he is the first child and the one who prompts her to recognize this conundrum. In the lives of these characters, love is a way to alleviate the suffering caused by poverty, which many of the characters never truly escape.

In foregrounding family and personal relationships in the story, the book paints a complicated picture, suggesting these relationships often come with a high degree of volatility. Gertrude loathes her husband, Walter. While he abuses her physically and emotionally, the main cause of her loathing is resentment. The man she falls in love with is not the man who becomes her husband. The young Walter, for example, is charming and warm. He seduces her with his charisma. As a young man, Walter is also a teetotaler. He is remarkably unlike any man Gertrude has ever met, which is why she falls in love with him. Soon after they marry, however, Walter begins to change. He becomes alienated from his wife, as she becomes alienated from him. Love and affection vanish from their life, replaced by a lingering animosity that occasionally spills over into direct conflict. Walter begins to drink every day, squandering what little money they have on alcohol and ensuring that the family is never able to save enough money to escape their poverty. Gertrude loathes Walter for selling her on a false future and for selling short their ambitions for his selfish needs. Walter may have been a warm and charming man in his youth, but he cannot even bring himself to sympathize with his wife just after she has given birth. Instead, he barely registers her pain or the birth of his child. He eats his dinner, resents the change in his routine, and then pays her the smallest possible amount of attention before retiring to bed. He shouts at his wife because there is no beer available, embarrassing her in front of the priest. Both situations demonstrate how he believes his own comfort is more important than his wife’s physical, social, or spiritual well-being, while also giving important context to The Role of Women.

Over the course of the opening three chapters, the dwindling love between Walter and Gertrude is directly proportional to Gertrude’s growing dependence on her children. As the children grow older, however, Gertrude is presented with a new fear. William matures and takes an interest in women. He attends dances, and when young girls come to speak to him at the house, Gertrude resents their presence. William’s new interest in women and socializing is, to Gertrude, a threat to her well-being. She has invested herself so much in her son that she fears being replaced in his life. He can derive enjoyment from elsewhere, while she cannot, so she becomes jealous of her son’s broadening horizons. When William moves to London, Gertrude is even more fearful. The growing emotional distance between them becomes a physical distance. As such, she turns to Paul. The relationship between Gertrude and William functions as a prototype for the relationship between Gertrude and Paul. After she felt as though William slipped away from her, Gertrude resolves not to let the same happen again. Subconsciously, she binds herself to Paul even more closely than she did with William. In turn, Paul becomes inseparably bound to her