An overlooked irony in D.H. Lawrence's use of dialect in 'Sons and Lovers.' (author)

No commentator appears to have noticed the deep ironical significance of a conversational exchange that takes place between Mr and Mrs Morel early in Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, centring on the use of the dialect word 'nesh', which has been translated too generally by editors. In the Cambridge edition, for example, the editors gloss the word simply as 'delicate, weak', and a glance at any other common editions of the novel, such as those by Penguin and Everyman, will show that their editors also explain 'nesh' as meaning weak or sensitive. But this is a general translation, when actually the word bears a much more specific meaning and, indeed, is used in the same specific …