Craftsmanship: drama and poetry

Most criticism of Sons and Lovers focuses quite properly on its narrative chronology—on Paul’s psychological odyssey, on his growth as an artist, or on his alienation from his working-class roots. However, by attending to Lawrence’s conscious craftsmanship (in so far as this can be usefully distinguished from the more embracing concept of his art)—and in particular by examining his employment of the expressive modes of poetry and drama—formalist criticism facilitates a fuller understanding of those significant points in the novel where Lawrence’s use of form transcends the linear narrative. These are events, or moments, which alert the reader to the simultaneous manifestation in human experience of the social and the spiritual, the communal and the natural, or the real and the ideal. Critics of Sons and Lovers have tended to treat Lawrence’s employment of the genres of poetry and drama separately; regarding his social realism as being rendered essentially in his detailed descriptions of Bestwood and in his dramatisation of personal and class conflict, while his vitalistic philosophy is embodied in his poetic use of patterns of imagery. However, with great craft Lawrence brings together these very different formal elements in Sons and Lovers , creating a dynamic interplay between them, in order to explore the characters’ responses to the opportunities that life proffers them to grasp a sense of the wholeness of experience.