儿子与情人 - 英文读后感

Reading Report of Sons and Lovers During my extracurricular time, I started reading Sons and Lovers, which was written by David Herbert Lawrence. He was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. He was born on September 11, 1885 to a miner and his wife in the small village of Eastwood near Nottingham, England. Arthur and Lydia Lawrence, his parents, had a troublesome marriage from the start: his father, a miner, was content to stay on the mining grounds while his mother yearned to leave. So his childhood was dominated by poverty and friction between his parents. He was educated at Nottingham High School, and won a scholarship. He worked as a clerk in a surgical appliance factory, and then for four years as a pupil-teacher. He was died in Vence, France on March 2, 1930. Lawrence is now valued by many as a visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in English literature. There is a background before the author wrote this book. Lawrence lived at a time when the Industrial Revolution was taking on the whole world, especially in Great Britain, which changed from agricultural society towards industrial society. And it brought all changes in national and personal lives. Lawrence?s novel Sons and Lovers deals with Lawrence?s personal experiences in the working-class environment in Nottinghamshire. Sons and Lovers is the third published novel of D. H. Lawrence, taken by many to be his earliest masterpiece. It tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and a budding artist. This autobiographical novel is a brilliant evocation of life in a working class mining community. This novel is about the life of Movels. Mr.Morel, Mrs.Moel, Paul, Miriam and Clara are the main characters in this novel. The author develops the story by portraying the relationships between these characters. But the end of the relationship is a tragedy. I divided this book into two parts. Now I will introduce the first part of this book. The refined daughter of a “good old burgher family,” Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner at a Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind romance. But soon after her marriage to Walter Morel, she realizes the difficulties of living off his meager salary in a rented house. The couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats to the pub after work each day. Gradually, Mrs.Morel?s affections shift to her sons, beginning with the oldest, William. As a boy, William is so attached to his mother that he doesn?t enjoy the fair without her. As he grows older, he defends her against his father?s occasional violence. Eventually, he leaves home for a job in London, where he begins to rise up into the middle class. He is engaged, but he detests the girl?s superficiality. He dies, and Mrs. Morel is heartbroken, but when William catches pneumonia, she rediscovers her love for her second son. Both repulsed by and drawn to his mother, Paul is afraid to leave her but wants to go out on his own, and needs to experience love. Gradually, he falls into a relation ship with Miriam, a farm girl who attends his church. The two take long walks and have intellectual conversations about books, but resists in, in part because his mother looks down on her. I want to introduce the three characters of this book: Mr. Morel, Mrs Morel and Miriam Leviers. Mr. Morel is Paul's rough, sensual, hard-drinking father. In many ways, he is his wife's opposite. Mr. Morel is from a lower-class mining family. He speaks the local dialect in contrast to his wife's refined English. He loves to drink and dance practices that Mrs. Morel, a strict Congregationalist, considers sinful. Mrs Morel is one of the most formidable mothers in all of Western literature. To the narrator, and perhaps to Paul Morel, she is both a giving, selfless nurturer of her children and a possessive tyrant. Miriam Leviers, Paul's teenage friend and sweetheart, was modeled after Lawrence's own young love, Miriam is Paul's devoted helpmate in his artistic and spiritual quests. Although beautiful, she takes no pleasure in her physical attributes. Her whole life is geared towards heaven and a mystical sense of nature. This is the most autobiographical of all Lawrence?s works as the author himself had a similar relationship with his own mother. The use of this oedipal theme is one of a number of Freudian concepts he used throughout his books. Like many of his works, Sons and Lovers was criticized when first published for obscenity and one publisher called it ”the dirtiest book he had ever read”, but compared to his later works it is quite constrained. There are three females that Paul had loved. The first person is his mother. Paul is afraid to leave her but wants to go out on his own, and experience love. Then, it is Miriam, whom is a farm girl. They have intellectual conversations about books in the nature. At last, Paul meets Clara Dawes, who has separated from her husband, Paul get physical satisfaction from her. I want to show my opinions about the love between Paul and Miriam. Miriam Leviers, Paul's teenage friend and sweetheart, was modeled after Lawrence's own young love. She is romantic in her soul but timid and sensitive in appearance. Miriam is Paul's devoted helpmate in his artistic and spiritual quests. Although beautiful, she takes no pleasure in her physical attributes. Her whole life is geared towards heaven and a mystical sense of nature. Miriam is Paul?s first lover. Miriam loves Paul, but she can?t admit to and has no courage to love. When she loves Paul, she only wants to dominate his mind, then to catc h Paul?s whole soul. But Paul knows that Miriam only loves his soul and wants to posses him. In this book, there is a dialogue between them which Paul rejected Miriam. Miriam said:” You had said that we belong to each other.” “I was young. I did belong to my mother and now she is died. I don?t want to live again with you, not even with you. I?m sure I?ll never find one as g ood as you, But perhaps I under stand at last what the mean to live,”said Paul. For Paul, mother…s love makes him unhappy, while Miriam seems like his mother as both want to control his soul. Of course, he will against that form of love as he thinks that?s not love and wants to escape from this spiritual love. I think the love was failed because of Miriam?s possession. Then, I?d like to co mpare Lawrence as a combination of both William and Paul. As William, he was a man who grew in such family and had a strong will to break the shackles of his class. William was gifted, he was successful in both his academy work and interpersonal relational, and he escaped from his lamentable family to London. The mentality of William just like Lawrence purred his feel to this character subconsciously: the disgust of his father, admiration of mother, struggle to free himself from the mournful family. All these characteristics are based on author himself experience. Of course, these stuffs also connected with the society at that time, which class you came from can be the first to affect who you were or how you were, in order to change your social status, the post important was to change the class you belonged to. All these ideology created both Lawrence and his William. At the moment, it?s clear that Paul?s Oedipus complex and reasons. Actually Paul has not become a normal adult by getting over some problems like other children. That is not only determined by his mother?s abnormal maternity. The reasons are in many ways, some comes from the parents; some comes from his sisters and brothers, some even from the society, the mechanical civilization, which leads to the family tragedy and distortion of personality. The working conditions and living states, which was brought by capitalist industrialization, is one of the main reasons of Morel?s family tragedy.