Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

BOOK REVIEWS compassion eliminate the acrimony that has long been attached to Lawrence's relations with his many women friends, and help to explain why so many women continued to find his conflictual attentions attractive . Her compact, even-tempered appraisal is a welcome antidote, certainly, to Holbrook's lengthy vendetta. MarkSpilka ______________ Brown University Lawrence's Sons and Lovers Michael Black. Sons and Lovers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. xi+ 111 pp. Cloth $27.95 Paper $10.95 MICHAEL BLACK'S Sons and Lovers is the most recent addition in the Landmarks of World Literature (General Editor, J. P. Stern). The purpose of this series is to provide "a close reading ... as well as a full account" of a given masterpiece's "historical, cultural, and intellectual background, a discussion of its influence, and a guide to further reading ." Such a task seems monumental, so perhaps it is understandable if Black manages only to erect a smaU plaque. The book begins with a chronology which parallels events in Lawrence's life and works with historical and literary events. It starts in 1843, forty-two years before D. H. Lawrence's own birth and three years before the birth of his father, with the buying of the main shaft of Brinsley Colliery by Barber Walker & Company. The placement of this event in the Lawrence life and works column rather than the historical and literary landmarks column implies an argument of a sort obviously relevant to Sons and Lovers and raises expectations of further discussion of this company, but the importance of its place within Lawrence's life and works faUs to appear. The chronology concludes in 1913, the publication date for Sons and Lovers. Certainly Black was not obligated to continue the chronology past this point; nevertheless, it is somehow disappointing in terms of its failure to reflect the discussion of the novel's influence and simply to satisfy curiosity about the rest of Lawrence's life and career. The initial chapter, "Genesis," is a lengthy (in comparison to other chapters in the book) and provocative study. It traces the origins of Sons and Lovers in Lawrence's earlier novels, plays and short stories. It shows the transformation of the many drafts of "Paul Morel" (the "working" title used by Lawrence until October 1912) resulting, in part, from considerations of "Jessie's comments, Garnett's notes [and] 121 ELT 37 : 1 1994 Frieda's suggestions" into the familiar version oÃ- Sons and Lovers. More interestingly, Black explains the changes in Lawrence's own thinking about life, love and occasionally other literature as he worked on the novel. Black also elucidates a method of work which is both planned, because there is an ordering principle to the distinctive two-part structure , and unplanned, because Lawrence nevertheless functions as an "instinctive wrier" moved by concerns of the moment or inspired by the muse. Black manages to convey reason rather than paradox through his discussion of this method which includes wholeness from inception, but is subject to reconception throughout the entire writing process. With the genesis oÃ- Sons andLovers clearly established, Black arrives at his thesis and makes a case for abandoning the edition of Sons and Lovers where most readers first encountered Lawrence. This edition was occasioned by the pressure of the prevaüing literary aesthetics of the age to resemble closely other esteemed works of the European/American canon. Black encourages readers to encounter Sons andLovers anew in the Cambridge edition (1992), the novel Lawrence himself actually wrote. The cutting of sexually explicit material is not, however, the basis of Black's primary quarrel with Garnett, the editor. In his editing of Lawrence's material Black asserts that "Garnett damaged an actual form without installing an equally considered new one, still less a better one." The full nature of the destruction caused by the censorship becomes clear in Black's next chapters which discuss form in terms of the narrative structure and the structure given by the imagery in the novel. The symmetry of the two parts is the essential element in the formal structure of Sons andLovers. Black points out that as each part reaches closure "all the themes coalesce," but...