Sons and lovers & women in love/ D.H. Lawrence

SONS AND LOVERS
Almost a century-old, the delectable Sons and Lovers has unfailingly entertained millions of D.H. Lawrence fans. However, when the novel was first published (in 1913), it was greeted with angry protests and raging controversies. Even then the work was highly acclaimed for its sensuality and skilled portrayal of complex relationships and lauded for the brilliant depiction of Sigmund Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. The echoes of the novels are clearly seen in Lawrence's own life in his mother's early and mature years. Young Paul Morrel is caught between his need for his family and his quest to define himself sexually and emotionally. Paul, in short, seeks the support his mother provides in the arms of another woman. When his mother is mortality ill, Paul feels, psychologically, that he too would perish.

WOMEN IN LOVE
When Women in Love was published in the year 1916, the critics varyingly branded it as a 'study in sexual depravity' and 'an epic in vice'. Yet Lawrence is at his most unglamorous best in Women in Love, a novel rightly hailed as a masterpiece that highlights erotic consciousness in young minds.
The time is pre-World War I. The Brangwen sisters of a mining town - school-teachers Gudrun and Ursula - are attracted by Gerald and Birkin; the former a mine-owner and the latter a schools inspector and akin to the author himself. The novel probes the enigmatic impulses between the couples in the background of a working class setting, skillfully revealing their true emotional upheaval.