This is perhaps the most flawed, most personal and most vivid of Lawrence's novel. Paul Morel is the son of a coal miner
in the western part of England, whose father is by turns tender, violent, ignorant, joyous and drunk. He is much like Lawrence's own father and, through Paul, Lawrence examines his own upbringing and the influences which made him the man he was.
There is no one who is
entirely happy in
Sons and Lovers, they lead lives closed off from one another, each carrying their own hardships within themselves and thrusting their demons on others by thwarting their needs. Paul's father does this through anger and by continually wasting the family's money on drink. His mother tries to control all of Paul's life, thrusting her frustrations on him by forbidding his deepest desires, including the woman he loves.
It is Paul's, and presumably Lawrence's struggle, to find himself and his own
affirmation by creating his own life, for himself, but he cannot break away entirely from his family. So, he too, for a while, becomes like his parents, by becoming as morose and untender as he sees them. It is only towards the end that he must make the choice to survive or to turn away and it is this choice that he leads him back to himself.
Sons and Lovers is a novel of affirmation and struggle and about struggling with bonds and histories and ourselves and finding some resolution at the end. Lawrence does this both for the characters of the novel and for himself. This is what makes the novel both flawed and entirely real and echoing with resonance.