Where It All Goes Down
English Countryside (Nottinghamshire)
When you first sit down with Sons and Lovers, you might believe you've gotta hunker down for a long book about the darkness of coal mines and company housing:
The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin. (1.1)
But Lawrence actually sets most of this book either in the Morel household or the beautiful English countryside.
Everywhere you look, the narrator describes the gorgeousness of Morels' mostly rural world:
The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of Derbyshire were blazed over with red sunset. Mrs. Morel watched the sun sink from the glistening sky, leaving a soft flower-blue overhead, while the western space went red, as if all the fire had swum down there. (2.138)
You can really see why many people think of Lawrence primarily as a poet, right? His language just seems to explode whenever he talks about nature. And the setting of the book is the only topic that seems to provoke him to get all lyrical like this.
As we discuss in the "Nature" entry of the "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory" section, Lawrence tends to contrast the natural aspects of his settings (i.e., flowers and birds) with the unnatural aspects (i.e., coal mines and heavy machinery). In doing so, he draws a clear distinction between the peacefulness and joy that can be found in nature and the cruel, cold world of modern industry.
Just as Paul's feelings of love are always balanced by feelings of hatred, so the beauty of Lawrence's setting is always balanced by the ugliness of the modern world and the coal mines that represent it.
In fact, you can even connect the nature/industry theme of this book to the problems facing Paul and his mother. Basically, Mrs. Morel's life has been ruined by her boozing husband. Which makes you wonder: why does Walter drink so much? Answer: probably because he spends his entire life hundreds of feet below the ground covered in coal dust, coughing his lungs up, and making next to no money for it.
Walter is a victim of the greed of modern industry, which means Mrs. Morel is, too.
Paul, on the other hand, is terrified of having anything to do with the world that has destroyed his father. He sees a life of professional painting as his ticket out. But it seems that no matter how good he is, Paul can never cut ties with industry.
He keeps working at Jordan's Manufacturing, and eventually learns to make the best of it. Still, he's happy to escape that factory and find peace in the English countryside whenever he can. Nature = Paul's release from his sad, but necessary role as a cog in the modern industrial machine.