What ideas make Sons and Lovers a modern English novel?

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence is described as a modern novel for several reasons. First and most obviously, it was written in the modern period. It also has several generic characteristics that make it resemble other works written in the period of the first world war.

First, the work portrays the lower classes in a realistic, rather than idealized, fashion, something also found in earlier writers Dickens and Hardy and certain turn-of-the century authors such as Gissing. Rather than an optimistic portrait of a young man rising in class, though, Laurence also portrays what happens to a woman who falls in class. The harsh vision of Paul's mother and negative view of motherhood was considered shocking and modern when the novel was first published.

The deeply Freudian psychological themes and exploration of sexuality in the novel are also considered typically modern and made Laurence's work scandalous. Finally, Paul himself is a "modern" alienated character who does not really find a place in the world.

Discuss Sons and Lovers as a modern novel.

Sons and Lovers is very much the modern novel par excellence in that it concentrates on the inner lives of its characters. Most of the main characters have rich, complicated inner lives that often challenge and undermine their outward social roles and identities.

Gertrude Morel, for instance, is expected by her drunken, boorish husband, Walter, to be a submissive housewife and to do as she’s told. But Gertrude’s not prepared to be submissive; she has a rich interior life that precludes her from fulfilling any traditional role that society may wish to assign her. Gertrude further undermines traditional gender roles by developing a deep, almost sexual passion for her sons, who themselves transgress what is considered acceptable by behaving toward their mother more like lovers than sons.

The radical suffragette Clara Dawes is another example of someone who defies social convention by following their subjective needs and desires. As well as being actively involved in politics, something still generally frowned upon for women in those days, she chooses to wear her own clothes and goes with a man who isn’t her husband.

Suffragettes were often subjected to the misogynist insult that they were more like men than women. In the character of Miriam, we have someone who actually comes right out and says that she wishes she were a man. Once again, we see the subversive nature of the subjective consciousness, how in giving free rein to one’s deepest, innermost desires and wishes it can transgress even the most rigid boundaries in this hidebound society.