Mark Schorer's criticism on D.H.Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers"
Mark Schorer evaluates D.H.Lawrence's text "Sons and Lovers" in a negative way. He points out the weakness in this novel. Here meaning is confused because of poor craftsmanship.
This novel has two themes 1)crippling effect of a mother's love on the emotional development of her son. 2)kind of split that Paul (protagonist) developed between spiritual and physical love.
Split in his mind is due to the crippling effect of mother's love. So Lawrence fails to develop theme properly. In this novel Miriam was shown as a person who is too spiritual in love. So Paul's failure is partly blamed on Miriam rather than his own twisted psychology. Thus there is a contradiction in handling theme.
The other weakness in theme is its conclusion. According to Schorer as a man of weakness Paul should walk towards darkness and never turn back. But author concludes the novel with Paul's return to life. Thus author destroyed "the artistic coherence of work"
Another confusion in the point of view is the portrayal of Paul's father and mother in the novel. He calls his father as small an mean and his mother as proud and honourable. But the confusion is which of these two characters has given Paul's real sympathy. The confusion arise because the general texture of the course suggest that his mother is "hard", "aggressive", "demanding" and his father is "simple", "direct", "gentle", "downright", "fumbling". Thus there is a contradiction between expressed moral epithet and general texture. So readers can't understand where Lawrence's real sympathy lies. Thus his psychological tension destroys the novel. Thus Lawrence failed to finish his novel in proper artistic way.
Schorer was very critical of D.H.Lawrence especially in reference to this text. We can appreciate the truths of his points. In spite of this Sons and Lovers is a powerful text and Schorer himself wrote a number of positive evaluations on D.H.Lawrence after some years.
