61

Chapter II

Sons and Lovers

The collier fled out of the house as soon as he could, away from the

nagging materialism of the woman. With the woman it was always:

This is broken, now you‟ve got to mend it! Or else: We want this,

that and the other, and where‟s the money coming from? The collier

didn‟t know and didn‟t care very deeply-… So he escaped. (Phoenix

136).

In almost all the works of D. H. Lawrence, the men seem baffled and confused

whereas the women are powerful or simply dangerous. This also encompasses the

relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Morel in Lawrence‟s Sons and Lovers. The book was

earlier titled Paul Morel. On Oct.15, in a letter to Edward Garnett, Lawrence

suggested the present title, “I have done 3/5 of Paul Morel, can I call it Sons and

Lovers? (Oct.15, 1913).

The social/ economic and cultural constructs such as gender and class find a

free play in the working of the relationships. To consider the first relationship that of

Mr. and Mrs. Morel would be interesting as it displays how a woman belonging to a

refined class marries a collier bringing into focus a gamut of power-play. In a letter to

Edward Garnett dated 19 November, 1913, Lawrence wrote:-

It follows this idea: a woman of character and refinement goes into the

lower class and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has had a

passion for her husband, so the children are born of passion, and have

heaps of vitality. But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers –

first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their
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reciprocal love of their mother- urged on and on. But when they come

to manhood, they can‟t love, because their mother is the strongest

power in their lives, and holds them.. . as soon as the young men come

into contact with women, there‟s a split… . The next son gets a woman

who fights for his soul- fights his mother. The son loves the mother- all

the sons hate and are jealous of the father. The battle goes on between

the mother and the girl, with the son as object. (Letters 160).

From this passage we learn that Mrs. Morel owing to her marriage to a man of

a „lower class‟ remains frustrated in her ambitions and this also has a direct effect on

her social behavioural patterns. Lawrence was keen on his dualistic philosophy of the

male-female divide. However, the female „passivity‟ and the „male‟ activity binary

are also not rendered in its absolute form for Lawrence‟s dualist metaphysic is fraught

with fine inner contadictions. This is evident from his biography. Sons and Lovers is a

reflection of this class and gender elements which complicate and disturb the social

status quo in the lives of the characters within the novel.

Lawrence‟s working class father was a symbol of mute, sensuous passivity

and mother was a strict puritan and a petty bourgeois. For his mother Lydia Beadsall,

ambition, upper mobility of class, “aristocracy”, refinement was more vital and these

she tried to instill in her sons. This partial inversion of his parents‟ gender as defined

by Lawrence intensifies the contradictions that his philosophy tries to resolve. The

mother (symbol of nurturing and loving intimacy) is resented for inhibiting true

masculinity (father‟s passivity). The mother‟s aspiring consciousness hammers on the

mother-nurturer image and disrupts the mindlessness of the sensual life as depicted by

the father.
 63

Sons and Lovers plays on these conflicts and treats them as its subject- matter.

Paul Morel though rejects the father-figure yet holds a secret admiration for him at a

sub-conscious level while at the same time defends the mother. Mrs. Morel is well –

educated, having taught school for some time prior to her marriage. This side of her

character emerges in conversations with the vicar over tea on starched, snow – white

cloths where she discussed about her activities with the Women‟s Guild and in her

promotion of her children‟s education. For her sons she wanted middle class jobs,

comfortable homes and „ladies‟ to wife and she attempts to regain some of the status

that she had unfortunately lost through marriage to Morel.

In sharp contrast, Morel left school at the age of ten in order to work in the

mine, is almost illiterate, spelling painfully through the head lines and finds no value

whatsoever in the reading of books. He pays no heed to either Mrs. Morel‟s religion

or to her high flown ideas or Paul‟s art. He prefers the pub to chapel. Unlike his wife,

he does not feel „specially pinched by poverty‟. He never dreams of making inroads

into the middle class nor does he envision different approach regarding his children‟s

future. Morel clearly does not live up to Mrs. Morel‟s idea of manhood and she

communicates her judgment to the children. They learn from their mother to mock

their father‟s manners, to belittle his work at the mine, to sneer at his lack of formal

education and in essence to degrade his manhood. Thus we find Mr. Morel being

marginalized for not only belonging to a lower status but also for being a male. This

novel bears a close parallel to Lawrence‟s play titled A Collier’s Friday Night where

Mrs. Lambert here comes from the middle class and she ascribes her sons doing well

in Latin. She tells her son Ernest that his maternal grandfather “was always fond of …

reading economics and history.” (S. & L. 484-85).

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Lawrence battled with contradictions of class in his works. As is expressed in

E. P. Thompson‟s seminal work The Making of the English Working Class, the

changing relationships of production are emphasized. “We are daily advancing to the

state in which there are but two classes of men, masters, and abject

dependents.”(Thompson 834-35).

Lawrence too was torn between the different class categories – petty bourgeois

as well as the working class. This has been enunciated in Lawrence‟s Fantasia of the

Unconscious and Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious. “Then one parent, usually the

mother is the object of blind devotion, whilst the other parent, usually the father is an

object of resistance”. (F.O.U.115).

The reason for such strong and aggressive reactions from Paul Morel is

because class conflicts tear apart his family and in turn his psyche. This becomes

conspicuous in Paul‟s verbal exchanges with his mother about his class.

„You know,‟ [Paul] said to his mother, „I don‟t want to belong to the

well –to –do middle class. I like my common people best. I belong to

the common people.

„But if anybody else said so, my son wouldn‟t you consider yourself

equal to any gentleman‟.

„In myself‟, he answered, „not in my class or my education, or my

manners. But in myself I am‟.- the difference between people isn‟t in

their class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one gets

ideas, and from the common people – life itself, warmth. You feel their

hates and loves (S.& L. 14-15).

H. M. Daleski, one renowned critic of Lawrence, used this exchange between

Paul and Mrs. Morel to argue for Paul‟s subconscious identification with his father‟s
 65

ideologies. We find it interesting to trace the suppressed feelings of each parent which

is expressed through Paul‟s articulations in the novel.

Lawrence has clearly constructed Paul‟s thinking about „class‟, by means of a

binary opposition- (middle class= ideas/working class= warmth) that persists

throughout his work. The warmth that Paul refers to his mother is evident from his

father‟s conduct. Mr. Morel shows his real happy and jovial self when he is in his

house either “mending boots”, or making “fuses with wheat –straws and gunpowder”,

or “patching his pit- trousers as too dirty for his wife to mend”. (S. & L. 88).

Mr. Morel, though the breadwinner of the family, is at a loss to communicate

as a member of the Morel household. He is the male parent who is used as a labour-

power in the productive process. The female parent, however, is left to provide the

material and the emotional maintenance of him and their children, Mr. Morel‟s

estrangement from the intensely emotional atmosphere of the home is due in part to

the social division. So in a desperate bid to maintain contact with his family, he

occupies himself with household chores- through his practical skills about the house.

Morel‟s lack of education, moreover, makes it difficult for him to articulate his

feelings, a fact which further increases the distance between himself and his family.

The exhausting, backbreaking and harshly disciplined nature of Morel‟s work

schedule is responsible for the creation of his domestic irritability and violence which

drives the children even deeper into their mother‟s lap and spurs on her jealous

possessiveness. In order to compensate for his inferior status at work, the father

struggles to assert a traditional male authority at home, thus estranging his children

from him still further.

Whereas Mr. Morel is inarticulate and unrefined, Mrs. Morel is of a lower-

middle- class origin, reasonably well-educated, articulate, assertive and determined.

 66

She thus stands for what the young, sensitive and artistic Paul may only hope to

achieve- his emotional turning to her from the father, is inseparably, a turning from

the impoverished, grime and soot- ridden and exploitative world of the colliery to the

life of emancipated consciousness. However, Paul was on a subconscious level

defending his father‟s predicament. Paul‟s animosity towards his father is balanced by

his unconscious sympathy which he mirrored dramatically. The Mr. and Mrs. Morel

pair bears close resemblance to Miriam‟s parents – Mr. and Mrs. Leivers. Mr. Leivers

was a lazy, unimaginative and unperceiving man while his wife was an ineffectual,

complaining, over – religious introvert.

D. H. Lawrence‟s voice rings out clear for through Paul Morel we can discern

that subconsciously Lawrence was identifying himself with his father. At one point he

asserts that he would have written another version of Sons and Lovers, pointing out in

clear terms that his mother was wrong.

Also in the essay “Women are so Cocksure”:

My mother spoilt her life with her moral frenzy against John Barley

Corn. At fifty, when the best part of life was gone, she realized it. And

then what would she not have given to have her life again, her young

children, her tipsy husband, and a proper natural insouciance, to get the

best of it all. (Phoenix 168).

Paul‟s preference of his father‟s values towards the end of the novel stem from

his allegiance to the pit- culture. The presence of the pit sits heavily on his

consciousness as he affirms to his mother his partiality for the vitality and solidarity

of his father‟s people, rather than the cold intellectualism of the middle- class. At one

instance in Sons and Lovers, when Clara is repelled by the coal pit rising still and

black among the cornfields, Paul responds: “You see, I am so used to it. I should miss
 67

it. No, I like the pits here and there. I like the rows of trucks… I thought the Lord was

always at the pit-top”. (S.& L. 364).

Moreover, Paul‟s contradictory feelings about his father‟s working class

partially stems from the routine scenes of colliers trooping back and forth to and from

the pit, the many references to Morel in his „pit-dirt‟.

The schizophrenic split in Paul‟s mind on account of the division of class in

his family is the root of all drama. Having got thoroughly disillusioned about her

husband‟s profession and unrefined habits, young Lawrence well as Paul in Sons and

Lovers was subjected to special tutelage so that he could become a white-collar

professional. Mrs. Morel is determined that Paul should not toe in the line of his

father by following his profession or by inculcating his father‟s colliery habits such

as drinking till late nights in the pub.

Mrs. Morel‟s bourgeois values include self-help, the work ethic, respectability

and the sacredness of the life of the mind, all of which she has inculcated from her

puritan family and all of which she has applied with rigidness to her husband. She is

mentally estranged from her husband by her bourgeois way of life. She deliberately

strives to nurture in Paul an aversion to his father‟s lifestyle, to the brute physicality

and danger of pit- labour and more generally to what she regards as the pervasive

atmosphere of culture-shock, the dirt, drinking, pit-dirt, degradation and the use of

dialectics. This emphasizes the mother‟s intense politics against the father. In Keith

Cushman‟s book, The Challenge of D. H. Lawrence, we are told that dialect is a

product of the working class. In one of Lawrence‟s short stories “Fanny and Annie”,

we have Annie who has come down the social ladder to consent to marry her first

beau, Harry. As she steps down from then train, Harry greets her in dialect: “Tha‟s

come, has ter?‟‟ Though to Harry these words express his warmth, Annie suffers
 68

hearing them for she has been a lady‟s maid and regards herself as superior. She

jealously guarded her class by her hard-earned veneer of class-prejudice. However,

the use of dialect is not the sole signifier for class origin but it may also be a device

used by the lovers to express their informal feelings and thoughts.

In most of Lawrence‟s works, we can discern that where the working class

comes into play, the device readiest at hand is dialect. Most colliers in Lawrence‟s

world turn dialect on and off at will. In Sons and Lovers, the children‟s exhortation to

Mr. Morel to tell stories bring up the warm side of Mr. Morel – the father, “Well,

there one little ‟oss- we call „ in Taffy” he would begin. Morel‟s stories in dialect not

only show his resistance and defiance of the wife‟s snobbish class consciousness but

also a part of the verbal and emotional world apart, a language of non co-operation, a

whimsical refusal to join the world of dry practical sense. Dialect is in fact a tool, a

class language with the capacity to bond labourers but also to unite males and females

who seem to be destined to be tied to each other despite diverse class backgrounds.

Another signifier of the collier is his being covered with grime and dirt. Apart

from dialect another signpost for knowing the working class is the sight of a miner‟s

blackened torso which signals both a gender as well as class distinction. The collier

by virtue of being cooped up underground happens to fit Lawrence‟s concepts of

masculinity for there are moments when Lawrence seems to „identify the male with

the demoniac underworld and the female with the enlightened, more social and

articulate world above ground‟. (Cushman 97).This brings in sharp relief the softness

and uncorrupted nature of the women characters.

The characters in Lawrence‟s works experience strong feelings about the

partner‟s social classes but Lawrence‟s magical word „love‟ wipes off all traces of

dirt, grime or shame from their minds. One case in point would be “Daughters of the
 69

Vicar” when Louisa, a woman belonging to the middle class visits Alfred Durant‟s

house and watches with revulsion the young man eating without having washed but

the same Louisa when asked by Alfred‟s mother to wash her son‟s back, is fascinated

by the touch of the man‟s dirty flesh and it is stated “her feelings of separateness

passed away”. In other words Lawrence feels that if the feeling of gender is authentic

then the false consciousness of class becomes immaterial and redundant. The scene

depicts a deliberate moving beyond the boundaries of class. Interestingly, by such an

act some other social equations also get negotiated. However, in Sons and Lovers,

Mrs. Morel fails to overcome her apathy for colliery class and she is determined in her

belief that the coal-mine is unsuitable for her sons. Her social aspirations are not only

political but also intensely personal. In attempting to transcend the working class

community through her children, she also tries her best to redeem the failure of her

married life. Young Paul Morel thus falls a prey to a member of forces- historical,

Oedipal and social that has a great impact on his artistic sensibility.

What is evident is Mr. Morel‟s adherence to the norms and values of the

mining community. Although he is an individualized portrait, he is also a

representative miner in several important respects. He lacks education, is almost

illiterate and insists on the physical authority, the exclusiveness and solidarity of

traditional working class community. His inarticulateness and his dialect separate him

from his family along with his incurable habit of drinking at the public house till late

night. Coupled with this Mr. Morel‟s short temper and physical exhaustion prevents

him from being a lovable member of the Morel family. Mr. Morel in his endeavour to

assert his patriarchal power as husband, father and head of the family is helpless by

the usurpation of this role by his socially superior wife. This is also partially

responsible for alienating him from his children. Thus both Mr. and Mrs. Morel
 70

emerge as trying to escape from the reality of their situations; Mr. Morel by going to

the pub almost every night and chatting with his friends and the mother Mrs. Morel by

ignoring the husband and by taking on the sons as her lovers one after the other.

Paul‟s rejection of his father‟s values at the beginning has much to do with

class and gender conflict within the family as it does with his unconscious oedipal

rivalry with his father for his mother‟s affections. This becomes evident in the gap

between the parents over the husband‟s deceit about the house being rented, the

incident of the cropping of William‟s hair, the row over the visit of the clergy man,

the theft of Mrs. Morel‟s six pence (and bringing to our mind the character of Mrs.

Thurlow in “The Ox” by H. E. Bates ), Morel‟s habit of socializing with his friends

over drinks at the local public house.

It would be incorrect to perceive Paul‟s turning away from the sphere of the

mind since it is neither a complete nor a permanent turning away from his father or

from the pit community and the world of work. Paul later rejects middle class values

for those of his father‟s people and in his choice of a career as a commercial artist, he

is in no possibility seen to reject the world of labour for the life of the mind or of the

aesthetic sensibility.

Like other relationships in the community, Paul‟s love for his mother is forged

and sustained in the context of money. Unlike his father or William, when Paul gets a

job he gives all his income to his mother which in effect signals the removal of his

father from his position as the head of the family. Moreover, economics plays a vital

role not only in Paul and Mrs. Morel‟s relationship but also in Paul and Clara Dawes

relationship. Clara is attractive to Paul as a symbol of the new woman who asserts not

only her sexual but also her economic independence and it is this combination of

economic as well as psychological and sexual liberation that makes Paul feel even
 71

more intensely the claustrophobic nature of his relationship with his mother and seek

to free himself. Paul‟s relationship with Clara is broken off as a result of the strange

fight between Paul and the jealous husband, Baxter Dawes; the estranged long

separated married couple replaces Walter and Gertrude Morel, the hero‟s own mother

and father.

Paul‟s desperate attempts to please his mother after William‟s death early in

the novel is hastened by over work as he strives to secure a place in the middle class

enables us to comprehend the clash of priorities within Paul‟s mature consciousness

as he strives to choose between the working class and the middle class.

From a very young age Paul is aware of the difference in classes and the two

sets of values which contribute to his neuroticism. The environment of the community

affects him greatly.

The environment of the community affects him not only directly

through contact with the mine, his father‟s friends, and with the

neighbours but more subtly and powerfully through his parents, whose

battle between the values of the pit and public house on the one hand,

and of Chapel and Women‟s Guild on the other, is partly class warfare.

(Geoffrey 62).

Lawrence evokes our sympathy for Paul in a series of typical scenes from his

childhood- his parent‟s battles, his love for his mother and hatred for his father‟s

domestic life (making fuses, telling stories and bullying the family) gathering black

berries for his mother in coppices and quarries, collecting his father‟s wages from the

offices of the coal company, scouring the market for bargains for his mother –through

which Lawrence develops our awareness of Paul‟s unnatural dependence on his

mother.
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Paul is tortured by this sense of class difference when he visits father‟s pay

office and also when looking for job advertisements in the reading room of the public

library where he believes people are measuring and judging him for his moral and

financial degradation in living at home with his mother instead of going down the pit.

Though Lawrence makes Paul stand in favour of his mother he is also aware

of his father‟s warmth. The myriad domestic activities of Morel like making fuses,

mending boots, trousers and similar activities humanizes him. This apart, Morel is

also found weeping for his son William. Moreover, we are made aware that in his

own way Morel really cares for his wife, bringing her tea in bed (only to be scolded in

case it has no sugar) and this tenderness emerges again at her death though he is also

frightened, feeling uncomfortable for being pushed to one side by his son. Paul suffers

from self-deception in the case of his affection for his father.

Paul‟s self-deception proves true in the context of his relationship with

Miriam. Miriam feels that the failure of their love is the outcome of Mrs. Morel‟s hold

over her son‟s affections. However, Paul views this as Miriam‟s desire to possess him

and his feelings totally. This is only one side of the picture for Paul at one instance

blames Miriam for his lack of interest in her calling her a „nun‟. Miriam‟s religiosity

distresses Paul who had by then grown up to be a self-centric and extremely egoistic

man. Paul turns into a self-divided individual for unlike his relationship with Miriam,

his affair with Clara involves revealing little of his inner emotional life. Clara is

presented in Sons and Lovers as a married woman and a suffragist. Her character is

portrayed in bold hues. She is the woman who helps Paul realize his sexual self.

Clara offers Paul the opportunity to release himself from the web of self-

delusion in which he is enmeshed. Clara approaches Paul from the adult world of

work, marriage and politics and she has the potential to stimulate Paul into a self-
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appraisal. She in fact gives a true picture of Miriam‟s feelings for Paul saying that it is

not the suffocating, religious devotion but a very healthy and possessive love for Paul.

She tells him in plain words that Miriam „doesn‟t want any of your soul communion.

That‟s your imagination. She wants you”. (S.&L. 338).

Paul‟s response to Miriam is symptomatic of the tension arising between Mr.

and Mrs. Morel. Paul becomes hyper-sensitive to his mother who had been deprived

of her sense of a „real husband‟ and this somehow places greater burden on his young

shoulders. He turns sentimental towards almost all the women who figure in his life.

The nicest men… were so sensitive to their women that they would go

without them forever rather than do them a hurt. Being the sons of

women whose husbands had blundered rather brutally through their

feminine sanctities, they themselves were too diffident and shy. They

could easier deny themselves than incur any reproach from a woman;

for a woman was like their mother; and they were full of the sense of

their mother. (S.&L. 323).

However, in spite of being over-sensitive to the women, Paul ill treats not only

Miriam but also Clara to some extent. His bad behaviour towards these women may

be on account of his monomania which is a natural concomitant of his mother‟s

possessive love for him. He dismisses Miriam from his life on the grounds that she

will „put him in her pocket‟. One of the other pretexts is even more elusive that she

failed to seize him and claim him her mate and property. Miriam is in fact, a real life

counterpart of Lawrence‟s own childhood sweetheart- Jessie Chambers. And Clara

Dawes, his second married lady friend is a prototype of real life Alice Dax. Her

feminist view points render her sexually more open to the extent that of a “loose

woman” whom Paul nonchalantly disposes off after having used her sexually. Paul in
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a very generous and authoritative mood bundles Clara off to her former master or

husband Baxter Dawes. Paul in the process receives a boost to his enormous ego. At

one instance Paul even demands of Clara:

“… You seem to forget I‟m your boss. It just occurs to me”.

“… And what does that mean? She asked coolly.

“… I don‟t know what you want”, she said

“I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully”.

“Call you sir‟, perhaps?” She asked quietly.

“Yes, call me „Sir‟. I should love it”. (S.&L. 309).

Clara obliged him for she discerned that he was starkly „alone‟. The book is

filled with instances of such examples of how men think women ought to feel. In the

book Sexual Politics by Kate Millett argues how a subject can diminish the object.

Clara Dawes is all that Miriam fails to be. She comes across as an

„independent‟, emancipated, experienced and physically inhibited. (Hough 48).She is

even estranged from her husband whom she has left for to her he is an insensitive

brute. What appeals to Paul about Clara is that she is full of openness and sunshine

demanding nothing from Paul but giving him physical satisfaction in return whereas

Miriam trespasses on sanctified territory that is actually Mrs. Morel‟s. Miriam

demands an absolutely committed love- with all its concomitants of loyalty,

tenderness and understanding. Lawrence has very subtly emphasized the

temperamental difference of the two women.

This difference in their attitude proves to be the deciding factor for Paul‟s

choice. Paul thus drifts away from the spiritual Miriam into the Socialist- Suffragette

Unitarian group formed around Clara. Paul is not clear about his own feelings towards
 75

the women who enter his life. Kate Millet has very deftly drawn an accurate picture of

Paul‟s opportunistic tendencies.

He is the perfection of self-sustaining ego. The women in the book

exist in Paul‟s orbit and cater to his needs: Clara to awaken him

sexually, Miriam to worship his talent in the role of disciple and Mrs.

Morel to provide always that enormous and expansive support, that

dynamic motivation which can inspire the son of a coal miner to rise

above the circumstances of his birth and become a great artist.

(Millett 247).

That Paul fails to form any positive or solid relationship with either of the

women, Miriam or Clara only reinforce the influence of his mother over him. At one

point his mother Mrs. Morel even articulates,” I‟ve never had a husband – not really‟.

(S.&L. 252).Paul‟s mother is often found giving Paul long fervent kisses. Walter

Morel ill-treats his wife, beats her and locks his pregnant wife out of the house. Paul

when young feels hatred and disgust at his father‟s behaviour towards his mother.

Mrs. Morel too is repelled and enslaved to the brutality of her husband. There is found

a perfect manifestation of power – politics between the husband and the wife. In Kate

Millett‟s Sexual Politics it is suggested that the men use the weapon of brutality to

exert their power and authority over the weaker sex. “Sexual possession of adult

woman may be the first… Mrs. Morel had no independent existence and is deprived

of any avenue of achievement”. (Millett 248).

Women had long been enslaved by men on account of their weaker bodies.

(Wollstonecraft 110). However, it is interesting to note the fact that the feminists

clamouring for equal rights for women would react to find the same women refusing

to submit to the male supremacy once granted equal status. (Colebrook 120).
 76

Such a predicament is well evident in Sons and Lovers where Paul Morel

moves ahead in his life and career but using the strength of other women whom he has

used shamelessly. Women in Sons and Lovers are presented as the epitome of self-

sacrifice, again a stereotype trait of the feminine.

Miriam and then Clara provide the support that Paul embraces but later rejects

them both. The things that go against the Paul – Miriam relationship was that though

they appeared to be a pair made for each other, yet the all- pervasive influence of the

dominant mother aborted the relationship. Mrs. Morel feels threatened by the

absorbing quality of Miriam‟s love for Paul. She feels apprehensive that there will be

no space left in Paul‟s heart and mind and life if Paul at all marries her. It is

interesting that both the women Gertrude and Miriam repel each other on account of

being very similar in their personalities. Both are over – possessive, jealous,

hankering after the whole of Paul‟s attention and energy. They are passionate and

temperamental as well as reserved and vulnerable.

Mrs. Moral feels disturbed whenever girls or young ladies come to pay visit to

her sons, William or even Paul. This suggests Mrs. Morel‟s over –possessive nature.

Another reason for Paul‟s rejecting Miriam is the temperamental incompatibility of

Paul and Miriam. “She could not take him and relieve him of the responsibility of

himself. She could only sacrifice herself to him…. And that he did not want…. . And

he did not hope to give life to her by denying his own” (S. &L. 462).

The stage seems set for some one else‟s entry and so Clara really enters Paul‟s

life. Clara Dawes is the „new woman‟ who is educated, economically independent

and socially emancipated. She is a suffragette and open, fair, honest and very upright.
 77

Paul seems to be enamoured by Clara‟s instinctive lifestyle. He had been

initially impressed by her physical presence. Paul seems caught between feelings for

the two women.

He belonged to Miriam, he loved Miriam with his soul. He grew warm

at the thought of Clara, he battled with her, he knew the curves of her

breast and shoulders as if they had been moulded inside him, and yet

he did not positively desire her. (S.&L.319).

Clara‟s attraction to Paul is alarmingly sensual unlike Miriam‟s which is

overtly spiritual. The over-possessive mother thus feels less threatened by the son‟s

attraction to Clara Dawes than to that of Miriam‟s. Clara Dawes is viewed by many

critics of Lawrence as a mother- surrogate. She is much older than Paul and also

married and thus fulfils Paul‟s suppressed sexual urges and also forms a good

substitute for Paul‟s unconscious wish – fulfillment of his relation with his mother.

Some of Lawrence critics have observed that Lawrence was not really

concerned with women and that he hated intelligent women. However, this belief has

been proved insubstantial when we study the character portrayals of women. Mrs.

Morel is a determined woman who tries to impose herself over the external affairs

through her sons. She uses her intelligence from the very beginning of the story.

At one instance Mrs. Morel is shown as deriving satisfaction through her

children here Paul: “Perhaps she only wanted him to be himself, to develop and bring

to fruit all that she had put into him. In him she wanted to see her life‟s

fruition.”(S.&L. 77).

She comes across as a very strong woman who knows her mind and spares

nothing to keep her sons out of coal pits and the misery that one can associate with

them. Not only Gertrude, but even Miriam and Clara are women with strong will
 78

power. With complete nonchalance they are shown to deny and defy the social norms,

fight against all odds and obstacles and attempt to live life on their own terms. Miriam

always desired to be a boy for it meant greater opportunities. She always wanted a

chance- to know, to learn, to do something in life like anybody else:

I want to do something. I want a chance like anybody else. Why should

I, because I‟m a girl, be kept at home and not allowed to be anything.

What chance have I?

…of knowing anything – of learning – of doing anything. It‟s not fair,

because I‟m a woman. But Miriam almost fiercely wished she were a

man. And yet she hated men, at the same time.. .. Men have

everything. (S.&L.185-86).

Mrs. Morel criticizes the urge to be a man saying:- “And my boy…. When a

woman wants very badly to be a man. You may back your life she‟s not much good as

a woman”.(S.&L. 186). Again this brings into play the issues of gender and power-

politics.

Paul‟s perception of Clara and Miriam corresponds to Freud‟s description of

the conventional ways in which Edwardian men classified women. The way women

see through the constructions of gender: the way they are socialized to accept the

asymmetrical power relations. So, mother or lover, they see through the „stable‟

structures of social relations.

Miriam is spiritualized while Clara becomes his sensual mistress of lower

social status. Clara represents Freud‟s concept of the „frigid‟ woman who due to

prolonged periods of non- engagement in sexual activity makes them psychically

impotent. In contrast to Clara, is Miriam who is described by critics as an incurable

romantic.
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There takes place a cross current of emotions which create a chasm within

him. While he is under pressure on account of Miriam‟s romanticism, he feels

distressed by the show of wealth and power by the masters, managers in a word, the

moneyed men at the top. This leads to Paul or Lawrence‟s hatred for industrialism. In

his middle period he was to concentrate his envy upon the capitalist middle classes,

and in his last years, he championed primitive societies where he was reassured that

male supremacy was not merely a social phenomenon all too often attenuated by class

differences but a religious and total way of life.

That Mrs. Morel is full of rapture to iron her son‟s clothes hammers home the

intensity of her love and dependence on her son‟s existence. “It was a joy to her to

have him proud of his collars. There was no laundry. So she used to rub away at them

with her little convex iron, to polish them till they shone from the sheer pressure of

her arm”. (S.&L. 79).

Lawrence also describes how Miriam idolizes Paul; even stealing a thrush‟s

nest makes him look so superior in her eyes that she catches her breath. “He was

concentrated on the act. Seeing him so, she loved him, he seemed so simple and

sufficient to himself. And she could not get to him”. (S.&L. 263).

Miriam by getting educated from Paul intends to overcome patriarchal barriers

but by falling in love with the chauvinist Paul she feels helpless and thwarted and at a

loss.

Paul is indeed enviable in his rock like self- sufficiency, basking in the respect

that he receives from a bevy of women who surround him, all energetic to serve and

stroke him, all disposable when their time comes. When Paul first ventures forth into

the larger male world it is again the women who prepare the way for their victories..

Paul wins the adulation of all the girls in the Jordan‟s Surgical Appliances Factory
 80

where he works. The women present him with inordinately expensive oil colours for

his birthday. He comes more and more to represent the boss, ordering silence,

insisting on speed and although he has physical relationships with one of his

underlings, he insists on a rapid division between sex and business.

The novel‟s centre of conflict is said to be in Paul‟s divided loyalty to his

mother and mistresses. In Fantasia of the Unconscious, one of the two amateur essays

in Psychoanalysis, Lawrence states the effect of doting motherhood: “The son gets on

swimmingly…. . Think of the power which a mature woman this infuses into her boy.

He flares up like a flame in oxygen”. (F.O.U. 124).

Paul is proud of not only being spoilt by his mother but also at a double

advantage of being a man and of doing a „white- collar‟ job unlike his father who was

a coal-miner. Paul‟s first girl Miriam is restless and eager to escape the narrow

boundaries of her class through the education that she receives from Paul. The scenes

of condescension are some of the most remarkable instances of sexual sadism

disguised as masculine pedagogy.

It is Paul‟s habit to lecture his mistresses that as women, they are incapable of

the sort of whole- hearted attention to task or achievement that forms the province of

only the male and is the cause of his superiority. “I suppose work can be everything to

a man… . But a woman works with a part of herself. The real and vital part is covered

up”. (S.&L. 460).

What Paul and in effect Lawrence wants to suggest is that woman‟s lower

nature here phrased as her „true nature‟ is incapable of objective activity and finds its

only satisfaction in human relationships where she may be of service to men and her

children. Men in the later Lawrence novels like Aaron, Ciccio and so on constantly

ridicule trivial female efforts at art or ideas.

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Feminism first enters Sons and Lovers in the form of the Woman‟s Guild to

which Mrs. Morel belongs. The details are those from Mrs. Lawrence‟s own life. In

the text it is stated:

When the children were old enough to be left, Mrs. Morel joined the

Women‟s guild. It was a little club of women attached to the co-

operative Wholesale Society, which met on Monday night in the long

room over the grocery shop of the Bestwood „Co-op‟. The women

were supposed to discuss the benefits to be derived from Co-

operation, and other social questions. Sometimes Mrs. Morel read a

paper. (S.&L. 69).

Mrs. Morel enjoys intellectual discussions for it gives her a scope to sharpen

her social and intellectual skills. She gains a new stature in the eyes of her children. It

seemed queer to the children to see their mother who was always busy about the

house, sitting writing in her rapid fashion, thinking, referring to books and writing

again. They felt for her on such occasions the deepest respect. (S.&L. 90).

Interestingly, the Woman‟s Guild evokes feelings of hostility in most of the

husbands. The Guild in a way made ordinary women politically aware. The husbands

looked on with suspicion at the over- independence of their wives and felt threatened.

The women too found faults with their meagre lives. The colliers found their women

talking from platforms and writing on the condition of women. They felt for her on

such occasions the deepest respect. (S.&L.90). So the colliers found their women had

a „new standard of their own‟ rather unnerving. In the men we can discern a

schizophrenic split. While at one point they feel threatened at another they harbour a

deep respect for the same emancipated women.

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The novel highlights the economic basis of women‟s oppression. In one

chapter we find that pregnant with her third child, Mrs. Morel reflects that „she could

not afford to have this third. She did not want it.‟ Mrs. Morel too finds her condition

too depressing. There is little that Mrs. Morel can do to change the fundamental

condition of her life. She comes across as an interesting case-study. While on the one

hand she ignores her sexual life, her husband; it is she who comments on women who

try to be like men should not be trusted. We see the various intricate strands in her

character. Though this woman is very intelligent in fact more intellectually superior to

him, she is controlled by her husband. With Clara the position is different. Being

childless and unable to stay with her husband, Baxter Dawes, she works for her living

and the feminist or suffragist movements give her the support that she needs. Clara‟s

feminist streaks as well as other important and interesting facets of her character get

their colour from her real life counterpart, Alice Dax.

Like the Clara and Baxter Dawes couple, Mr. and Mrs. Morel too go through

unpleasant situations. Mrs. Morel is upset by her husband‟s financial deceit. She is

constantly at a disadvantage because of her financial dependence on Mr. Morel.

Logically, she cannot even upbraid her husband for stealing money from her purse

when she is totally dependent on him to give her the money in the first place. In their

battles, Morel exploits their position as breadwinner and Mrs. Morel‟s essential

powerlessness is revealed. This can be read against the background of feminism. Like

men, a woman‟s projected position in the labour market is influenced by her

education and (father‟s) class background, but unlike men a woman‟s actual labour

status can also be determined by the way her relationship to the labour market is

mediated through her dependence upon a husband and her assumed domestic
 83

responsibilities not to mention how gender socialization affects her own view of her

career potential.

In Lawrence‟s works, men are found to fare well when their partners or

women provide them the required support. Sons and Lovers come across in three

stages, each influenced by a woman. Mrs. Morel, a prototype of real life. Mrs.

Lawrence, Miriam, a model for real life Jessie Chambers and Clara Dawes, a

synonym for actual married woman in the pattern of Alice Dax. Even in his dreams

Paul could not think of beginning his day without the support of his mother, and at the

end of the day he had to narrate the entire day‟s events to his mother.

It is extremely striking that at the age of fourteen, Paul was very sensible,

mature and commonsensical. It was “… to earn his thirty – five shillings a week

somewhere near home, and then, when his father died, have a cottage with his mother,

paint and go out as he liked, and live happily ever after”. (S.&L. 114).

Paul as stated earlier being a miniature carbon – copy of D. H. Lawrence

articulates and performs like the real life counter part Lawrence himself. In one of his

letters to Earnest Collings on 17 Jan. 1913 Lawrence wrote : “It is hopeless for me to

try to do anything without a woman at the back of me. … I daren‟t sit in the world

without a woman behind me”. (Letters 503).

Gertrude Morel and Walter Morel marry out of sheer physical attraction.

Whereas she had been limited in scope to mix with ample acquaintances and lived a

strict puritan and religious life, her limited and restrained living felt the fever of

excitement on encountering Mrs. Morel, a sensuous and fun – loving very virile man

who also happened to be an excellent dancer. Gertrude Morel had inherited her proud

bearing and unyielding temper from her father and after marrying Walter felt grossly

cheated for she learnt after her marriage to Walter that the bills were unpaid. So much
 84

so that the furniture in the house and the house itself was not paid for. She despised

him yet felt tied to him. She made the most of what she could at home. At first, she

was not very keen to move into the Bottoms for she saw it as a descent both in terms

of status as well as location. She did not even feel the need to socialize with her

neighbours at the Bottoms. She prided on the fact that they occupied an end house

having an extra strip of garden on the other side. That she paid six pence a week extra

rent also made her exult and revel. In her locality, Mrs. Morel felt herself „superior

(S&L 22) and this irked the other women in her neighbourhood. That she belonged to

an aristrocratic family, Gertrude could not forget and this fact coloured most of her

words, thoughts and deeds. She came of a good, old Burgher family. Her father

George Copppard, was an engineer. He was a large, handsome man, proud and full of

integrity. The defiant spirit of the father passed on to the daughter Gertrude. It was

this defiant spirit that made her marry below her rank Mrs. Morel remained

perpetually dissatisfied with her fate. In the essay” Women in Sons and Lovers” her

plight is well documented.

Unfortunately Gertrude doesn‟t get used to anything – to her

surroundings, to the Bottoms, to her husband‟s limitations. In fact, she

forgot that she married this miner of her own sweet will. Forgets that

he is a remarkably handy man. … Forgets that at the Christmas party

they had met for the first time it was his dance that had drawn her to

him. Forgets that her rich, ringing laughter had fascinated her. Forgets

that he had seemed so noble to her in the early months of their

courtship. Forgets that he risked his life daily and with gaiety. Forgets

that she married him only after her engagement to the scholarly but

pragmatic John Field had fallen through. (Sitesh 486).

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Gertrude had initially been struck by the appeal of one preacher John Field.

However, Field after encouraging Gertrude had gone off to marry his landlady, a

woman of forty, a widow with immense property. This recalls Lawrence‟s short story

“Second Best” where Frances after being jilted in love by Jimmy, a doctor of

Chemistry and decides to marry John Smedley, a commoner. This apart, in the short

story, “Fannie and Annie”, Annie is jilted by her cousin, whom she adored and she

plans to marry and then opts for the second best option that is a common man by the

name of Harry. But at every juncture of her new life with Harry she receives severe

jolts. Landing at her hometown, she immediately feels upset by comparing this to her

arrival at Gloucester. Harry was by profession a moulder, had not „saved twenty

pounds‟. Like Mrs. Morel, here Fanny had to provide the money for the house.

Her thoughts revert to the past trip. “…The carriage for her mistress, the dog-

cart for herself with the luggage! The drive out past the river, .. And herself sitting

beside Arthur, everybody so polite to her”. („Fannie and Annie‟ 429).

The strong feminist tendencies in Annie bears close resemblance to Clara

Dawes who in her heart of hearts tries her best to be a man while appearing to hate

men in general. She too like Mrs. Morel is at a disadvantage on account of being a

woman and is essentially powerless. In the book Mrs. Morel at one point shouts at her

husband saying:

The house is filthy with you, she said

Then get out on it! He shouted. It‟s me as brings th‟ money

whoam, not thee. It‟s my house, not thine.

Then get out on‟t. (S.&L. 33).

To this she answers in tears” tears of impotence” that she would have left the

household a long time back but failed. However, despite her helplessness and
 86

humiliation which she feels is meted out by her husband, she will not stoop to being

exploited.

Clara is better off than Mrs. Morel for the simple fact that she has the courage

to walk and articulate her dissatisfactions. She is said to have left her husband because

of his cruelty and incapacity to satisfy her. She is an „advanced woman‟ a suffragette

who „talks on platforms‟ having been in a woman‟s movement before her marriage

and remained active in it for ten years. Through her Paul gets in connection with the

Socialist Suffragette, Unitarian people in Nottingham.

Clara is an individualist and her sense of feminism has urged her to identify

with other women, but to separate herself from them. She is considered as a woman

apart, and particularly apart, from her classes, a stance based to some extent on the

education she has been able to obtain through the woman‟s movement. Her feminism

begins by intriguing Paul but later it appears as an irrelevance and towards the end of

the novel her aggressive self almost dies.

From the developments in the novel, it becomes clear that Clara‟s

dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the women‟s oppression, but concerns only her

own sexuality and the necessity for her to come to terms with it, she has only to sort

herself out, „not to try and change the society‟. Her affair with Paul is a kind of

therapy, enabling her to finally return to her husband. Because the novel fails to focus

on Clara‟s personal or on political character, the personality at times lacks coherence.

Kate Millett has remarked on the shifting centre of Clara‟s character.

Clara is really two people, the rebellious feminist and political activist

whom Paul accuses of penis envy and even man- hating, and who

tempts him the more for being a harder conquest, and at a later stage,

the sensuous rose, who by the end of the novel is changed once again-
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now beyond recognition- into a „loose woman‟ whom Paul

nonchalantly disposes of when he has exhausted her sexual utility.

(Millett 83).

In the beginning Paul is struck by Clara‟s confident assertiveness. Clara is a

„striking woman‟, the way she holds herself, is defiant. She is tall with „handsome

shoulders‟ and to top it all she is not in the least interested in Paul. Miriam notices the

response to this apparent challenge, „The girl saw his masculine spirit rear its head.‟

Paul remembers after parting from Clara that she was separated from her husband.

What interests Paul is the way Clara touches him and gives him the feel of his mother,

Mrs. Morel. Paul is fascinated by her aggressiveness, he sees in her face her

„fierceness‟, „her skin and the texture of her mouth‟ which is „made for passion‟ and

the very „set- back of her throat‟. For Paul, Clara‟s assertiveness and her physical

presence are an indication of sexual energy again suggesting her self- deception.

Clara‟s is a rigid, ego –centric isolation which has cut her off from all warm

contact with the others, leaving her with minimal verbal, intellectual, political and

commercial relationship.

One of the tactics Paul uses to avoid Clara‟s feminist attacks is by the

principle of chivalry. He has already shown a tendency to cope with the world of the

factory by romanticizing it. Paul explicitly sets up this chivalric attitude in opposition

to Clara‟s feminism. On the day of Clara‟s visit to Willey Farm, when he and Clara

and Miriam are out walking, he remarks-

„what a treat to be a knight – and to have a pavilion here‟

And to have us shut up safely? Replied Clara.

„I would carry your banner of white and green and heliotrope…

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„I have-not doubt‟, said Clara, „that you would rather fight for a

woman than let her fight for herself.‟

„I would when she fights for herself she seems like a dog before a

looking-glass?

She asked with a curl of the lip

„or the shadow‟, he replied.(S.& L. 274).

Here Paul seems to suggest that men and women can gain nothing by setting

themselves against the other, „man is woman‟s shadow‟. Clara interprets this

differently suggesting that what he really means is that man is the mirror in which

woman seeks her true self. Moreover, this dialogue mirrors the patriarchal mind-set of

Paul where he makes the use of tropes like Knights and damsels in distress.

It is interesting that only when Paul finds Clara emotionally weak or

vulnerable that he starts to feel soft towards her. So we can read it as Paul‟s weakness

which is to see an otherwise independent and strong girl betray her vulnerability.

When Paul visits Clara‟s home and sees her jennying lace, he reflects that “she

seemed denied and deprived of so much. And her arm moved mechanically. That

should never have been subdued to a mechanism, and her head was bowed…. That

never should have been bowed?‟(S. & L. 304).

Not only does Paul want to see Clara betray her vulnerability, he also wants

her to acknowledge that her feminism is misguided, and that what she really needs is

sexual fulfillment. To Paul, Clara cannot be bound by conventional sexual morality.

When Mrs. Morel asks, “Won‟t people talk?” about his connection with Clara. To this

he replies: “They know she‟s a suffragette,… . She lives separate from her husband,

and talks on platforms: so she‟s already singled out from the sheep, and, as far, as I

can see, hasn‟t much to lose”. (S. & L. 358-359).

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Paul‟s gets baptized in passion from his relations with Clara as also with

Miriam. In effect the relations are similar on several grounds and both can be said to

„fail‟ for the same reasons. Paul conceives of sexual desire as something impersonal,

„a sort of detached thing; that did not belong to a woman‟, „the great hunger and

impersonality of passion‟. With Miriam who is reluctant and scared of their love –

making, „he had always almost willfully, to put her out of his own feelings‟. Paul

resents the fact that Miriam insists on calling him back to „the littleness, the personal

relationship‟. Clara is more sexually experienced and not afraid of physical passion in

the way that Miriam is; and for a brief time it seems as if she and Paul experience

what he calls: “The something big and intense that changes you when you really come

together with somebody else”.

Paul is unconcerned about the double standards of morality. Talking of the

fact that Clara‟s husband is living openly with another woman, Miriam says to Paul:

„Don‟t you think a position like that is hard on a woman?‟

„Rottenly hard!‟

„It‟s so unjust!‟ said Miriam.

„The man does as he likes-

„Then let the woman also‟ he said.

„How can she? And if she does, look at her position!‟

„What of it?‟

„Why it‟s impossible! You don‟t understand

„What a woman forfeits-

„No, I don‟t. But if a woman‟s got nothing but fair fame to feed on,

why … a donkey would die of it!‟ (S. &L. 361).

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Clara‟s return to her husband at the end of the novel is singled out by Kate

Millett as a glaring instance of Sons and Lovers, anti- feminist stance. Clara is

presented at this instance meek as a sheep and Paul God-like makes a sacrifice of her

to her husband, Baxter Dawes. So the property of her husband, Baxter Dawes is

restored proving a denouncing of the female domination. At one point when Paul

converses with Clara regarding Baxter Dawes and her relationship, Clara confesses

that she had committed a mistake of thinking Baxter loved her and that she had

entered marriage without much thought. According to her the marriage went wrong

because Dawes never waked her, „never got there‟. Baxter Dawes, she feels bullied

her because he felt that she never could belong to him. Later Paul hounds Clara with

queries whether Clara gave Dawes any chance to come near to her:

„Weren‟t you horrid with him?

Didn‟t you do something that knocked him to pieces? … I feel you did

something to him – sort of broke him- broke his manliness… I believe

you did him as much damage… by sort of cutting him underneath, and

making him ashamed… making him feel as if he were nothing – I

know.(S.&L. 97).

This articulation brings to light the subconscious reflection that functions

instinctively within Paul‟s mind that his mother, the wife of Mr. Morel should in fact

be returned to his father.

Like Miriam, Clara will not in the last issue, submit to Paul, will not choose

the relationship in which she would have to be the subordinate partner.

She did not love Dawes, never had loved him but she believed he loved

her, at least depended on her. She had received her confirmation; but

she never believed that her life belonged to neither Paul Morel, nor his
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to her…. They would have to part sooner or later. Even if they married,

and were faithful to each other, still he would have to attend to him

when he came home. But it was not possible. Each wanted a mate to go

side – by – side. (S.&L. 405). Thus the confidence to attend to the

equipoise is lost and the relationship fails.

The element of „will‟ which D. H. Lawrence so feared becomes vital in

deciding the future of any relationship of the married Mrs. Dawes and Paul happen

spontaneously and passionately, yet many a time they bicker on this issue. At one

instance, Clara speaks strongly to Paul, “… I have met your sort before: the young

men who think he knows everything”. To which Paul retorts, “And you are then

young woman who thinks I know nothing”.

Paul is very sarcastic towards her calling their conversation a Suffragette

meeting. This reveals Paul‟s and like him the high- handed way in which men deal

with women. This gets reinforced by Paul‟s behaving with her as a boss talks to a

subordinate.

“Here, I say, You seem to forget…I am your boss”. (S.&L.309 ).

This attitude comes out in almost all his dealings with either Miriam or Clara.

Out on a walk Miriam, Clara and Paul come across a suffragette movement, Paul

immediately voices his opinion against women fighting for their rights. This brings

out even vehemently the vulnerability of „manliness‟ that it can be injured by women.

In this novel Paul comes across as a typical male chauvinist who blamed Clara

for falling out with her husband, Baxter Dawes. Mrs. Dawes sounds Paul about the

actual state of affairs between herself and her husband. Discussing about Baxter, Paul

asks Clara-

“Do you hate him?” he asked.

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“You talk”, she said, “about the cruelty of men, in their brute force.

They simply don‟t know that the woman exists.”

“About me you know nothing”. She said bitterly.

“Not more than Baxter knew?” he asked.

“Perhaps not as much”.

Her dissatisfaction is that Paul never lets her come near him in the truest sense

like Baxter did. She complains to Paul,” But you‟ve never come near to me. You can‟t

come out of yourself, you can‟t…”(S.&L. 407).

She rues the fact that with Paul she feels non- existent.

“When I had Baxter, actually had him, then I did feel as if I had all of

him,” she said.

“And it was better?” he asked.

“Yes- yes- it was more whole…

“… But you‟ve never given me yourself.”

She presents a very insightful analogy of a dead leaf flying in the wind after

Paul‟s making love to her. At one instance Paul tells Clara, “If I start to make love to

you, he said, “I just go like a leaf down the wind- “And leave me out of count.” She

said. (S.&L. 407). The sex wrangle is clearly visible and no relationship seems to be

free from this. This whining against her situation is also noticed when she tells Paul

that Baxter at least treated her with respect unlike Paul who treated her with

indifference almost like „cattle‟.

Clara rues the fact that she had treated Baxter Dawes horribly:

“… I‟ve treated him badly. And now you treat me badly. It serves me

right. ….
 93

… I never considered him worth having, and now you don‟t consider

me- But it serves me right. – He loved me a thousand times better than

you ever did…”

Paul at one point sarcastically interjects:

“It looked as if he respected you”

“He did! And I made him horrid, I know I did. You‟ve taught me that –

And he loved me a thousand times better than ever you do”.

(S. & L. 427).

This comes across as an interesting rejoinder for we understand Paul as not

only being a typical male chauvinist who would naturally not pay much attention or

importance to the individual in Clara. He only deals with her as a woman. Even with

Miriam, Paul deals with in a very humiliating fashion. He offers to give her Algebra

and French lessons. Paul is abusive in their relationship. She is beautiful to him when

she suffers and cringes. Kate Millett too points this out when she quotes in her

work Sexual Politics. “She was ruddy and beautiful. Yet her soul seemed to be

intensely supplicating, knowing he was angered”. (S.&L. 188).

It is interesting that Miriam‟s cowering and diffident nature is what fascinates

Paul. However, the sight of the humiliated Miriam is not only attractive to Paul but

also arouses his hostility and sadism. He fails to account for his violent reactions

towards Miriam:

In spite of himself, his blood began to boil with her. It was strange that

no one else made him in such a fury. He flared against her. Once he

threw the pencil in her face… She turned her face slightly aside… .

When he saw her eager, silent, as it were, blind face, he felt he wanted
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to throw the pencil in it… and because of the intensity with which she

roused him, he sought her. (S. & L. 253).

Here again, we notice that Miriam (woman‟s) aspirations and hopes are not

respected rather she is thought to be lacking in talent, inferior when she thinks of

sacrificing herself to Paul; she knows beforehand that he would soon desert her,

Miriam fails to measure up to the demands of Paul and so her predictions come true as

Paul soon drops her and takes up Clara instead. However, the situation is not too

simple to pass a judgment so hastily for there lies a lot of underlying factors- Oedipus

Complex according to Michael Black, a Lawrentian critic is the central issue round

which the entire novel revolves.

Paul rejects Miriam for the simple reason that his mother wished him to do so.

Mrs. Morel felt insecure and afraid that Miriam would „put him in her pocket‟. She

failed him also by not seizing upon him and claiming him as her mate.

Both Miriam as well as Paul‟s mother is similar in their tendency to absorb

Paul and their over-possessive nature.

he is hounded by an overwhelming desire to mother Paul.

Then he was so ill she felt he would be weak. Then she would be

stronger than he. Thus she could love him. If she could be mistress of

him in his weakness, take care of him, if he could depend on her, if she

could, as it were, have him in her arms, how she would love him.

(S.&L.174 ).

However, though both Miriam and Mrs. Morel share similar traits, Miriam is

far more cloying, begging one and all to love her while Mrs. Morel is more dignified

and sane.
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From the very outset, the relationship between Paul and Miriam had been

flawed with unpleasant overtones of the mother substitute. During the trip to Lincoln,

Paul at one point wonders why he could not have a younger mother. So the logic for

Miriam and Clara‟s entry becomes clear. Clara as she is older and so comes across as

a mother- surrogate and Miriam on account of her close resemblance to his mother. At

this juncture we find the gender stereotypes dissolving and the dominance of

incestuous relationships. Here both the love-interests of Paul become mother-

surrogates.

Therefore it is quite logical and likely that he would fall in love with Clara ,

only six or seven years older than him, a woman married, like his mother to a

workman who has she says treated her badly. There is a striking resemblance between

Baxter Dawes and Mr. Morel. Their working class background, use of dialect, their

roughness and their collapse into drunkenness and apathy with outbursts of violence.

Clara is „reserved‟ and „superior‟ like his mother and she has the mother‟s deep

discontent, her independent spirit, her sharp tongue and bitterness against life and

against men. For Paul his affair with this intellectual, strong and pretty woman was a

total instinct, a flowing away into a flood of emotions and sensations. “He became,

not a man with a mind, but a great instinct.” (S.&L. 432).

Interestingly, all the relationships in Sons and Lovers seem to involve power

struggles. Mrs. Morel wrenches power from her husband by turning from his sexual

presence and then dominating, even emasculating her sons, she controls Paul‟s

devotion so much that he spurns all his love relationships. Miriam, apparently passive

and devoted to Paul, is in effect constantly trying to assert her will over him. To

possess him, Paul is very afraid of this and thus gradually their relationship

disintegrates. Clara accuses Paul of holding back much from her. She complains that
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he cannot or will not “come out” to her. Paul controls this relationship in accordance

with his own sweet will and opportunity, dissolving it when it seems superfluous to

him. Later on it is Paul who is instrumental in bringing Mr. and Mrs. Dawes together

subconsciously fulfilling his duties of bringing his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Morel

together if not in actual life at least in his mind.

The balance of power in relationships seems to be vital and an essential

concern of D. H. Lawrence for it also seems the reason for the death of love.

Lawrence‟s men and women will not be controlled, possessed or lost in another

individual‟s world. Perfect relationships cannot be sculpted by an outright possession

of one by the other but rather through a delicate balance, achieved somehow in terms

of recognition of otherness and of the primal selfness.

Each couple in D. H. Lawrence‟s works face some critical or crisis conditions.

In the case of Mrs. Morel we understand that she had blundered through a mismatch.

Mrs. Morel is very wary that her sons do not falter or fumble through life. Since the

major cultural dislocations is the marriage of the parents – Mr. and Mrs. Morel. Mrs.

Morel has been drawn into her marriage by the lack of an experience which is outside

the narrow confines of her puritan upbringing. Morel‟s vitality and virility, his

„sensuous flame of life „ and „dusky softness‟ made Gertrude Morel feel that he was

„something wonderful beyond her.‟ However, very soon she gets over this hangover

of physical attractiveness and it is viewed by her as socially a reduction of all

possibilities and she becomes hostile to their relationship. She can only relate to

Morel in her wanting to transform him into her own image. “His nature was purely

sensuous and she strove to make him moral, religious. She tried to force him to face

things… drove him out of his mind”. (S. & L. 22 ).

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For Mrs. Morel vision of the family is actually of more interest. She sees it as

an agent of social mobility. In a significant glimpse into her past, Lawrence

associates how she rebuked her earlier middle class lover, John Field, for not going

into the ministry because of his father‟s pressurizing him to enter business instead

saying,” But if you‟re a man?” However, she later realizes that being a man is not

enough and it is significant that she calls Baxter, Morel‟s colleague, more of a man

than her husband although he is physically inferior and this enhances her admiration

for Baxter‟s ability to do his wife‟s chores when she is in childbirth. She sublimates a

primarily physical relationship into a social one. Of course Morel is a failure and it is

to sentimentalize the character. He is excluded from the family gossips, activities and

laughter.

The process of individuation for Mr. Morel is through his family. She has her

own ways out- through the moral vitality of the chapel and the feminist emancipation.

Her highly refined habits and education causes a cultural dislocation between the

working – class miner and his aspiring wife.

When Morel is ill because of an accident, caused by his own irresponsibility,

Paul talks of himself as the man in the house. Later when Mrs. Morel complains that

her husband is giving her less money, Paul gets angry because it shows a lack of

respect and responsibility towards the wife and he reacts badly, for he feels that his

mother still cares about the father/s responsibilities or lack of them when he thinks he

can manage looking after his mother.

According to Hiran Malani, this middle – class snobbery on the part of Mrs.

Lambert hammered into her children only serve to alienate their father even more.

(Malani 34).The ambition of the mother to foster them into white – collar jobs and
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rise into the middle – class world creates a discord between the working classes and

the newly risen middle classes.

It is true that Mrs. Morel squabbles with her husband on the question of

finance as he scants her budget but such a situation is nothing unusual to this family

for all the miners behave in a similar manner. It is far more significant that he does

not share her education, religion, social aspirations, aesthetic training, economic

motivations, manners, language, moral views or political or even cultural interests.

Their marriage is wrecked by differences that are primarily social rather than

personal.

In the third chapter, Mr. Morel calls attention to her preferences of her son‟s

not going to the pit. In the opening chapters we learn how Mrs. Morel is very

uncomfortable in living in a rented house, sitting on mortgaged chairs and eating off

mortgaged tables might suit old Mrs. Morel but it is far from suiting Gertrude Morel.

Such a cramped financial state pinches her bourgeoisie soul. She had earlier

persuaded herself that she was marrying a financially independent man, owner of two

houses and a houseful of furniture, possessor of a bank account, a miner with a drive

to „get on‟. Her disenchantment with marriage dates from this experience. Because

she remains aloof from the other miner‟s wives who beret her for having deprived and

plugged his dancing skills with her puritan scruples, she feels increasingly isolated

„miles away from her own people‟. Her own people, of course, are the ministers,

teachers and the like whom she knew as a girl. This is an‟ alienation‟ for both Mr. and

Mrs. Morel.

The difference between Mr. and Mrs. Morel are translated into valued

„opposites‟ – she has an over – working super conscious and a high moral instinct

whereas he in comparison has low. While she aspires to noble heights, she strives to
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shape him. Thus particular and concrete differences between the two separate human

beings, differences that are comprehensible in social terms serve as the basis for

constructing a metaphysics that opposes the body and the mind.

In various scenes we learn that Mr. Morel‟s public house going habit acted as

a catharsis for his numbing and back – breaking work, often the only social activity

other than the chapel which was available to an uneducated and an exhausted man in

an industrial village. Despised by his wife, shut out from his family, Morel has added

reasons for drinking and chatting with his fellow- miners. The narrator constantly

views the father through the eyes of the mother. “As he bent over, lacing his boots,

there was a certain vulgar gusto in his movement that divided him from the reserved,

watchful rest of the family. He always ran away from the battle with himself”.

(S.&L.36).

The class differences between his parents affected Paul or Lawrence

(autobiographical element), and coloured Lawrence‟s mind and consciousness to such

an extent that we find representatives of this in his novels and other works. The

conflict between Walter‟s spirits, an opposition which is reflected by differences in

speech- Morel‟s language is highly sensory suggesting his emotional responses to

immediate experience. Mrs. Morel on the other hand demonstrates that while sharing

her husband‟s capacity for concreteness, she possesses an additional capacity for

abstraction, for transcending the present situation towards past and future and for

articulating something more than immediate sensations. Lawrence has referred to this

rift between body and mind in the attitude of his parents:

My father hated books, hate the sight of anyone reading or writing. My

mother hated the thought that any of her sons should be condemned to

manual labour. Her sons must have something higher than that she
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won. But she died first. There is a basic hostility in all of us between

the physical and the mental, the blood and the spirit. The mind is

„ashamed‟ of the blood. And the blood is destroyed by the mind

actually. (Studies in Classic American Literature 81).

Here manual labour is contrary to mental labour. Morel‟s work is almost

purely physical; the role of planning, purpose of control is minimal. Only at night or

on some holidays does he engage himself in mending boots or black smithing. Mental

functions in the mines have been transferred to the owners and managers. Like Mrs.

Morel they are the educated ones and they are the ones whose projects and orders are

carried out by such men as Morel. There is in the novel a functional division between

workers and managers correspondingly. They bring to mind Lawrence‟s own

statement where he places greater importance to the life of the blood than of the mind.

Paul is a true looking glass through whom we can view the industrial set-up of

his times. Paul‟s feeling of terror and humiliations when fetching his father‟s pay

express a child‟s dread of the „system‟. When first seeking work as a lad, fresh out

from school, he baulks at his entry into the „business world with its regulated system

of values and its impersonality because it means becoming a „prisoner of

industrialism‟.

The working people of Bestwood have little sway over those forces which

fundamentally shape their lives- wives‟ naggings, supply and demand of the market,

weather, pay offers, strikes, government decisions, uses for coal, accidents in the

mine, or the distribution of resources in the earth‟s core As a group they function

within an encompassing political and economic and social system over which they

have practically no control. This was what Lawrence detested as this system gave no

place to human desires and emotions.

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Paul strives to become a man of tender sensibilities towards the women in his

life. Discussing his feelings regarding Clara with his mother, he says: “You know

mother, I think there must be something the matter with me, that I can‟t love… I feel

sometimes as of I wronged my women, mother”… (S. & L. 395).

He realizes that though he loves Clara as he had earlier loved Miriam he

cannot come up to the measure of marrying any one of them. His mother is of the

opinion that he would want to marry as soon as he met the right woman but Paul

remains unconvinced realizing that till the mother lives he will be unable to love any

woman. He resents Miriam when she very lovingly slips her arm into his: “Sometimes

as they were walking together, she slipped her arm timidly into his. But he always

resented it, and she knew it. It caused a violent conflict in him”. (S. & L. 209).

This particular action- reaction brings to our mind another similar incident in

another of Lawrence‟s novels The Rainbow where Will too felt uncomfortable at the

over - confident manner of Anna‟s linking her arms into his. Lawrence while within

the biographical frame declares that he would have composed a different Sons and

Lovers some time later.: “My mother was wrong, and I thought she was absolutely

right”.

Similarly in „Women are so Cocksure’ he wrote:

My mother spoilt her life with her moral frenzy against John

Barleycorn. … And at fifty, when the best part of life was gone, she

realized it. And then what would she not have given to have her life

again, her young children, her tipsy husband, and a proper natural

insouciance to get the best of it all. (Phoenix 168).

In Sons and Lovers the conflicts between human beings and their relationships

become even more intense. In the case of Miriam, the self – conflict, the divided self
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is very pronounced for she is accosted with a set of very reality- based expectations

which her nunnery –like garden –house finds her to be at odds with. Her mystical

touch makes her love –affair with Paul a failure and this voices Lawrence‟s own

philosophy of love. In his letter to E. Collings dated 1913, he stated:

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than

the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels,

believes and says is always true…. . All I want is to answer to my

blood, direct without fribbling intervention of mind or moral or what

not. (Letters 503).

Sons and Lovers emerges as a real –life document of D. H. Lawrence where

class factors determine individual behaviour, love- relationships and gender politics.

The novel paves the way for a restless journey into a world of tangled relationships

between men and women and shows the way for a more detailed, circumstantial and

intricate study of man- woman relationships as found in the next novel published in

1915 titled The Rainbow.