In this respect, the novel is not centrally focused on class, marriage, money, and gender in the manner in which such contentions dominated earlier.
It is difficult to classify this novel. It has elements of Bildungsroman (coming of age) yet the novel wanders away from it. Lawrence didn't make his novel gothic, pastoral, or even a Jane Austin-like critique of British social mores. Lawrence once wrote that Sons and Lovers has the qualities of "A book which is not a copy of other books has its own construction." In that sense Lawrence certainly was remaking the British novel.
