The Penguin English Library Edition of Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

She was a brazen hussy.
She wasnt. - And she was pretty, wasnt she?
I didnt look ... And tell your girls, my son, that when theyre running after you, theyre not to come and ask your mother for you - tell them that - brazen baggages you meet at dancing classes

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul - determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mothers suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrences native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

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