was his body, his chest, that leaned against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar. They seemed something. Where was he?—one tiny upright speck of flesh, less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it. On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing.

“Mother!” he whispered—“mother!”

She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her.

But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.

Endnotes

All quotations from the Bible are from the King James version, except where noted. All quotations from D. H. Lawrence’s letters are from The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Harry T. Moore, Vol. 1, New York: Viking, 1962. Other biographical quotations are from D. H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, edited by Edward Nehls, Vol. 1, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957-1959. In defining much of the dialect in the novel, I am indebted to the comprehensive annotations in Helen Baron and Carl Baron’s edition of Sons and Lovers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Chapter 1: The Early Married Life of the Morels

1 (p. 3) colliers: This is a term for coal miners. In a letter to his editor, Edward Garnett, dated March 1912, D. H. Lawrence refers to an early manuscript of Sons and Lovers as “the colliery novel.”

2 (p. 3) Bestwood: D. H. Lawrence fictionalized many of the place names in Nottinghamshire for this book. Bestwood is his name for Eastwood, a town in the north of England where he was born.

3 (p. 10) Colonel Hutchinson: Governor of Nottingham Castle during the Civil War (1642-1649) and a member of Parliament, Hutchinson signed the death warrant for Charles I.

4 (p. 10) Congregationalists: This political and religious group believed that all legislative, disciplinary, and judicial functions of the church should be vested in the local congregation. Like the adult Paul, Congregationalists reacted against orthodox religion.

5 (p. 12) Apostle Paul: A missionary for Christianity, Paul was one of the founders of the Christian church. Originally known as Saul of Tarsus, he converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus and changed his name.

6 (p. 14) She had never been “thee‘d” and “thou’d” before: These terms were part of nineteenth-century English dialect that gradually fell out of use. Although these terms would be part of Morel’s typical form of address, they carry with them the additional implication of courtship.

7 (p. 19) spear through the side: This is a reference to the Bible, John 19:34, in which a soldier pierces the side of the dead body of Christ with a sword and blood issues from the wound.

8 (p. 20) butty: Contractors for the coal mine, butties were assigned a length of coal along a seam to mine out. They were paid a set amount for the weight of coal they retrieved, out of which they paid all the expenses for the day-to-day running of the mine, including men’s wages and tool costs. In a manuscript of Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence wrote: “If their stall was a good one, and the pit was turning full time, then they got a hundred or two tons of coal out, and made good money. If their stall was a poor one, they might work just as hard, and earn very little. Morel, for thirty years of his life, never had a good stall. But, as his wife said, it was his own fault.”

9 . (p. 25) “Lead, kindly Light”: John H. Newman, a powerful member of the Church of England who converted to Roman Catholicism, composed this hymn in 1833 during a period of homesickness: “The night is dark, and I am far from home ... I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears / Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!”

Chapter