D H Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

Question 1

‘sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves one’s self as if it were slurred over’

Answer 1

Ontology

Question 2

Mr Morel - seems to Mrs M at first ‘noble’, - why?

Answer 2

becuase he ‘risked his life’ in mines for work

Question 3

What is Mr Morel’s ‘nature’ described as? What does Mrs Morel thus strive to do?

Answer 3

‘his nature was purely sensuious, and she strove to make him moral, religious’

[irony - ‘she strove to make him moral’ plays on his name Mr Morel/Morel, she - in marrying him - is the one who became Morel

Question 4

What is a morel?

Answer 4

A fungi bearing irregularly patterned spores

Question 5

How do Mr Morel and Baby William interact?

Answer 5

‘the two played together, and Mre Morel used to wonder who was the truer baby’

Question 6

What does Mrs Morel do to Mr Morel?

Answer 6

‘in seeking to make him nobler than he could be, he destroyed him…but she lost none of her worth’

Question 7

What happens to Mr Morel’s physique?

Answer 7

‘his physique seemed to contract along with his pride and moral strength

Question 8

What happens when mr Morel is ill?

Answer 8

‘he depnedning on her [Mrs Morel] almost like a child, was rather happy’

Question 9

What happens after Mrs Morel ‘casts off’ mr Morel?

Answer 9

‘his wife was casting him off..henceforth he was more or less a husk’

Question 10

Why is Mr Morel ‘an outsider’ in his family?

Answer 10

‘he was an outsider. he had denied the God in him’

Question 11

What happens as Mr Morel ages?

Answer 11

as he grew older, Morel fell into a slow ruin..did not seem to ripedn’

Question 12

What happens as Mrs Morel is locked out?

Answer 12

‘the child boidled within her’

‘excpet for..his consciousness in the child, her self melted out’

Question 13

How does Mrs Morel react to william as a baby?

Answer 13

‘she wsaw a man…making the world glow again for her’

Question 14

How deos Mrs MOrel react to Paul’s birth

Answer 14

‘as if the navel string…had not been broken’

Question 15

How is Paul first described?

Answer 15

‘paul would be built like his mother’

suggests inevitability - confuses past present and future, tenses

Question 16

How is the ‘intimacy’ of Pual and Mrs mOrel decribed?

Answer 16

the ‘intimacy’ as compared to that with William is ‘more subtle’ and ‘not so passionate’

Question 17

Why does Paul ‘suffer’ and from what?

Answer 17

‘he suffered very much rom the first contact with anything////but after that he liked it’

Question 18

How does Paul discuss his life to his mother?

Answer 18

‘his life-story, like an Arabian Nights….was told night after night to his mother. It was almost as if it were her own life.’

Question 19

What does Paul always do?

Answer 19

‘he alwasy came to his mother, mkaing her the touchstone’

Question 20

How does Mrs Morel’s death cause Paul to react?

Answer 20

‘everything seemed to have gone smash for theyoung man. He could not paint’; ‘nothing was distinct, or distinguishable’; ‘she was the only thing that held him up, hismelf…and she was gone, intermingled, herself!….but no, he would not give in’

Question 21

How is the Death Plan described?

Answer 21

‘they claughted together like two conspiring children…this little sanity’

Question 22

What does Paul lie to his dying mother about?

Answer 22

that he had ‘tasted’ the lmilk with her morphine OD in

Question 23

What does Mr MOrel loathe?

Answer 23

[Mr Morel] ‘loathed a fork. It is a modern introduction which has still scarcely reached the common people’

Question 24

Why do the children enjoy foraging?

Answer 24

‘the joy of contributing to the family exchequer’, but ‘straight from nature’