Lawrence`s first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. No writer before or since has written so well about the intimacies enforced by a tightly-knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never
hidden forlong. Paul Morel is caught between his need for family and community and his efforts to define himself sexually and emotionally. Lawrence`s powerful description of Paul`s relationships makes this a novel as much for the beginning of the twenty-first century as it was for the beginning of thetwentieth.