What The style of sons and lovers?

Answer 1

Lawrence uses a combination of realistic description and poetic images to create the world of Sons and Lovers. Realism is a style of writing that attempts to describe in a true-to-life manner concrete, everyday events. Poetic narrative, on the other hand, serves to lift life out of its normality, making it seem supernatural or symbolic of universal themes outside ordinary daily experience. Poetic narrative achieves this feat by using word comparisons, metaphors and similes, many adjectives, or elaborate and rhythmical language, rather than everyday speech.

The realism in Sons and Lovers is strongest in the first half of the novel, where the narrator describes the Morel family's day-to-day existence. Mr. Morel hammers away at work, and the children help him along with his tasks. Mrs. Morel goes out marketing and comes home with a load of domestic treasures. The narrator also uses realistic detail to great effect when he presents the miners dividing their weekly pay in the Morel home. The men's gestures are carefully described in almost photographic detail. The realism of Sons and Lovers gives you an accurate picture of working-class life at the turn of the century. You come to know, almost as if you were there, the pains and joys of their hard lives.

Lawrence's poetry comes to the forefront in his descriptions of nature, where, for example, vivid sunsets and blazing rosebushes stand out against darkening skies. The poetic portions of Sons and Lovers seem to make the common lives of its characters miraculous and heroic.

Many times Lawrence uses a pattern that starts in realism, expands into lyrical poetic narrative, and then puts you back on your feet with a return to realism. You'll notice this particularly in the scenes between Paul and his women- his mother, Miriam, and Clara. He'll start them off on a normal walk or conversation and then heighten the language to give you a sense of their souls' communion. The poetic style serves the purpose of evoking an emotional response in the reader rather than advancing the plot's action. As you read Sons and Lovers, try to discover where the different styles are used and what each of them offers. How do they enhance each other and create what's unique about the novel as a whole?

Lawrence also uses dialect to accurately convey his working-class characters' conversations. The Midlands dialect is quite different from standard English and you may have some difficulty understanding its slang terms, as well as its contractions of words. The dialect often drops beginning consonants of words and employs the old-fashioned "thee" and "thou" for "you." To Lawrence, this sort of language was more warm and intense than standard English. Walter Morel speaks in dialect, emphasizing his social background and his sensuality. Gertrude Morel, on the other hand, speaks the standard English of the educated middle class. You'll notice that Paul speaks both "languages," as well as French, which he teaches Miriam. Paul uses dialect for sensuous love with the sexually uninhibited Clara and for flirtation with Beatrice. He reserves proper English for Miriam and his prim mother.