Week 1: Introduction and Historical Context to Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers by D.H Lawrence


Historical Context of Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers is set in the early decades of the twentieth century in an industrial mining community. The housing estate the Morels live on is typical of the mining communities which sprung up across the north of England during the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. These areas were entirely reliant on the coal mines for work because they were generally rural and slightly removed from the large, northern manufacturing towns, like Nottingham, where Paul gets a job in the novel. In the early twentieth century in Britain, miners were considered working class people and, like Mr. Morel, were generally uneducated and would work in the mines their whole lives. There was a noticeable shift throughout the twentieth century, as young people gravitated away from these types of hard, menial jobs to take advantage of education and employment opportunities in the growing towns and cities. This often led to class divides within generations in the same families, a subject which is loosely touched on in Sons and Lovers, as the children of miners would often progress into the middle class. Britain in this period had a strict culture of convention and propriety which was based in class and which held considerable sway over how people lived their lives, whom they married, and their social reputation. The novel is set in a period when there is growing interest in women’s rights, with the rise of the suffragettes, who protested frequently for the right to vote, and a public interest better labor laws and better conditions for workers. There is a brief reference in the novel to the possibility of war in Europe. This demonstrates political tensions at the time which would gradually escalate and erupt into WW1, which broke out shortly after the novel was published.