CHAPTER-2

Symbols and Images in

Sons and Lovers

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 CHAPTER-2
SYMBOLS AND IMAGES IN SONS AND LOVERS

2.1 Introduction:
D. H. Lawrence makes an extensive use of symbols and images in his Sons and
Lovers, which is taken to be one of Lawrence’s masterpieces. A proper understanding of
these symbols and images leads to a better understanding of the novel. It is considered to
be the most autobiographical novel with an ‘oedipal complex’. That is he dramatizes and
recreates much of his early life in this novel such as his education, his family life and
environment and his love with Jessie Chambers whose counterpart in the novel is Miriam.
He tries some kind of catharsis through the novel. Even though much of his personal life
is dramatized in the novel, it remains a work of art. As in his letter to Edward Garnet in
1912, D. H. Lawrence opines that the novel deals with the story that is about a woman of
character and refinement marries a man bellow her class. As a result, she has no
satisfaction and then turns her attention to her children. Instead of bringing them the best
of life, she corrupts them particularly in their own relationships with other women.
D. H. Lawrence, in Sons and Lovers, combines the dramatic presentation of
characters in speech and action with a poetic expression of their consciousness. Almost
all the characters in the novel are used as symbols to stand for some of the leading ideas
of Lawrence. Like in other novels, characters here symbolize certain ideas and concepts
which Lawrence advocates or protests. One of the characteristics of his characterization is
the abrupt shifts in his presentation of the characters’ contradictions. He employs symbols
and images to embody the tragedy of thousands of young men of England. He powerfully
portrayed the depressing conditions of the miners on the purpose and hope that he would
teach them the ways to change their lives for the better and the happier. Thus, this is what
persuades John Worthen argues thatSons and Lovers is a book that bears the imprints of
sickness, surgery and health as well(Worthen 26).
Nature for Lawrence is a repository of images. His images are at their best
unsurpassed. He draws his images from every aspect and every phenomenon of nature.
Trees, flowers, plants, birds, moors, hills and dales downs and rivers, different natural
phenomena as the sunrise and the sunset , the moon, the sun, the stars, the different
sound, forms, colors of nature all inspire Lawrence to a wealth of similes and metaphors.

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He uses the nature in the novel as a salvation force against the industrial distortion of
human nature.
D. H. Lawrence lived in a time when the British society was experiencing a great
change as a result of the industrial revolution. Thus, the novel, in addition to its
autobiographical trend, traces the disintegrating impacts of industry on the easy-going life
of the countryside. It is noted that the symbols and images in the early chapters of the
novel are used to imply the degrading life conditions of the working class engaged in the
mining industry. If we compare the characters’ involvement with nature between Sons
and Lovers and its previous novel The White Peacock, we find that Lawrence has made a
development in the characters’ cosmic consciousness.
In addition, Sons and Lovers has an oedipal tone, so there are some images that
suggest this Oedipal thread in the novel. Lawrence is a critic of social culture, so he uses
the scenes in which characters of different social classes react with each other as a means
to illustrate his views of the social disintegration due to industrialization. His scenes are
rich with symbolic significance and impregnated with several levels of connotations
achieved through accurate use of symbols and images. All these aspects of the symbolic
structure of the novel are in-depth investigated in this chapter of the thesis.

2.2 Symbolic Characters:

Lawrence is one of the 20th century novelists who do not follow the conventional
method of characterization. His characters are emotionally and psychologically studied
from within as well as from outside. He moves from portraying his characters’ behavior
into the poetic exploration of their inner dimensions on the levels of their psychology,
consciousness and sub- consciousness. Characters in this novel seem as symbols that
convey some doctrinal ideas. Therefore, they may look like mere puppets in the hands of
the writer rather than human beings of flesh and blood. Like, in other novels, the
characters in Sons and Lovers symbolize Lawrence’s concept of polarity. Although it is
universally recognized that Lawrence’s characters deeply stand for his own person and
individuals around him, he has a talent to keep distance between his creative self and his
actual experiences in life.
Most of the characters in Lawrence’s novels are highly symbolic. The symbols
and characters are assimilated. Almost all characters in Sons and Lovers are symbols
representing some of the leading ideas of Lawrence. His characters certainly symbolize
certain ideas and concepts. They are symbols of some doctrinal ideas, and, therefore, they
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create impression that they are puppets being manipulated by Lawrence. The speeches of
the main characters in this novel are often statements of the ideas and theories which
Lawrence wishes either to advocate or contradict. Every character represents a different
aspect of Lawrence’s doctrinal beliefs and a personification of that aspect. The main
incidents of the novel are symbolically used in so far as they serve to reveal and
emphasize the doctrinal purpose which each of the characters stands for. Radha Krishna
Sinha in his book Literary Influences on D. H. Lawrence states:
But the theme of the novel is not the life of the miners, but an
individual drama. And although the characters are concrete, in the
perspective of the later novels, they acquire an importance purely
symbolic. Walter Morel is the sensuous, unmoral, purely animal hero
of the later stories, Mrs. Morel the spiritual bully; Miriam, like
Hermione, is pure spirit, Clara, like Ursula in Women in Love, is pure
womb.(Sinha 33)
The symbolic significance of the characters in the novel is discussed in detail one by one
as follows:

2.2.1 The Mother Figure ( Gertrude Morel ):

Gertrude Morel, one of the central characters in the novel, symbolizes the mother
figure in D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers. She dominates the entire book and the
lives of all the characters in the novel. Gertrude Morel reflects D. H. Lawrence’s
awareness of the fundamental power of women over men’s emotional life as well as of
strong female influence in his own society. She embodies the concept of disillusionment
in marriage. The novel deals with her gradual rejection of her husband, her taking on of
her sons as lovers and the disastrous effects of that on their emotional life. She
symbolically represents the middle class values such as inclination for education, vanity
and snobbishness. She has inherited from her parental family unyielding temper and
Puritanism. She is married to a miner, but her middle class values impede her relish in her
marital life.
Mrs. Morel is the pen-portrait of Lawrence’s mother. As it is well-known, Sons and
Lovers constitutes an autobiographical work. Gertrude’s character is conceptualized on
the basis of his real mother, Lydia, who descends from a better, more intellectual
background than her husband. She found it hard to come down to a more sensual, more
earthly level of a miner. The mother in the novel has a similar problem but is totally
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idolized by her sons. Similarly, Lawrence is also known to have loved his mother with the
same intensity. Thus, there is a close approximation between Lawrence's mother and Mrs.
Gertrude Morel. Lawrence idealizes her in order to prove her superior to Paul’s father and
Miriam Leivers.
Later, Lawrence had himself confessed that while highlighting the positive points
of Gertrude Morel, he had been rather unjust to Walter Morel who had been drawn after
his father. At the time of writing the novel, Lawrence was completely under the influence
of his mother, but later on he came to realize her many wrongs towards his father. He
portrayed the Morels while he was under the unresolved tension due to his parents’
relationship. Jassie Chambers was also of the opinion that Lawrence had handed his
mother with laurels of victory.
Mrs. Morel is the central character in the novel. She is a hard willful and
unbending woman who with her possessing love ruins the life of Paul and destroys Morel
as a man. It is because of her disillusionment in marriage and her inability to adjust
herself to the life which her miner husband can offer, that the whole tragedy of the novel
is brought about. All these traits in her character make her the image of Lawrence's
mother. She is the literary parallel to Lawrence’s mother.
Mrs. Morel in the novel symbolizes the self-sacrificing mother who does her best
to save her sons from the ugly and wretched life of the mines. She is capable of providing
her sons much warmth. She fights a heroic and persistent battle against poverty and does
her best to save her sons from the ugly and wretched life of the mines. She wishes to
provide them with good education and hence enable them to get decent jobs. She muses
them devotedly and does not have any life of her own though the result of all this
sacrifice is not healthy.
After the birth of her first child, she falls out of love with her husband and begins
to actively despise him, looking for fulfillment in her relationships with her children,
particularly her sons, William and Paul. The intensity of her emotional bond with both
William and Paul makes it difficult for them to develop romantic relationships with other
women. She dislikes William’s girlfriend, Lily Weston, and is jealous of Paul’s friend,
Miriam Leivers. After William dies, she pins her hopes for the future on Paul. She wants
him to be successful and to escape a working-class miner’s life. She has foisted herself
upon her young sons and is using them to escape her loneliness caused by her failure to
establish a rapport with her husband. In fact, the refusal of the mother to recognize the
‘otherness’ in her husband and her sons destroys their life and personality.
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 As a result of Gertrude’s frustration and acute dissatisfaction with her married life,
she transfers her affection to her sons. It is made clear that she is responsible for the
failures in her marriage as well as her sons’ relationships with women. The worst aspect
of her despise for her husband is that she, in addition, conveys her hatred for her husband
to her sons for their father. Their children, thus, look down upon their father as a drunken
bully devoid of human feelings. Among them Paul is the most who cannot stand his
father. She casts off her husband and turns to her sons-first William and then Paul for
emotional satisfaction. She is the opposite of her husband. While he is the symbol of
spontaneous life, she represents mental and spiritual consciousness. She lives in the world
of ideas. The narrator tells that she likes most of all ‘an argument on religion or
philosophy or politics’ (p. 62). Jagroop Singh Birring argues that Lawrence in his
depiction of Mrs. Morel shows sympathy with her, and that Lawrence’s sympathy is not
only because of Oedipal complex but also due to the fact that that Lawrence at this stage
is not yet fully aware of the weakness in his mother’s ideal views.(Birring 66)
The conflict between the mental consciousness and blood consciousness which is
represented by Morel and his wife takes place also within the character of Mrs. Morel.
That is to say that consciousness, it does not deter her from being attracted to Mr. Morel’s
spontaneous virility and vitality. Her mental consciousness does stand in contrast with her
instinctual attraction to ‘the dusky, golden softness of Morel’s sensuous flame of life, that
flowed off his flesh like the flame from a kindle’ (p. 18). This inner conflict in her
character ends in favor of the mental religious consciousness, for she ignores the blood
consciousness and does not achieve integrity. She symbolizes the domineering, over
possessive woman who deters the others from reserving their own individual identity. She
fails to realize the sense of polarity in her relationship with her husband and children. In
other words, she does not respect the otherness in the other. She does not recognize that
her husband and sons have each a distinct personality with its own emotional
characteristics. This causes disharmony and disintegration in the whole family.
Mrs. Morel is depicted as an unsympathetic wife. Gertrude Morel married Walter
Morel knowing well that he is a miner. When the initial fascination wears off, she starts
looking at all the negative aspect s of her husband. She turns her attention from her
husband to her children. She cannot forgive him for a little lie regarding his financial
status. Her resentment of her husband is so harsh that she casts off her husband and
involves herself totally with her children. She begins to openly humiliate him by
discussing philosophy and religion. He cannot participate in these drawing room
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discussions because he exists at a physical, sensual level. She begins to regard his
profession as ugly and undignified and his manners uncouth. She fills this hatred in her
children who in turn begin to turn against their father. While he represents the working
class people, she represents the middle class people.
She herself was opposite. She had a curious, receptive mind, which
found much pleasure and amusement in listening to other folk. She was
clever in leading folk on to talk. She loved ideas, and was considered
very intellectual. What she liked most off all was an argument on
religion or philosophy or politics with some educated man. This she did
not often enjoy. So she always had people tell her about themselves,
finding her pleasure so. (p. 15)
She is hardened and does not understand the hardships of him and that a miner,
after a hard day’s work, needs love and care at home. On one occasion, when he asks for
food, she snaps at him and says that she would rather ‘wait on a dog’. This would drive
any man insane. She attempts imposing her hollow ladylike pretensions on him and
thought she could reform him. But it destroys him. The author says during the course of
the novel that she could not be content with the little he might be, she would have him be
that he ought to be. So in seeking to make him nobler that he could be, she destroyed him.
Paul is the product of this clash of wills between the Morels. When Mrs. Morel
discovers her husband’s liars, her proud, honorable soul is ‘crystallized out hard as rock at
Morel’s weakness.’ (p. 13). Her illusions about her husband are over before Paul is born.
The marriage of the Morels is described as a ‘fearful, bloody battle that ended only with
the death of one’. (p. 14). This transformation of Mrs. Morel has passive effects upon
Paul in her womb. That is her effects upon him is prenatal and he becomes her victim.
Her victory over her husband does not only victimize her husband but it also turns her to
a death center that injures her son Paul. There are many images that suggest her impact
upon him. In the first chapter, particularly after she is dismissed outside the house by her
husband, she is still pregnant with Paul. She has been transformed while she is outside.
The imagery of the moon’s white light falling cold on her and the remembrance of
her husband’s wrongs show her transforming phase. The fusing of the unborn child and
the mother is suggested by the image of their melting in ‘the mixing-pot of moonlight’ (p.
24). This image of their mixing together in one pot illustrates the main theme of the
novel; that is the utter merging and identification of two souls into one inseparable
identity. This image shows Paul as a victim of his mother even before he is born for his
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central vital self has been symbolically abnegated in this prenatal nocturnal event. Thus,
this state evokes the question:- How can Paul achieve his independent vital self and assert
his own identity?
In addition to this prenatal symbolic affects of mother upon Paul, Paul is bound
and tied more completely to his mother in another symbolic event that takes place after
his birth. Mr. Morel thrush a drawer and cuts his wife’s brow. Her brow is bleeding. A
drop of blood falls from the wound on ‘the baby’s fragile, glistening hair. Mr. Morel sees
the drop “soak through to the baby’s scalp. He watched, fascinated, feeling it soak in’ (p.
40). Now Paul is fused with his mother by blood. The image of mother’s blood and the
image of Paul’s scalp suggest the merging of the two identities into an inseparable one.
Thus, his tie with his mother is getting so complicated. He is completely assimilated to
his mother. These two prenatal and post natal events symbolize and indicate Paul’s future
growth as completely dominated by his mother. They imply the impossibility of Paul’s
freedom from Mrs. Morel.
While she is portrayed as an unsympathetic wife, she is, on the contrary, portrayed
as a mother goddess. It is a strange contradiction that a woman, capable of so much hatred
for whatever reason, should also be capable of so much warmth. The love that Gertrude
should have spread evenly in the house centers around only her children and she alienates
her husband totally. She is a heroic mother who fights a constant battle against poverty
and shields her sons from the ugly and wretched life of the mines. She strives to give
them finer things of life like a good education and good jobs. She amuses them devotedly
and does not have any life of her own. But, then this sacrificing of her own for the sake of
her sons is shown to be destructive. This possessiveness is not very healthy. The reality is
that she has foisted herself upon her young sons and she is using them to escape her
loneliness caused by her failure to establish a rapport with her husband. The reality is that
she has used her sons as husband-substitutes and destroyed their capacity to establish any
outside relationship with other women. So the mother goddess fails. The refusal of the
mother to recognize the otherness of her husband and sons destroys their life and
personality.
The images used in describing Mrs. Morel in her deathbed suggest the Oedipal tie
with Paul:
My love-my love-oh my love! …. She lay raised on the bed, the
sweep of the sheet from the raised feet was like a clean curve of
snow. … He bent and kissed her passionately. But there was
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 coldness against his mouth. He bit his lips with horror. (p. 389-
399).
The image of the brow ‘clear, and white as if life had never touched it’ shows her as a
symbol of a beloved. The image created by the simile of the sheet ‘like a curve of snow’
suggests the ambiguous situation opposed to the realistic level of the event. John E. Stoll
argues that the contrast between the realistic and symbolic aspects of the novel and the
contradiction in many situation between Paul’s response to his mother and Miriam and
the causes of his response suggest a tone Oedipal complex.(Stoll 92)

2.2.2 Walter Morel (Symbol of Phallic Life)

In Sons and Lovers, Walter Morel is depicted as the symbol of the phallic life,
whereas his wife Mrs. Morel represents Lawrence’s concept of mental consciousness.
Jagroop Singh Birring in his book The Holy Ghost: A Study of the Novels of D. H.
Lawrence deals with and analyzes ‘how both Walter Morel and Gertrude Morel
symbolize blood consciousness and mental consciousness respectively and so they are not
able to establish a successful relationship.’ (Birring 57) Thus, the conflict between
Gertrude Morel and his wife symbolize two opposite levels of consciousness. This
contrast between husband and wife reoccurs throughout Lawrence’s fiction. He through
his fiction searches for a resolution for this conflict.
Mr. Morel is portrayed in a way that keeps the spontaneity and vitality intact in
him. His physique is portrayed as having ‘ruddy cheeks’ and ‘red moist mouth’. He is a
man ‘so full of color and animation, his voice ran so quickly into comic grotesque, he was
so ready and pleasant with everybody’ (p. 20). He stands for virility and quickness.
Although he is a mere miner, he has a fascinating personality that she is attracted to him
at first sight. He is portrayed as a set-up, erect and very smart person. He has “that rare
thing, a rich, ringing laugh’ (p.20). The word “ringing” shows intensity and virility. He is
depicted as a sensuous character. He behaves and conducts as per his instincts dictates
him. Life flows within him. He gets up early in the morning. His character is portrayed as
a contrast to the character of his wife. In spite of his heavy hard work in the mines and its
dehumanizing impact, this does not dissuade him from enjoying life and nature. He likes
walking in the early hours of the morning across the fields. Thus, Mr. Morel is introduced
as a man full of warmth, virility and natural delicacy.
Walter Morel symbolizes the honest ordinary unsophisticated man. Although he
has the vice of drinking, he is presented as honest. He tells lies to his wife about the house
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and furniture, but the motive for his lies is that he loves his wife and does not want to
uncover his poverty to her. He tells lies in order to save himself from his wife’s anger, but
he does not wear a mask to cover his personality. His lies are innocent ones in
comparison with the big lies told by the unabashed so called cultured people. Mrs. Morel
is mainly responsible for his being a bad person, for she had cast away him. He had
almost abstained drinking after his marriage, but due to his wife’s domineering manners,
he now returns to drinking and he often returns home drunk.
Mr. Morell’s vitality and virility resembles Mellors in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Both use dialect which mirror their spontaneity and sincerity. Hard work and his wife’s
values both undermine and thwart Morel’s spontaneous life. He has been crippled by the
work in the mines. His wife does not understand the hardships of the pits, so she adds to
his sufferings. As a result, he is cast off by his wife and children and hissense of
alienation makes him marginalized in the family. He is compared by the use of metaphor
to a mere ‘more or less husk’ (p. 62). The image of husk is associated with his uselessness
and insignificance in the family. He is the opposite to his wife. If she stands for
intellectual element and mental consciousness, he symbolizes spontaneous life. Mr. Morel
is a pathetic figure who fails to command the respect of his wife or children. He gradually
loses his virility, gallantry, vitality and his ringing laugh, as the story progresses.
Walter Morel symbolically represents the father figure in the novel. He is depicted
in the image of a common people life that does not fit into the mould of ideas. He is a
symbol for the working class. He represents the common people. He is depicted as a
person devoid of intellectual content, full of physical life, close in touch with earth and
rejoicing in the life of nature. He is represented as a common person full of physical life
who rejoices in the sensuousness of life and nature. His simplicity stems from a simple,
earthy personality that is not much bothered about the complexities of life. In his
simplicity and acceptance of life, he is open and spontaneous in his responses to life,
close to the primitive in his uninhibited delight in singing, dancing and drinking. His ‘full
fine presence’ makes its impact felt on all who come in contact with him. He has a sturdy
physique, ruddy cheeks, shiny black moustache and tumbling hair. His movement is full
of animation and has taken his zest for life. He gives the impression that there is nothing
wrong about life, no complexity, and that one has only to turn life to feel its manifold
joys.
Morel was then twenty-seven years old. He was well set-up, erect, and
very smart. He had wavy black hair that shone again, and a vigorous
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 black beard that had never been shaved. His cheeks were ruddy, and his
red, moist mouth was noticeable because he laughed so often and so
heartily. He had that rare thing, a rich ringing laugh. Gertrude Coppard
had watched him, fascinated. He was so full of collour and animation. His
voice ran so easily into comic grotesque, he was so ready and so pleasant
with everybody. Her own father had a rich fund of humour, but it was
satiric. This man’s was different: soft, non-intellectual, warm, a kind of
gamboling. (P.15)
Mr. Morel is twenty-seven when he gets married. He is represented as a smart
young man with virile and fascinating personality. Mrs. Morel feels ‘a certain subtle
exultation in his movements’, it is the flame of life leaping up in him. The essential
simplicity of his personality is also reflected in his, "rich ringing laugh". Gertrude meets
him at a Christmas party and is, at once, attracted towards him. He has an overflowing
humour and speaks in a typical dialect. She feels him to be a different kind of person,
‘His soft, non-intellectual, warm life’, both attracts and baffles her. He has a magnetic
personality. His physical appearance along with ‘the dusky, golden softness of this man’s
sensuous flame of life, that flowed off his flesh like the flame from a candle’ makes him
fascinating to Gertrude. His non-intellectual warmth envelopes her and she is enchanted
by his having ‘thee'd and thou'd’ her. They get married exactly a year after their first
meeting.
The early impression one gets of him is that of a man who is bouncy, riding the
crest of life. ‘He was like the Scotch in the smooth, happy machinery of the home.’ The
dialect that he speaks is associated with persons of vitality in Lawrence’s fiction. In
comparison with other character of Lawrence’s, a character called Mellors created by
Lawrence in Lady Chatterley’s Lover also speaks the same dialect and stands for organic,
integrated life. Paul and Arthur also speak this dialect when their emotions are
heightened.
Although he is depicted as a rough harsh character, we also notice some flashes
of tenderness in him that could have been more frequent if his wife had been more
sympathetic and loving. Once in his rage, he flings a drawer at his wife and she is badly
hurt in the eye. Even though he is unrefined in his manners, he is noble at heart. He feels
repentance after he has shut his wife outside the house one day and he has hurt her by
flinging the drawer at her another day. He is instantly apologetic, concerned and he asks
her tenderly:
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 Did it catch thee?
Lemme- lemme look at it, lass. … what has it done to thee, lass? (p. 61)
Before we come to his gradual deterioration, another positive aspect of his
character can be highlighted. He symbolizes the primitive man who lives by instinct.
Thus, his response to life is natural and instinctive and not conditioned by any social or
exterior factors. It shows a human side of him which did not get much opportunity to
flower. He is a good workman. Mr. Morel is very skillful in making things with his hand.
He is portrayed as adept at manual work and is happy doing odd jobs at home. When his
children crowd around him and watch him cobble shoes or repair pit bottles, he appears to
be at peace. His children feel fascinated as they watch him working. The life of the entire
family would have been different, if Mrs. Morel had taught the children to love their
father in whatever way he was equipped.
While Gertrude Morel is the literary image of Lawrence’s mother, Walter Morel is the
literary image of Lawrence's father, since the source of the novel is his own life. Like
other characters of the novel that are close approximations of real figures, the character of
Walter Morel has been closely drawn after Lawrence's father, Arthur Lawrence, just as
Mrs. Morel has been drawn after his mother. Lawrence's own father was a miner. The
uncouth manners and brutish temper of his father left bad memories for Lawrence and he
felt that his mother had suffered very heavily for it. So Lawrence was unnecessarily harsh
while delineating the character of Walter Morel. Though he later confessed that if he were
to write the book all over again, he would be more sympathetic to his father. However, it
is good that he withheld his sympathies. We find great similarity between Walter Morel
and Lawrence’s father as in his description as follows:
I was born among the working classes and brought up among them.
My father was a collier, nothing praise-worthy about him. He wasn’t
even respectable, in so far as he got drunk rather frequently, never
went near a chapel, and was usually rather rude to his little immediate
bosses at the pit. He practically never had a good stall, all the time he
was a butty… and he grumbled. (D.H.Lawrence 149)
It was unfortunate that Walter Morel married a woman who created an emotional
vacuum in her life and that of her family by denying her husband’s personality. Morel is
gradually alienated by his wife’s hollow middle-class pretentions. The little lie that he
told his wife regarding his financial status, in the ultimate analysis, is not so serious as to
merit such condemnation. She almost discarded him after that. He would not have
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resorted to drinking and fighting if his wife had not made him feel so lonely and useless.
It is a sorry sight to see that ’No one spoke to him, the family life withdrew, shrank away
and became hashed as he entered.’ He is just not included in the family circle. So the
resulting behavior is that of a wounded animal. He is harsh, quarrelsome, noisy and out to
be nasty. Perhaps that is his way of getting attention which he is otherwise denied.
The hatred that Mrs. Morel whips up for her husband is reflected in her
condescending behavior towards her husband, bickering, insulting dialogues and it is
eventually total casting off. This diminishes his self-assurance and moral strength. The
charming carefree person that he once was declines to such an extent that he can feign
false emotions and talk his way out of tricky situations. What can he give at the end when
he has never received anything in life? Anyone in his place could have sought comfort in
some other relationship but morel did not. So this shows fidelity which is proof defending
him. That is why we call him a pathetic figure. Even though D. H. Lawrence has dwelt on
the deterioration of Walter's character, his drunkenness, his violent temper and his
vulgarity at times, he emerges a pathetic figure at the end. He is dejected and completely
ignored by his family. It is obvious that with no son to support him in his old age, he is
doomed to loneliness.

2.2.3 Paul (Symbol of an Artist):

Paul reflects the symbol of an artist, Like Lawrence, Paul reflects the artist and
perceives the element of beauty in Nature like a true artist:
He went down to the field to watch the moon sink under. A corncrake in
the hay-close called insistently. The moon slid quickly downward,
growing more flushed. Behind him the great flowers leaned as if they
were calling. And then like a shock, he caught another perfume something
raw and coarse. Hunting round, he found the purple iris, touched their
fleshy throats and their dark, grasping hands. At any rate, he had found
something. Their scent was brutal. It was melting down upon the crest of
the hill. It was one; all was dark. (p. 92)
Paul has an artist bent of mind. He is very sensitive and nervous to find joy in the
external world. So he finds self-fulfillment in the world of art and nature. He is an
exquisite painter and he has won recognition as a skillful painter. The painting of his
‘landscape’ gets the first prize at Nottingham Castle Exhibition and is bought for twenty
guineas. He is gifted with a rare insight and his paintings are manifestations of his life
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long quest of ‘inner reality’. His ideas on art are expressed in his conversation with
Miriam. He explains why one of his pictures looks so true to life:
It’s because there is scarcely any shadow in it; its more shimmery, as if I had
painted the shimmery protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the
stiffness of the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this shimmeriness is the
real living. The shape is a dead crust. The shimmer is inside reality. (p. 93)
Paul has a rare insight and penetration and can see into the heart of things. He can
paint the soul and not only the externals. The pursuit of art, things of intellect and the
world on nature brings him inner satisfaction.
Paul symbolizes the Oedipal complex which is very clearly seen in him. The
damaging influence of the mother-fixation in the story, Sons and Lovers, is not confined
only to William, but it is more intensely noticeable in the case of Paul and in his
relationship with Miriam and Clara. That is to say that the Oedipal relationship between
Paul and his mother ruins his ability to love and have a healthy relationship with other
women. It was at the birth of Paul that Mrs. Morel had decided that:
With all her force, with all her soul, she would make up to it for having
brought it into the world unloved. She would love it all the more now it was
here, carry it in her love. (p. 53)
She feels that the navel string that had connected both the mother had not been
broken. The poor health of Paul forced his mother to pay special attention to him. He was
very much dependent on his mother and trotted after her like a shadow. Later he is shown
to love her like a lover. He watched every physical movement of his mother with delight.
They are almost like lovers when they go out for walks.
Since Paul is obsessed with his mother, he keeps thinking about her and finds it
difficult to think about any other woman. His unnatural bind with his mother has affected
his relationship with his father. He also developed an abiding hatred for his father because
of his brutal treatment of his wife. His hatred for his father goes to the extent that he
wants to forfeit the prize he has won at school rather than seek his father’s approbation.
The very sight of his father irritates him. Mr. Morel is also apprehensive of some
incestuous relationship between the mother and son. Mrs. Morel, in chapter VIII,
confesses to Paul that she never really had a husband and Paul tries to console her by
stroking and kissing her:
And I've never-you know, Paul- I've never had a husband-not really-"
He stroked his mother's hair, and his mouth was on her throat.
40
 And she(Miriam) exults so in taking you from me-she's not like ordinary
girls.
‘Well, I don’t love her, mother,’ he murmured, bowing his head and hiding
his eyes on her shoulder in misery. His mother kissed him a long fervent
kiss.
‘My boy!’ she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love.
Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.(p. 229)
The above conversation between mother and son shows that the physical intimacy
of mother and son is getting more explicit in this chapter. Mr. Morel is also apprehensive
of some incestuous relationship between the mother and son. Mr. Morel returns home
drunk and finds Paul and his mother in amorous scene and then he says to his son:
‘Perhaps I'm selfish. If you want her, take her, my boy.’
He remarks venomously, ‘At your mischief again?’(p. 230)
This chapter ends with a quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Morel just over a piece of
pork-pie that was made for Paul. When Morel threw it into the fire, the father and son
almost comes to blows. This is too much for Mrs. Morel and she faints. If Mrs. Morel had
not fainted, a fierce combat would have taken place between the father and the son. Paul
now comes closer and closer to his mother and becomes a husband-substitute for her. She
waits upon him in the evening and unburdens her heart to him, of the day’s happenings.
They walk down the station, feeling the excitement of lovers having an adventure
together.
The blood-tie between Paul and his mother has a symbolic significance. In the
very beginning of the novel, Mrs. Morel has a quarrel with her husband, in an outrage of
anger and she is hit with a drawer which is flung at her. The wound bleeds profusely and
two drops of blood fall on the hair of Paul who is in the hands of Mrs. Morel at the
moment. The blood is not cleared away but it gets soaked into the scalp of Paul. This
small incident is of much symbolical significance in the novel. It is pregnant with
symbolic levels. It symbolizes the disillusioned and tattering relationship of the husband
and wife and the subsequent reversal of attitude of Mrs. Morel towards her husband and
the ultimate substitution of her sons in place of her husband. The scene is also symbolic
of the odd contract of souls between the mother and son which is sealed with a blood tie.
Due to his mother-fixation, Paul is unable to develop any unproblematic
relationship with any other women including Miriam in spite of its intensity. His deep
attachment with his mother makes it impossible for him to think of having sexual
41
relationship with other women. His infantile bond with his mother has so conditioned his
attitude towards women and sex. His ultimate rejection of Miriam has its own roots in the
fact that Miriam is in conflict with his mother for the possession of his soul. In fact he
himself is averse to physical relations and when he does take Miriam physically, he is
torn between his love for Miriam and his love for his mother. He takes delight in stroking
and kissing his mother, whereas he shrinks from and resents it when Miriam slips her
hand into his while they are walking.
Paul is influenced by Clara’s physical beauty. Miriam is too spiritual, while Clara
is too fire and passion. Clara exudes sexuality. He is swept off by her physical charms.
His relationship is a physical satisfaction for him, but the appeal of this relation lasts for a
while. Then, he feels fed up with this relationship as he finds out that it is also superficial.
At the end of the novel, Paul is a ruined and disintegrated man. His calamity is that he as
a man wants to love a woman and keeps his own manhood and individuality inviolate at
the same time. He loves three women, but each one tries to dominate and possess him.
They are a threat to his whole being. As he wants to keep his whole being, he also wants
to love a woman of whole being. That is he wants a complete woman who combines a
balance between the mental consciousness and blood consciousness. Miriam symbolizes
the mental consciousness while Clara represents the blood consciousness. All women he
meets lacks the whole being which is realized when there is both the two consciousness in
a balance. Miriam and Clara cause a split in Paul’s self, and the novel ends with Paul still
suffers from this split.
Paul suffers from female possessiveness either from his mother or Miriam or
Clara. They all represent the possessive dominant woman in terms of their symbolic
connotations. On the realistic level of the novel, they are different in nature and character,
but they are the same on the symbolic level. Symbolically, the three women prevent Paul
from natural healthy growth due to their dominating desire to possess him. Thus, Paul has
to put an end to all the three women in order to ensure his future growth. Both Miriam
and Clara symbolize the mother surrogate; Miriam wants to possess Paul’s soul, while
Clara the body. On the realistic level, Paul does not show a growth in his personality, but
his psychological growth can be traced on the symbolic level. Paul’s love for Miriam and
Clara is portrayed as a sinking down rather than as rising into unison with nature. His
usually equated his emotional and passionate moments of peace with death. Paul cuts his
relation with Miriam, returns Clara to her husband and murders his mother by the so

42
called mercy killing all to get his inner freedom and overcome the image of possessive
women they represent.
Paul’s vital self or whole being is inseparable from sexual development. Unless he
has achieved his sexual self independent from his mother, his vital self cannot be
achieved and his whole being cannot be completed. Paul-Miriam relationship embodies
the conflict within Paul between his vital self which is synonymous with his adolescent
sexuality and his mental, spiritual self which is worshiped by Miriam. When he and
Miriam are together in the garden, he does belong to her own world until ‘he came back
right to her, leaving his other, his lesser self’ (p. 165). The image of his other self and his
lesser self stands for his adolescent sexuality yoked with vitality. This struggle within
Paul would be resolved by the victory of the essential maleness over the mental self.
Lawrence holds Miriam responsible for the failure of Miriam-Paul relation by
giving her a symbolic value. She changes him from ‘the natural fire of love’ into ‘the fine
stream of thought’. In order to have him, “he must be made abstract first” (p.173). He is
reduced to the abstract. Both Mrs. Morel and Miriam could not annihilate Paul’s vital,
sexual self. This shows that Paul’s vital self can be disturbed but not uprooted or
perverted by the dominating woman. We note that Lawrence’s heroes do not reach the
level of the whole being until his novel Women in Love. Thus, Sons and Lovers is taken to
be the initial stage in the struggle to fulfill the vital self and whole being. Stoll considers
Sons and Lovers as a study preparatory to the later works The Rainbow and Women in
Love in which whole being of the vital self is relatively fulfilled.(Stoll 65)
Paul’s mother passed away. After his mother’s death, he is in a transitory period.
He lives as if in a death period. However, his mother’s death also causes a symbolic death
for Paul, since Paul the son dies and Paul the man is born. He has broken his spiritual
pond with Miriam. Clara has returned to her husband. He, on the contrary to his
depression, decides not to give up. He does not return to Miriam. This suggests that he
has to cut all his ties with the past that threaten his identity in order to pass into the future.
At the end of the novel, we find him make a decision of life against death. He turns his
back on the village and walks towards the faintly humming, glowing town quickly.
The novel’s conclusion has been a matter of great deal of controversies among
critics who have held opposing points of view and interpretations. It can be inferred from
the nature of Paul presented in the novel that he would have gone to death. However, he
goes in favor of life towards the ‘glowing town’. This can be interpreted as resulted from
a split in Paul’s soul between despair and hope. It also reveals a split between Paul’s
43
deep sense of despair and the author’s concept of the novel’s end. John E. Stoll rightly
argues that the author is divided between the emotional and conceptual significance of
Paul’s decision. Stoll thinks that Lawrence may leave the end deliberately ambiguous in
order to cover the lack of coherence between the realistic and symbolic aspects of the
novel.(Stoll 62)

2.2.4 Miriam (Representative of Spiritual Life):

Like his mother, Miriam also thwarts Paul’s spontaneous blood consciousness.
Like Mrs. Morel, Miriam represents spiritual life. She is introduced as a symbol for
romantic love. She inherits an intense spiritual inclination and fear from sex. Miriam’s
spirituality has its own negative impact on Paul’s vitality and spontaneity. Her over
religious sensitivity thwarts Paul’s spontaneous life which has already been undermined
by his mothers. She takes physical love to be a shame. She has inherited her religious
consciousness from her mother, Mrs. Leivers. When Miriam later in the novel submits to
Paul, she tells him ‘there is one thing in marriage that is always dreadful, but you have to
bear it’ (p. 355). She, thus, scorns the male sex.
Miriam represents the mental and spiritual self. Her religious upbringing makes
her very sensitive. She symbolizes the religious spiritual concept of love. This makes her
feel fear of sex. She has an unhealthy attitude towards sex. She tells Paul, “Mother said to
me, there is one thing in marriage that is always dreadful, but you have to bear it, and I
believed it” (p. 150). She thinks sex to be an ugly experience. Thus, Miriam represents
the extreme religious attitude towards passion, and this is the main impediment that stops
the natural flux of her emotions. It also causes psychic disorder that prevents her from
establishing natural relationship with others. We are told that she is afraid of every
physical thing and shrinks from trying to jump from even a small height. She is afraid of
trying the swing. Even when she submits to Paul’s passion in the last phase of their
relationship, she does so as a religious ritual and as a kind of sacrifice. She remains there
as if she is waiting for immolation. When she has faints of joy, it seems that they have
sprung from sadness. Jagroop Singh Birring argues that Miriam’s mental consciousness
resembles that of Hermione in Women in Love and that of Carlota in The Plumed Serpent
and that it is potentially fatal.(Birring 72) She is compared to a vampire who wants to
absorb everything. Mrs. Morel describes her fatal impact on Paul as follows:
She is one of those who will want to suck a man’s soul out till he had
none of his own left. (p. 199).
44
 Miriam spoils Paul’s naturalness. Paul cannot give her his soul because his mother
has it. She looks at love from a spiritual point of view, and Paul does not like that. Thus,
the relationship between Miriam and Paul is a fiasco for lack of balance between blood
consciousness and mental consciousness, so she lets him go to Clara. Miriam’s hyper
spirituality makes her compare Paul’s going to Clara to going to an inn for a glass of
whisky. When she one day surrenders to him, she offers herself to him only as a religious
sacrifice and not as a sensual experience.
Miriam symbolizes possessive love. Her possessive inclination towards things
springs from her sense of insecurity. She wants to possess Paul’s soul, so he could not
bear it. She threatens his personality and individuality. She makes him irritable and
restless. In the last encounter between the two he accuses her of being possessive and
dominating. He means that he wants her to leave him his individuality and otherness. She
should have come to him as a sensual being, but she could not do that. She lacks the sense
of equilibrium which is required as per the Laurentian theory of duality. Her desire to
possess and clutch can also be noted in her attitude to everything that she loves. She
wants to possess either her baby brother or roses and daffodils.
Paul suffers from female possessiveness either from his mother or Miriam or
Clara. They all represent the possessive dominant woman. On the realistic level of the
novel, they are different in nature and character, but they are the same on the symbolic
level. Symbolically, the three women prevent Paul from natural healthy growth due to
their dominating desire to possess him. Thus, Paul has to put an end to all the three
women in order to ensure his future growth. Both Miriam and Clara symbolize the mother
surrogate; Miriam wants to possess Paul’s soul, while Clara the body. Miriam and Mrs.
Morel share the same threat to Paul’s character. In a scene taking place near Leivers’
farm, Miriam touches and looks at the roses as if to posses them. She is compared to a
rose and the sun, and this shows her predatory qualities.
Miriam’s possessive and worship attitude towards the flowers make Paul feel ‘a
white, virgin scent’ (p. 160). As a result, he feels anxious and imprisoned. Thus, like his
mother, Miriam stands in the way of his freedom and whole being, and she must be
rejected so that he regains his vital self. The link between Miriam and Mrs. Morel is
indicated by Paul’s note that Miriam gives him “a feeling like his mother” (p. 289).
Another instance of association between the two women is when Miriam accuses him of
being like a child. He said in his heart he does not want another mother. Paul cuts his
relation with Miriam, returns Clara to her husband and murders his mother by the so
45
called mercy killing all to get his inner freedom and overcome the image of possessive
women they represent.
Miriam is too spiritual, while Clara is too fire and passion. Clara exudes sexuality.
He is swept off by her physical charms. His relationship is a physical satisfaction for him,
but the appeal of this relation lasts for a while. Then, he feels fed up with this relationship
as he finds out that it is also superficial. At the end of the novel, Paul is a ruined and
disintegrated man. His calamity is that he as a man wants to love a woman and keeps his
own manhood and individuality inviolate at the same time. Paul feels that Miriam has no
body and that she has ‘only a voice and a dim face’ (p. 346). We are told that, ‘looking
for her was like looking for something that did not exist. She was only his conscience, not
his mate’. (p. 358). She is portrayed as a lady lacking physical passion. When she yields
to sex she does so only when it is unavoidable and she does so as a sacrifice which she
must make for the sake of her lover’s happiness.
Paul loves three women, but each one tries to dominate and possess him. They are
a threat to his whole being. As he wants to keep his whole being, he also wants to love a
woman of whole being. That is, he wants a complete woman who combines a balance
between the mental consciousness and blood consciousness. Miriam symbolizes the
mental consciousness while Clara represents the blood consciousness. All women he
meets lack the whole being which is realized when there is both the two consciousness in
a balance. Miriam and Clara cause a split in Paul’s self, and the novel ends with Paul still
suffers from this split.
Miriam is the pen-portrait of Lawrence’s friend Jessie Chamber. As it is well
known, Sons and Lovers constitutesan autobiographical work. Miriam’s character is
conceptualized on the basis of his real friend, Jessie, who helped him commenting and
revising the novel. Although Jessie feels that he is unfair to their own relationship, she
finds out that he glorifies his mother at her expense(Chambers 203). She finds out that he
is cruel to her.

2.2.5 Clara Dawes ( Symbol of New Source of Consciousness) :

Clara-Paul relationship is introduced after the failure of his relation with Miriam.
Clara Dawes represents a new source of consciousness. She symbolizes the means of
initiating Paul into manhood. Paul enters this new relationship while he is still not free
from the morbid effects of his mother and Miriam. Thus, it is noted that the encounter
scenes of Paul and Clara are not presented as successful. Lawrence uses some images and

46
symbols to illustrate the sexual relationship as a carry-over from his previous ties with
Miriam. Paul in the theatre scene is looking at Clara with the sense of inequality since ‘he
felt himself small and helpless, her towering in her force above him’ (p. 331). He is also
in a passive state when they make love in her bedroom after the theatrical scene. Clara
and Paul pass in the second scene through a transformation into a momentary
completeness. They are compared to ‘Adam and Eve’ after that evening (p.353). In
addition, there are several images used in the description of the encounter to suggest the
transformation of Paul in such encounter. The images such as the pewits ‘screaming in
the field,’ the grass ‘curving and strong with live, Clara’s eyes’ and ‘life wild at the
source’ imply an alteration in Paul’s relationship with the universe.
Clara is the opposite of Miriam. If Miriam lacks physical passion, Clara represents
intensity of passion. She is the daughter of Mrs. Leivers’s friend. She is married to Baxter
Dawes who is a smith at Jordan’s. She lodges with her mother because she is separated
from her husband. She represents the emancipated woman who lives apart from her
husband. She becomes Paul’s mistress. She represents the physical appeal. She is
portrayed as having a skin like white honey and a full mouth. She has beautiful bare
shoulders and arms. Paul is strongly fascinated by her curvaceous body. However, she is
a simple affectionate girl. She holds a scornful, hateful attitude towards men due to her
husband’s brutality. She enflames his manly flames and draws him towards her like a
magnate. However, she soon gets fed up with him and he with her. He helps her return to
her husband after many years of separation.
Lawrence dedicates an entire chapter to portray Clara; there is a whole chapter
called Clara in the novel. Lawrence in this chapter presents a clear portrayal of Clara. She
represents the flesh aspect of life. Her relationship with Paul is entirely physical, so if
Miriam represents one side of the coin, she stands for the other side. That is to say that
while Miriam symbolizes the soul, Clara symbolizes the body. She is portrayed as the
tempting Eve who has the qualities of bewitching female. She had a white, honey like
skin and full mouth. She has all the physical charm to attract Paul. His encounter with
Clara marks a new phase in his sexual life that differs from his relationship with Miriam.
Clara excites his sex instinct that has been so refined by Miriam:
Often, as he talked to Clara Dawes, came that thickening and quickening
of his blood, that peculiar concentration in the breast, as if something
were alive there, a new self or a new centre of consciousness, warning

47
 him that sooner or later he would have to ask one woman or another (p.
252).
The images formed by the phrases ‘thickening and quickening of his blood’ and
‘that peculiar concentration of in the breast’ suggest a new phase of emotional
transformation in his life. However, the verb ‘warning’ implies some dangers and
morbidity in such relationship. Lawrence’s concept of vital self is not achieved here, even
though it is a new step ahead on the way.
Clara symbolizes the modern emancipated woman. She is bold enough to walk out
of an unhappy marriage. Her self-respect deters her from accepting the cruel strokes of
fate. She does not meekly submit to her husband’s brutality. She is not satisfied with
staying at home. She supports herself by working. Moreover, she is part of the Suffragette
movement. She thinks that this is the proper way to free woman from social, traditional
shackles. She has a hateful attitude towards men. She is an image of the independent,
dignified woman. Paul, and Lawrence, has to maintain the over unconsciousness over the
mechanical mind. She does not feel friendly with the other women at work. In spite of
that, she is simple, affectionate girl. She has an ordinary life. She is referred to as “The
Queen of Sheba” by the girls at Jordan’s factory.
Clara symbolizes the sensuous, passionate woman. When Paul goes to her, she
does not show any spiritual signs. She offers him intense sensuality which Miriam could
not offer.

2.2.6 Minor Characters:

There are a few minor characters who appear in the novel and have also been
given symbolic significance. These minor characters such as William Morel, Anna
Morel, Arthur Morel, Louisa Lily (Gipsy), Mr. Leivers, Mrs. Leivers, Baxter Dawes,
Thomas Jordan, Miss Jordan and Fanny. Even though they have a very limited role to
play and rarely interact with other characters, they are used as symbols and, thus,
emphasize some human qualities.
Baxter Dawes resembles Walter Morel in the sense that he symbolizes the
primitive man. He is physically similar to Walter Morel in appearance. He also resembles
Mrs. Morel in his skillful work in his hand. They are like each other in being the rejected
husbands of educated women. He has not got the refinement and sophistication that are
associated with the modern man like Paul. He is portrayed in the novel in a way to show
the contrast to Clara’s character. He lacks self-control in his behaviour with others. He

48
shows vulgarity. As a husband, he is portrayed as a brutal man. He does not show any
respect for Clara’s sentiments. He looks at her as only a tool to satisfy his animal passion.
Here, a comparison is worth made between him and Paul. While he fully satisfies Clara
passionately, Paul fails in that regard. So far as virility is concerned, he is an image of the
real man and does not suffer from any inhibitions. As a lover, he is, unlike Paul, a
successful man. When Clara finds out Paul’s inadequacy as a lover, she prefers returning
to Dawes.
William Morel is Walter and Gertrude’s eldest son. He stands for what Paul later
will experience in love matters and his relationship with his parents. He symbolizes the
hard working boy who makes progress in London. He is ‘fair-haired freckled with the
touch of the Dane or Norwegian about him.’ (p. 9). He is first introduced in the novel
when he is seven years old as an active boy eager to joy life to its extremes. He could
receive several medals and prizes at school. He symbolizes the achievement of his
mother’s struggle and ambition to be high in life. He gets a job at thirteen and continues
his success until he is well settled in London.
William sides with his mother against his father. His aversion to his father springs
from his father’s violent behaviour against his wife. This is the apparent reason, but the
subterranean motive for this hatred is his being a rival contender of his mother’s love.
William and his father exchange feeling of aversion due to some hidden odd competition
for the mother’s affection. Thus, he is on one occasion ready to hit his father and asks his
mother to let him settle his father.
William, as a child, is so attached to his mother. He expresses his love and
devotion towards his mother in many ways. For example, he purchases two egg cups with
moss-roses on them for his mother. Although he likes them, he buys them to please her.
When he settled down in London, his mother’s thoughts still guide him. He cancels a trip
to the Mediterranean. He visits his mother instead. His love for his mother acts as a
deterrent to his personality. That is it stops him from growing as a normal man of
individual characteristics. In the sixth chapter, we are told that William ‘was accustomed
to having all his thoughts sifted through his mother’s mind’ (p. 68). The metaphorical
adjective ‘sifted’ suggests the importance of mother as a source of thought for her son,
William. The image of sift in the above statement signifies the indispensible position of
his mother in his life.
William’s love for his mother becomes morbid for his health and personality.
Later on, when he grows up, the Oedipus complex becomes very palpable, his hindering
49
love for his mother deters him from establishing relationship with women outside the
house. He is trapped in his mother’s mesh that he cannot break those ties to realize his
own individuality. His mother transferred all her affection that should have been given to
her husband to William and took a hard hold over him. He is incapable to free himself
and exchange love feelings with others around him. Thus, he symbolizes the inner
conflict between his attachment to his mother and his manhood requirements. He loves
Gypsy and wants to marry her. But he cannot marry her for his mother does not accept.
He is hung between his manly love for Gypsy and his childish love for his mother. He
suffers painful emotional conflict within himself. This conflict aggravates when he could
not wrench himself away from his mother. He is sunk in a sense of despair, and he starts
talking about death. Ultimately, he has pneumonia in London and dies there. His death is
a symbol for the demolishing of the vital organic aspect of life. Before his physical death,
his own individuality and manhood die due to his mother’s possessive love. Dr. S. Sen
rightly argues that the mother’s love that should be one’s strength has become William’s
cross. His strength is undermined by it and he could not establish his own manhood.(Sen
170) Lawrence uses his poetic language and his symbolism to give a tragic touch to the
scene in which William’s coffin is brought home:
Paul went to the bay window and looked out. The ashtree stood monstrous and
black in front of the wide darkness… Morel and Burns, in front, staggered; the
great dark weight swayed…sex men struggled to climb into the room, bearing
the coffin that rode like sorrow on their living flesh. (p. 172-3)
Lily is William’s girl, who is a true representative of London girl. Her name is
Lily, name of flower, as a sign of contrast between the flowery life of the countryside and
the city. She symbolically represents the flower that is twisted by the industrial
civilization. She has been raised in London, the centre of industrial civilization. So it is
very natural for her to be infected by some of the industrial plagues, such as vanity,
shallow-mindedness, carelessness in spending money, etc. These weaknesses in her
character can be attributed to the holy flower of lily. If she had lived in the countryside,
she could have been as hard working and independent as Clara, or as faithful as Miriam.
Mrs. Leivers is Miriam’s mother. She represents the very religious women who
treasure religion inside them. She has a great impact on Miriam. She is responsible for her
spiritual religiosity of Miriam. Mrs. Radford is Clara’s mother. She is very keen in
understanding. She is practical and realistic.

50
2.3 Symbols of Nature vs. Industry:
Nature for Lawrence is a repository of images. His images are at their best
unsurpassed. He draws his images from every aspect and every phenomenon of nature.
Trees, flowers, plants, birds, moors, hills and dales downs and rivers, different natural
phenomena as the sunrise and the sunset , the moon, the sun, the stars, the different
sound, forms, colours of nature- all inspire Lawrence to a wealth of similes and
metaphors. We quite often notice images which are drawn from the most commonplace of
nature. His images from nature arrest the attention and excite the admiration of the
readers. They are notable for their imaginative range, their suggestiveness, their original
and illuminating power and perfect precision. Their originality and freshness are the
products of long years devoted to a calm contemplation of nature by Lawrence who is
considered one of the most devoted lovers of nature. Qamar Naheed in D. H. Lawrence:
Treatment of Nature in Early Novels, says:
Lawrence is praised for his ability to visualize a scene, to evoke a mood or
create an atmosphere. In his description of nature, we notice a linking up of
human nature with external nature and external nature in perfect harmony
with human nature…. Nature in Lawrence, as in Hardy, is extremely fertile
and exuberant. He had accurate, extensive and detailed knowledge about
Nature. It is friendly and congenial and gives life, nourishment, health and
vitality to those who are in its lap. It strengthens and soothes them. The
description of the seasons in Lawrence's novels is striking…. Lawrence's
ecstasy gives way to a more realistic portrayal of Nature in Sons and Lovers
in which the rural scenery and the impress of industry are presented.
(Naheed 101-2)
It is noted that Lawrence’s use of nature’s forces are not explored for their own
sake. When he uses nature, he does so to show its relevance to emotional states of the
characters. The emotional life of the characters of Lawrence is much influenced by the
active participation of nature. Nature actively participates in the emotional life of the
characters. It arouses them emotionally. It embodies their emotions. Thus, the passages
describing the nature are considered to be symbolic expressions of the characters’
emotions and quandaries. Stephen J. Miko states that the nature and human are
interrelated together so that the former informs and defines the latter, and that the two are
fundamentally related.(Miko 76)

51
 To illustrate the interrelated integrated relationship between nature and characters’
emotional states, some examples are listed here. The novel begins with description of the
bottoms, the coal pits and what man has done to nature. It signifies how man’s activities
deface nature and create disharmony. Men are likened to donkeys and ants burrowing
down into the earth (p. 1). The description of the men with animals symbolizes their
vitality which is going to be ruined by industry. The images of donkey and ant symbolize
the dehumanizing effects of industry. This is more apparent in the later novels than Sons
and Lovers. Later on, when Paul and his mother are in the countryside, the trucks are
standing “like a string of beasts to be fed” (p. 123). This attitude towards nature and
human as integrated whole is also depicted in Paul and Mrs. Clara’s view over the town.
When Paul and Clara look out at the countryside from Nottingham Castle, they describe
the town houses as “Poisonous herbage”, although Paul says that the town will be all right
(p. 271).
While they are walking together one evening, Paul and Miriam witness a large
orange moon staring at them. The passion in Paul is aroused by the sight of the moon
staring at them. Though Miriam is also deeply moved, Paul fails to get across to her.
Violent sexual passion is aroused in Paul. Thus, the orange moon becomes a symbol of
the aroused passion in Paul:
An enormous orange moon was staring at them from the rim of the sand
hills…. He remained perfectly still, staring at the immense and ruddy
moon, the only thing in the far-reached darkness of the level. (p.220)
The sight of the moon arouses the passion in Paul. His blood is concentrated like a
flame in his chest. In spite of that Miriam is also moved, he fails to get across to her. Here
the orange moon arouses violent sexual passion in Paul as a force. At the same time, it
becomes a symbol of the aroused passion. In another event, Paul and Clara walk down the
bank of the river Trenton. The river, by its turbulent and impetuous flow aroused them so
strongly that Paul, unable to check himself, takes Clara instantly. Thus, the tempestuous
current of the river arouses their passion as much as it becomes a symbol for it. The
symbolic significance can be noticed for having its sexual implications earlier with
Miriam:
Miriam, walking home with Geoffrey, watched the moon arise big and red and
misty. She felt something was fulfilled in her (p.210).
The ash tree which is one of the natural world has been effectively used by D. H.
Lawrence in the fourth chapter to describe the sinister and dark aspects of life in the
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Morel family. There is a sinister side to the symbol of ash tree. In the Irish folklore, ash
trees have shadows that damage crops. The ash tree gives the feeling that something evil
and dangerous is happening or will happen. It creates an evil atmosphere. It is symbolic
of the dark, mysterious forces of nature which are the foreboders of tragedy in human life.
It is symbolic of the discords and disharmony that exist between the husband and wife in
the Morel family. It gives the children the sense of terror.
The tense anxious atmosphere in the family is intensified by the shrieking and
crying of the ash tree, and the wind and darkness in front of the house. In the sympathetic
use of natural background, nature often becomes almost symbolical. The ash tree
becomes a symbol of the inner terror of the children who shriek and moan inwardly. So
the tree shrieks and moans at night as if it were an externalization of the terror of the
children or a prophecy of approaching doom. It is symbolic of the father’s violent, which
dominates the household and instills a fundamental fear in the children. It also prophesies
the future doom which is to assail the Morel family:
In front of the house was a huge ash-tree. The west wind, sweeping from
Derbyshire, caught the houses with full force, and the tree shrieked again.
Morel liked it.
‘It's music, he said. ‘It sends me to sleep.’
But Paul and Arthur and Annie hated it. To Paul, it became almost demoniacal
noise. The winter of their first year in the new house, their father was very
bad. The children played in the street, on the brim of the wide dark valley,
until eight o’clock. Then they went to bed. Their mother sat sewing below.
Having such a great space in front of the house gave the children a feeling of
night, of vastness, and of terror. This terror came in from the shrieking of the
tree and the anguish of the home discord. (p. 84)
Unlike the children, Morel liked it. He said, ‘It is music. It sends me to sleep.’ But
Paul, Arthur, and Annie hated it. To Paul, it became almost demoniacal noise. It terrifies
the children at night. The parents' quarrels and dissonance are all drowned in the ‘piercing
medley of shrieks and cries from the great wind-swept ash tree’. The terror came from the
shrieking of the tree and the anguish of the home discords. At the end of the fourth
chapter, while both Mr. Morel and Mrs. Morel were so gnawed with anxiety waiting for
William to come from London, the ash-tree moaned in a cold raw wind. Its shrieking
added to the parents' anxiety.

53
 There was an ash tree in front of Lawrence's house. Richard Aldington, in his
book Portrait of a Great Genius, But… describes relationship between the ash tree and
the emotional state of the characters.(Aldington 6-7) This vitality of nature is related to
the characters’ development through symbolic scenes. In such symbolic scenes, Lawrence
tries to evoke the vitality which man and nature shares through natural metaphors. This is
clearly illustrated in the scene in which Mrs. Morel is thrown outside the house by her
husband. She is thrown away from the human world to be in touch with the natural world.
Outside their cottage in Walker street was a great ash tree whose branches shrieked in the
night gales and mingled with the angry voices of the quarrelling parents. Richard
Aldington argues that having such a great space in of the house gave the children a
feeling of night, of vastness, and of terror. This fear came in from the shrieking of the tree
and of the home discord. He would often wake up, after he had been asleep a long time,
aware of thuds downstairs. He was wide awake. Then, he heard the booming sounds of
his father, come home nearly drunk. Then he heard the sharp replies of his mother. Then,
he heard the bang, bang of his father’s fist on the table, and the nasty snarling shout as the
man’s voice got higher. And then the whole was sunk in a piercing mixture of shrieks and
cries from the great, wind-swept ash-tree. The children lay silent in fear, waiting for a
while in the wind, to hear what their father was doing. He might hurt their mother once
more. There was a feeling of fear, a kind of fear in the darkness, and a sense of blood.
They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense pain.
Lawrence presents nature in a way to send its benediction on his characters who
wish to live willfully or upon those who wish to attain happiness through their vital
instincts. For Lawrence, nature is the healing source for those who have been passively
inflicted by intellectual and industrial life or by problematic relation with another human
being. Before the birth of Paul, Mrs. Morel is once locked outside house after a quarrel by
her husband into the garden. She feels protected and at peace in nature. Here she feels the
presence of nature under the 'blinding' August moon. Lawrence in this scene uses the
moon imagery and the flowers of the garden to embody the life forces which soothe Mrs.
Morel’s turmoil. They equate in a sense the vital forces in her husband which she does
neglect. She is going to give birth to Paul and she feels herself melting away in the moon
light along with the child. Later, when she is allowed into the house by Morel, she is
happy with herself seeing her face smeared with the pollen dust of lilies. The yellow dust
is symbolic of the kiss of nature's benediction for both the mother and the child. It also
confirms their vitality.
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 Similarly, on another occasion when Paul rises after making love to Clara on the
bank of the river, there lie on the ground many scarlet, carnation petals like splashed
drops of blood, and red small splashes fall from her bosom, streaming down her dress to
her feet. This is also symbolic of the benediction of flowers showered upon them for their
perfect union. The most perfect union between the lovers are always fulfilled in the lap of
nature not only in this novel but also in almost all his novels. In still another occasion, the
rose bush is used as a symbol of the witness to the spiritual communion of Paul and
Miriam which they achieve while watching the rose bush together in perfect harmony.
Though there is natural beauty in flowers that Paul picks, yet he picks them scientifically.
The clash between the two opposing classes, the oppressors and the oppressed is
one of the key themes in the novel Sons and Lovers. Spiritual wasteland and desperation
become incurable modern diseases. Lawrence, as a novelist, attempts to find a cure to
these modern problems through employing the depiction of natural scenes in Sons and
Lovers. He employs images and symbols to reveal the disintegrative, dehumanizing
effects of industrialization upon human lives. Moreover, he uses the nature in the novel as
a salvation force against the industrial distortion of human nature. D. H. Lawrence lived
in a time when the British society was experiencing a great change as a result of the
industrial revolution. The enormous wealth produced by the industrial civilization caused
social problems such as income gap, poverty, paucity, poor working conditions, the
collapse of the Christian faith, the deterioration of the overall moral standards, and the
natural environmental pollution, etc. Thus, some critics call Sons and Lovers as a
proletarian novel.
In fact, the negative reviews about the destructive impact of the industrial
civilization on the moral foundations of the British society began long before Lawrence’s
age. In the works of many of the late 19th century realist novelists, the industrial
civilization was given a very gloomy portrait, such as in the works of Charles Dickens,
Thomas Hardy and T. S. Eliot. Such passion against the industrial civilization is densely
located in D. H. Lawrence’s works. As a result of the dehumanizing effects of industrial
civilization, the Christian faith has been devastated, causing a vacuum in faith and a
horrible wasteland in the 20th century social life. In order to restore faith in God and to
help people tolerate the industrial trauma, many literary figures use their pen as a weapon
to rebel against the social evils caused by the industrial civilization. Lawrence is one of
those very successful figures spending most of his efforts in this respect, trying to help
the world to regain their heavenly bestowed virtues and their good old faith. Thus, he in
55
Sons and Lovers portrays in a symbolic poetic manner the sickness caused by industry on
the psychological level of his characters as well as on the social and religious levels. He
refers to his novel as ‘colliery novel’.
Lawrence differs from the 19th century realist novelists in his dealing with nature
in his novels. The nineteenth century novelists focus more on the economic exploitations
suffered by the workers, while Lawrence cares more about the destructive influence of the
industrial civilization upon human relations and the spiritual well being of individuals.
While his forefathers insist on nature’s joint impact in causing the misery of industrial
life, Lawrence regards nature as a victim of the industrial invasion as well. Moreover, he
regards nature as a force reacting against such invasion. In his opinion, nature seems to
imply the source of salvation. By returning to nature and discovering the divinity of
nature, people will ultimately release their own nature, and, thus, regain their spiritual
integrity and sense of peace. Here, Sons and Lovers is selected as a typical example of
how Lawrence makes his point about the importance of nature as a form of escapism
from the tensions and ills of industrialization of twentieth century people.
As his first successful novel, Sons and Lovers illustrates how the industrial
civilization castrates the male characters of the family, making them incapable of love.
The members of the Morel family are contaminated by the industrialized values. They
along with their neighbors unconsciously embrace a distorted love concept on their
beloved ones. Thus, industry suffocates their dream, their love and their life, rather than it
helps them prosper. Lawrence presents the character of Walter Morel as the symbol of the
working class.
In this industrial environment in which the material values govern the course of
life, Mrs. Gertrud’s first real love is suffocated and came to failure. She, at the age of
nineteen, fell in love with John Field, the son of a well-to-do tradesman studying in the
college in London. But, ultimately, he betrayed her and married a rich widow. She still
had the Bible that John Field had given her. The image of the Bible here comes to show
the contrast between religion and industrial world. With the failure of this love, we come
to realize that the material commercial world is a world without love. Consequently, the
father Mr. Morel yields to the conventional patriarchal role forced on him, and gradually
loses his natural sense of humor. The mother Mrs. Morel, deprived of her husband’s love,
is forced to centre all her love and hope on her sons, and eventually suffocates their life.
Thus, a tragic sense pervades the entire story. The light of hope temporarily pierces
through the thick industrial clouds to alleviate the pain and sorrows of the characters only
56
when nature steps in. It helps their souls wake up a while from their sound sleep.
Therefore, nature is not only a mere passive background, but it is in Sons and Lovers an
active participant of the plot, a mentor for human soul, and it is very human like.
One cannot deny his favour of the natural scene in contrast with the industrial scene.
He prefers the agricultural lifestyle which is more closely related to nature than to
industrial lifestyle. His favorable view of the country life is clearly portrayed in the
opening scene where the background setting of the story is introduced. When contrasted
with the ugliness presented by industrial constructions, nature as a mirror clearly reflects
not only the physical damage cast on our living world by industrial production, but also
exposes the distorted human relation in the industrial world. Hereby, the fragile nature is
wielded by Lawrence as a powerful sword against the inhumanity of Puritanism and
industrialism.
In another sense, nature is also full of sensual and religious connotations. It is used
to signify the progress and frustrations in the development of human relations. By digging
into these natural depictions, the readers can have a more explicit insight into the surging
emotions and desires in the character’s mind. Thus, nature is far more than a mere passive
witness of human activity. Instead, it has always been, and still, an active participant of
all human life. It is the beginning point of human life, and also the ending point of all
human beings. When human society moves into the industrial age, we tend to pull further
and further away from the natural world in which process we are becoming less and less
human. He obviously shows his disgust towards the industrial civilization.
Because of the industrial development, the beautiful countryside view has been
destroyed. “Corn and meadows” are destroyed to make place for coalmines. People’s
labour has lost its dignity. People are compared to ants working into the earth. The
arrangement of the houses in the industrial area implies that the industrial civilization has
no respects for the beauty of nature, because in spite of the beautiful trees and flowers in
the front garden, the living space-the kitchen where people spend most of their time is
located at the back part of their houses facing the ugly ash-pits. Anyone familiar with the
Christian culture may agree that the ash reminds one of death, while pits remind one of
fall and hell. Therefore, through the layout of the house’s different parts, Lawrence
implies that the industrial civilization is plagued with death and has come to the edge of
its fall. The beauty of nature is introduced in parallel to the ugliness of the industrial
civilization.

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 The entire life of the mining community depicted in the novel depends upon the
coal-pits which stand on the horizon. The coal-pits are not indispensable for a better
understanding of the novel but they have their own symbolic significance. Literally, they
may be coat-pits but they are symbolic of a particular attitude towards life. Morel, with
his irrational life principle, has a close association with them. The descent and ascent of
the coal-pits is symbol of the sexual rhythm or a rhythm of sleep and awakening. The
naturalness of the coal-pits stands in contrast against the artificial way of life of the
sophisticated people.
The natural depiction in his novels is replete with implications and connotations.
Lawrence uses a very poetic language to portrait natural scenes and objects. Nature in his
works seems to be the incarnation of beauty itself. Such beauty is very essential for the
people who are drowned by the industrial world. The beauty of nature becomes a source
of power and it enables people to forget their physical miseries and psychological
tensions and reach a transcendental land of hope. The industrial production prevents
workers from obtaining pleasure from their labour by making their work more and more
dull and mechanic.
The work in the mine extracts every bit of energy out of the coilers. What is more
is that working in the mine dull the minds and the sensual desire of the coilers. As a
result, mutual communication between man and woman, which is the central clue to all
other relations, cannot happen in its normal level. In Sons and Lovers, the mutual
communication cannot succeed in the Morel family. Mr. Morel is always too tired and
frustrated by his wife’s taste in tidying the house. Mrs. Morel’s pride and knowledge
prevents her from understanding her husband’s insensitivity. Harmony in their
relationship is destroyed soon after their marriage, and hot and cold wars begin to take
place between them.
The industrial scenes in the novel are presented in contrast to the benevolent
scenes of nature. The industrial scenes are full of images of darkness, horror and death.
This is clear in Paul’s feeling of suffering from his first contact with the industrial world
in the fifth chapter. When his mother asked him to look in the papers for advertisement
and apply for jobs he was very much upset and it seemed to him a bitter humiliation.
Industrial life is compared to a prison. He would rather prefer to be ‘like a dog in the sun.
I wish I was a pig and a brewer’s wagoner. He dreaded the business world, with its
regulated system of values, and its impersonality. It seemed monstrous also that a
business could be run on wooden legs.’ (p.105) The image of the wooden legs adorned
58
with elastic stockings implies the inhuman values of the business world. The images of
dread of the industrial world are also found in the depiction of Paul’s first impression of
Mr. Jordan’s factory:
Suddenly they spied a big, dark archway in which were names of various
firms, Thomas Jordan among them. And they ventured under the archway, as
into the jaws of the dragon. They emerged into a wide yard, like a well, with
buildings all round. It was littered with straw and boxes, and cardboard. The
sunshine actually caught one crate whose straw was streaming on to the yard
like gold. But elsewhere the place was like a pit. (p.104)
The above scene conveys nothing pleasant. Instead, it resembles desert and prison
in many ways. The dragon mouth image symbolizes the all-swallowing greedy nature of
the industrial system. Once one is in a system he is going to lose his own nature and
becomes part of the system. In other words, the evil industrial system kills his human
nature. The ‘well’ image is a strong symbol of entrapment. Man cannot escape from its
mechanical values and freedom becomes a luxury. The beauty of nature is closed to the
insiders, and litters become their only company. The allusion to the pit in the final
sentence is a definite reference to the universally hell-like conditions of the working
environment. The image of the golden sunlight beaming down the hole among the
buildings overhead reminds people of the light of heaven. It calls on people to break the
industrial shackles and return to nature.
In the first chapter, after their fight, Mrs. Morel is locked out of the house. Once
she is in the front yards she comes to contact directly with nature and begins to draw
power from it. Firstly, it is the moonlight that helps her to regain her soberness by cooling
her inflamed soul. In the lap of nature, she begins to review her fight with her husband
and feels something biting in her conscience. She comes to a stage of sudden awareness.
She begins to observe the white lilies in the moonlight.
She became aware of something about her. With an effort, she roused
herself to see what it was that penetrated her consciousness. The tall
white lilies were reeling in the moonlight, and the air was charged with
their perfume as with a presence. Mrs. Morel gasped slightly in fear. She
touched the big, pallid flowers on their petals, and then shivered. They
seemed to be stretching in the moonlight. She put her hand into one white
bin: the gold scarcely showed on her fingers by moonlight. She bent
down to look at the pin fall of yellow pollen; but it only appeared dusky.
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 Then she drank a deep draught of the scent. It almost made her dizzy.
(p.30)
The above part is a scene of natural beauty. The moon light is crystal clear, and all
embracing. The lilies seem to be stretching because the air is filled with their fragrance.
The moonlight, the perfumed air and the lilies combine together to give Mrs. Morel the
sense of power. Everything in its embrace slowly gets assimilated into her. Once Mrs.
Morel is in direct touch with nature, her own nature is turned on and she undergoes a
process of purification. Once she is in nature, she forgets her pains and sufferings.
Besides the spiritual peace, her physical body gets a profound rest under such
circumstances.
As well-known, Lawrence thinks that the sexual satisfaction is very important for
a happy life. The same message can be found through touch between human and nature.
The lily flower is often considered as a symbol of the female sexual organ, and Mrs.
Morel’s dipping into the flower cup is like the sexual intercourse. The fact that Mrs.
Morel feels dizzy and completely loses the sense of her body is an obvious reference to
the ideal sexual orgasm, in which the two persons becomes one and there is nothing left
except pure happiness. The beauty of nature has such a powerful effect on things that they
become in oneness with nature and as beautiful as nature itself. All evils are purified and
human becomes kind and understanding. This is what happens to Mrs. Morel. Once she is
in the moonlight, she becomes cool and begins to examine her own fault. Nature as a
power of beauty is always outside there. What one needs is to step out of one’s concrete
enclosure and to appreciate such beauty. When Mrs. Morel does this:
The small frets vanish, and the beauty of things stands out, and she had the peace and the
strength to see herself. (p.44)
Nature, moreover, has religious Christian implications in Sons and Lovers. One day
after the birth of Paul, Mrs. Morel took the baby to the top of the hill. The meadows and
the evening lights begin to influence her again.
The sun was going down. Every open evening, the hills of Derbyshire
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, leaving the bell
cast flawless blue. The mountain-ash berries across the field stood fierily
out from the dark leaves, for a moment. A few shocks of corn in a corner
of the fallow stood up as if alive; she imaging them bowing; perhaps her
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 son would be a Joseph. In the east, a mirrored sunset floated pink
opposite the west’s scarlet. The big haystacks on the hillside, that butted
into the glare, went cold. (pp.43-44)
According to the Christian belief, the world is created by God. And the sun, the
moon, the earth, the sea and all the living things are the creations of God, and they act as
manifestations of the Almighty of God. So a Christian comes to appreciate nature, he or
she feels the power of God. In this context, Mrs. Morel feels she is very closely connected
with God. She becomes boasted about her son. She imagines her son to be a Joseph, the
savior of the world, and the world is going to bow before him. So she calls her son “my
lamb”, which is a term used to refer to Jesus Christ. The baby stares at her, “and at that
very moment she felt, in some far inner place of her soul, that she and her husband were
guilty.”(p.44) “And a wave of hot love went over her to the infant.”(p.45) This scene is a
very powerful symbolic display of the salvation strength lying in the Christian tradition.
Nature acts as the media through which people could get in touch with this salvation
power. Through human’s touch with nature people come to realize what is wrong with the
modern industrial society, that the industrial society is a society without love and
emotion.
Sons and lovers has a great deal of images which are taken from nature. Nature
images constitute one of the most conspicuous features of the novel. The weather and
environment images reflect the characters’ emotions. The nature images indicate sexual
energy. Lawrence’s characters experience moments of transcendence while they are alone
in nature. The characters more frequently bond deeply while in nature. Lawrence found a
curious kinship of man with nature. The emotional life of his characters is much
influenced by nature and, technically, nature represents human emotion. D. H. Lawrence
possesses the painter’s eye for detail in his description of natural scenes. His observation
of Nature is always minute and accurate, and his natural images are always graphic. His
images of nature are part and parcel of the thematic structure of the novel. He may
appropriately be called a poet in his attitude to nature, and a painter in his technique in
dealing with nature.
The nature images in Sons and Lovers give it a rare freshness and charm. We find in
the novel vivid images of individual objects of nature such as the flowers, the birds, the
beasts, the sky, the moon, the sun, the trees, the hedges, the creepers, the buds, the
blossoms, the meadows, the grass, the thickets, the river and its flow. All these images
and the like are integral to the story. Moreover, nature is presented in the novel in all its
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hues, colours and tents. There are all the shades such as luminous, bright, dim, dark and
so on. It is also to be noted that Lawrence’s love for nature is Keatsian in quality. His love
for nature is deep and sensuous like that of Keats.
Nature treatment in Sons and Lovers is even more impressive and fascinating than
in the earlier novels. When the love life of Morels is strained and frustrated, they give the
impression of being pulled into different directions, and here comes the role of nature as
an antidote to the strain and despair of the Morel family. Whenever Mrs. Morel is
depressed and feels suffocated within the walls of the house, she moves into the front
garden and feels the soothing and quietening effect of various flowers. The odour of
flowers quietens and comforts her and she finds some compensation in the lap of nature:
There she stood, trying to soothe herself with the scent of flowers and the
fading, beautiful evening (p13).
The scent of flowers exhilarates and strengthens her and gives her a new life and
vitality. Similarly, Mr. Morel loves the early morning and he is fond of walking across the
fields. Walking in the nature gives him life nourishment and vitality. Different objects of
nature seem to him friendly and congenial.
As Lawrence loved Nature, he was a landscape painter taking a particular interest
in flowers. Apart from their description, Lawrence employs the flower as a symbol.
Flowers of all varieties are in the novel to form a tapestry of concepts like the crimson
carnation, the white chrysanthemum and other flowers in the vase. Even hay, the pine
grove and the wheat all contribute to the larger symbolism of the novel. The lily in the
episode in which Gertrude is locked out of the house at night by her drunken husband has
a symbolic significance. She buries her head in the lilies and the pollen dust covers her
face. She inhales its intoxicating fragrance and, for a brief while, as if lifted from her
dismal reality. The lily is a flower that is conventionally associated with death and to
Gertrude it appears a temporary escape from her sordid life. When she is afflicted with a
terminal illness, she gazes at sunflowers for they stand for life to her. The sunflower
represents the fusion of three symbols-the flowers, the sun and fire.
Moreover, Paul and Morel, the main characters of the novel are great lovers of
nature. Paul Morel has fascination for natural beauty. He goes to Willy Farm for the
natural beauty of the farm there in addition to meeting Miriam. In addition to poetry and
French lessons, natural beauty also gives him inner satisfaction. The beauty of nature, its
changing colors and forms stimulate him. The chapter entitled, ‘Lad-and-Girl-Love’
contains intense images of the world of leaves and flowers. The flowing water stars, the
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moon, and the sun all have an overpowering effect on him. Flowers are his special love.
Whenever he sees a beautiful flower he wants to make it a part of himself. He would
breathe a flower, as if he and the flower were loving each other. It is a great coincidence
that the girl, Miriam, whom he loves and who fascinates him, is also a great lover of
nature:
….so her friend, her companion, her lover was Nature. She saw the sun
declining wanly. In the dusky, cold hedgerows were some red leaves. She
lingered to gather them, tenderly, passionately. The love in her fingertips
caressed the leaves; the passion in her heart came to a glow upon the leaves.
(p. 205)
Since nature is full of different images and objects, almost all people could find
expressions for his or her own emotions in the natural world. And this is especially true in
Sons and Lovers. In Paul’s first love, his girl, Miriam, tries to keep their relation
completely spiritual. But for Paul, the physical impulse is growing stronger and stronger
with him, and the suppression of it becomes a torture to him. One day, when Paul and
Miriam sat together at the sunset, Paul pointed at the pine-trunks embraced in the sunlight
and said:
I wanted that. Now, look at them and tell me, are they pine-trunks or are
they red coals, standing up pieces of fire in that darkness? There’s God’s
burning bush for you, that burned not away.(p.166)
The image of God’s burning bush is an explicit allusion to the story of ‘Moses’ in
the Bible. When Moses is alone in the field one day, God reveals himself in the form of
burning bush. And He tells Moses to go to Egypt and saves the enslaved Jewish people,
and lead them out to Jerusalem. In the theory of Dr. Freud, any stick-shaped object may
stand for male sexual organ in people’s sub-consciousness. So the pine-trunks painted red
by the sun stand for Paul’s burning physical desire to have intimate body contact with
Miriam. This image is mixed with the God’s burning bush to give one concrete message
that it is also a sign from God for both of them to fulfill that desire. This is a sign that the
physical fulfillment is not only a matter of worldly joy, but it is a fulfillment of religious
order. By directing Miriam’s attention to these pine-trunks and calling them God’s
burning bush, Paul is trying to reveal his physical desire for her and to direct her to that
part of her which she ignored. Since she is religious girl, he tries to persuade her that this
is also a part of religion. He wants Miriam to feel that impulse too, and to answer the call
of God.
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 For Miriam, nature is also full of meanings, but she only sees the holy side of it.
The white rosebush in the dark woods tells us the image of nature in her eyes. Miriam
sees nature in a religious eye, that she worships nature as a reflection of God:
Point after point the steady roses shone out to them, seeming to kindle
something in their souls. The dusk came out like smoke around, and still
did not put out the roses. She looked at her roses. They were white, some
incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark as a
shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went
forward to touch them in worship. (p.174)
With the white roses, she intends to quench the sexual desire in Paul. Judging
from the above examples, nature is expressed in a symbolic language which can be used
by everyone to find an outlet for his or her particular emotions. Yet Lawrence seems to
value Paul’s interpretation of nature higher than that of Miriam. That is because Paul, like
his mother, is able to let go of his nature, while Miriam always worships nature. That is to
say, nature, though it is admired by Miriam, could never find echo in her heart. And that
manifests the reason for her shrinking back from any sensuous contact with Paul. Her
desire for Paul’s body is always suppressed and distorted by the puritan doctrines which
is part of her character.
Different from his relationship with Miriam, Paul’s relation with Clara is expected to
be a healthier one. They both have desires for sensual pleasure and they do not deny that
desire. Such mutual attraction joins them together. Nature also plays an important part in
their relation. This is especially true in their first love adventure in the riverside bushes
after the rain. The day is wet because of the rain, and it is fit for the growth of things,
including love:
When they walk on the bank, the things that they see encourage their
inner desire. The cliff of red earth sloped swiftly down, through trees
and bushes, to the river that glimmered and was dark between the
foliage. The water meadows were very green. He and she stood
leaning against one another, silent, afraid, their bodies touching all
along. There came a quick gurgle from the river below. (p.376)
Everything is washed by rain, and radiates vitality into the surroundings. The earth
becomes freshly red, and meadow becomes very green. All the things seem to encourage
them to take action to fulfill their desire. Leaning against each other, the desire inside
their bodies make great noise as loud as the roaring river torrent behind the bushes. Their
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later descending to the river for a place of privacy is a clear indication of their intention to
answer their bodies’ sexual call. If they truly opens themselves to each other and take
each other in themselves, this relationship is bound to succeed. However, it fails again.
Both Paul and Miriam gain strength warmth and happiness. They both feel at one
with nature. Love for nature is common to them. It is the connecting rope that unifies
them:
They went into the garden. The sky behind the townlet and the
church was orange-red; the flower garden was flooded with a strange
warm light that lifted every leaf into significance. Paul passed along
a fine row of sweetpeas, gathering a blossom here and there, all
cream and pale blue. Miriam followed, breathing the fragrance. To
her, flowers appeared with such strength she felt she must make
them part of herself. When she bent and breathed a flower, it was as
if she and the flower were loving each other. Paul hated her for it.
There seemed a sort of exposure about the action something too
intimate. (p. 214)
Lawrence describes their meetings, their walks through the woods, their visit to
the church, their discovery of the pine trees and rose bushes, etc.. in a language
remarkable for its lyrical and emotional intensity:
One evening he and she went up the great sweeping shore of sand
towards Theddlethorpe. The long breakers plunged and ran in hits of
foam along the coast. It was a warm evening. There was not a figure
but themselves on the far reaches of sand, no noise but the sound of
the sea. Paul loved to see it changing at the land. He loved to feel
himself between the noise of it and the silence of the sandy
shore…(p.220)
Moreover, nature is depicted as a source of nursing and nourishment for the young
lovers. It is clearly noted that typical laurentien lovers make love in the open sky far from
the suffocating industrialized world. The love affair of Paul and Miriam takes place in the
picturesque surroundings of the Willey Farm. There are also a number of beautiful short
scenes describing the Paul-Miriam love in beautiful natural surroundings in the open
field. There is a graphic description of the beautiful Willey Farm, the home of Miriam.
The details of the place have been painted by the novelist meticulously:

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 As soon as the skies brightened and plum-blossom was out, Paul drove off
in the milkman's heavy float up to Willy Farm. Mr. Leivers shouted in a
kindly fashion at the boy, then clicked to the horses as they climbed the
hill slowly, in the freshness of the morning. White clouds went on their
way, crowding to the back of the hills that were rousing in the spring time.
The water of Nethermere lay below, very blue against the seared meadows
and the thorn trees. It was four and a half miles drive. Tiny buds on the
hedges, vivid as copper-green, were opening into rosettes; and thrushes
called, and blackbirds shrieked and scolded. It was a new, glamorous
world. Miriam, peeping through the kitchen window, saw the horse walk
through the big white gate into the farmyard that was backed by the oak-
wood, still bare. (p.179)
The chapter which is titled ‘Lad-and-Girl-Love’ is remarkable for its beautiful and
lyrical descriptions of nature, specially flowers when Paul and Miriam meet. The flower
imagery in the novel is largely symbolic. Qamar Naheed in her book D. H. Lawrence:
Treatment of Nature inEarly Novels writes:
Like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, Lawrence has also made use of
different objects of nature to suggest something deeper than it appear
to be on the surface. Sons and Lovers, perhaps more than any other of
Lawrence's books, is full of images of flowers. The different traits of
Miriam's personality, her physical charms, her philosophical and
mystical bent of mind, her spirituality and possessive nature are
brought home to the reader through the help of flowers. (Naheed 61)
Paul uses the image of daffodils to express Miriam’s beauty and her coldness towards
him:
Your daffodils are nearly out. Isn't it early? But don't they look cold? (p.177)
The image of daffodils here stands for Miriam, and the coldness is of Miriam's love and
feelings towards Paul. The reader can make out this meaning with little thinking and here
lies the greatness of Laurentian symbols.
Qamar Naheed thinks that the general attitude of the various characters towards
flowers symbolizes their attitude towards life.(Naheed 62-3) Paul loves flowers but
respects their otherness, establishing them as existences in their own right. Paul in
Chapter XI goes into the garden in a state of tense emotional tension. The flowers flag all
lose, as if they were panting. They are depicted as if they were alive. Here they are clearly
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shown to have a life of their own which Paul shares and respects without trying to destroy
it. There is vitality and healthy glow of life in Mrs. Morel’s attitude towards flowers.
Whenever Paul brings her flowers, the scene is gay, lively, warm or poignant. In
Miriam’s relationship with the flowers, there is a blasphemous possessorship which
denies the separateness of living entities. Her relationship with flower clearly shows her
fawning attitude towards life. One day Paul lashes out at her for caressing daffodils:
He watched her crouching, sipping the flower with fervid kisses.
‘Why must you always be fondling things?’ he said irritably. ‘But I love to
touch them’, she replied, hurt.
‘Can you never like things without clutching them as if you want to pull
the heart out of them? Why don't you have a bit more or restraint, or
reserve, or something?’ She looked up at him full of pain, then continued
slowly to stroke her lips against a ruffled flower. Their scent, as she
smelled it, was so much kinder than he; it almost made her cry.
‘You wheedle the soul out of things’, he said. I would never wheedle-at
any rate. I would go straight… you don't want to love your eternal and
abnormal craving is to be loved. You aren’t positive, you’re negative. You
absorb, absorb, as if you must fill yourself up with love, because you have
got a shortage somewhere. (p.268)
The extract above shows Miriam possessive nature; her unhealthy spirituality and
tendency to ‘absorb’ the soul of Paul. The imagery of flower here stands for Paul. At the
end of the novel, Paul presents flowers to Miriam. For Paul they are symbol of life, but
for Miriam they represent the rootless flowers of death. This two contrast attitudes
towards flowers is clearly evident in the passage bellow:
She waited for him, took the flowers, and they went out together, he talking,
she feeling dead. (p.509)
The most important of the flower symbols are presented in the scene where Clara
has just been introduced to Paul by Miriam. All three of them walk in an open field with
its many ‘clusters of strong flowers’. This floral scene of picking up the flowers is very
symbolic. They begin to pick flowers. Though there is natural beauty in the flowers that
Paul picks up, yet he picks them scientifically. He has a spontaneous and direct contact
with the flowers. Although Miriam picks the flowers lovingly and referentially, yet she
seems to derive the life out of them. Thus the way she picks them up suggests that she has
no sense of their life. But Clara does not pick them at all. She defiantly asserts that
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flowers should not be picked because it kills them. Clara’s attitude here suggests that she
does not want to be picked by any man.
Thus, if we closely read these three attitudes of the three characters towards the
flowers, we feel that this scene symbolically depicts the different attitudes of various
characters towards life. Mrs. Morel has a vital and healthy attitude towards flowers. The
scenes where Paul brings her flowers are warm and gay. Since the love of Paul and
Miriam develops in the midst of natural surroundings, the flowers are symbolic of its
freshness and innocence. They also symbolize the beauty and youth of Miriam.
There are various other symbols in the novel like the symbols of the burned
potatoes symbolizing Miriam’s total absorption in Paul. On the other hand, the charred
bread symbolizes Paul's total absorption in Miriam. Hope and optimism are symbolized,
at the end of the novel, with the help of the gold phosphorescence of the city. Hence,
symbolism used in Sons and Lovers is crucial to a better understanding of the novel.
Like flowers and moon, Lawrence also has made use of the images of the sun-
shine and sun-set in the novel effectively. In Chapter VIII entitled ‘Strife in Love’, we
notice that Mrs. Morel is in a gloomy and sad mood. She has the feeling in her heart of
hearts that Paul Morel, her youngest son is in losing the glow of his face gradually and is
in a state of emotional turmoil. She uses the image of the sun-shine to convey the sense:
She saw the sun-shine going out of him, and she resented it. (p.223)
Similarly, the image of sun-set is equally symbolically significant in the novel. In the
chapter entitled ‘Lad-and-Girl-Love’, Miriam notices the resentment of Paul’s mother
over their meetings, and decides not to see him any more. She identifies her situation with
the beautiful sun which is going to set very soon:
Miriam picked up her books and stood in the doorway looking with
chagrin at the beautiful sun-set. She would call for Paul no more.
(p.215)
Similarly, Paul’s emotional turmoil towards the end of the novel is identified with
the image of sun-set:
And then the queer feeling went over him, as if all the sun-shine had
gone out of him and it was all shadow.(p.449)
Qamar Naheed believes that Lawrence wants to live zestfully, and that he fiercely
condemns anything that obstructs the natural flow of life.(Naheed 71) Lawrence wants
complete interaction between man and nature. Lawrence makes nature send its
benediction upon those who show strong will to live or upon those who, through their
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vital instinct, attain happiness. In the Fourth Chapter entitled ‘The Young Life of Paul’,
Annie, Paul and Arthur go out early in the morning, in summer, looking for mushrooms,
hunting through the wet grass, from which the larks were rising:
There was the joy of finding something, the joy of accepting
something straight from the band of nature….(p. 88)
The seasons are of inevitably symbolic significance in the novel. Whenever there
is a crucial point in the novel, there is a reference to the season in which the particular
event takes place. We find that the human situation is in harmony with the external
weather. For example, in the Chapter entitled ‘The Young Life of Paul’, there is a strain
and tension in the family life of Morels. The entire atmosphere of the house is stuffy, and
the season in the background is winter. Later in the book, Paul’s meetings with Miriam in
the Willey Farm could not materialize, perhaps because they take place during the
autumn. It is only in the spring season that his effort to approach Miriam proves to be
fruitful. In the Chapter entitled ‘Strife in Love’, Paul realizes that he and Miriam are very
much low spirited, and he comments:
But, there, it's autumn', he said and every body feels like a disembodied
spirit then. (p. 232)
Qamar Naheed concludes her analysis of treatment of nature in Sons and Lovers by
saying:
To sum up, we can say that Lawrence’s ecstasy gives way to a more
realistic portrayal of nature in Sons and Lovers in which the rural scenery
and the impress of industry has been presented. It also assumes symbolic
character in the book. The characters in Sons and Lovers commune with
flowers, meadows and moonlight through which emotions are revealed to
the characters and the reader. Human emotions are here expressed in terms
of natural objects. The beautiful Nature description in the book is a source
of joy in itself and one of the chief attractions of the novel for many
readers (Naheed 73-4)

2.4 Symbolic Scenes:

The scenes in Sons and Lovers are presented to symbolize the individual’s truths
of characters in which their inconsistencies make the readers’ sympathies shift from one
character to the other. Lawrence is a critic of social culture. So he uses the scenes in
which characters of different social classes react with each other as a means to illustrate

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his views of the social disintegration due to industrialization. His scenes are rich with
symbolic significance and impregnated with several levels of connotations achieved
through accurate use of symbols and images. F. B. Pinion, in an essay, argues:
In George Eliot fiction, the extended metaphor usually relates to
character or human situation. Lawrence also uses it in this more artistic
mode, but he is most strikingly brilliant in the invention of metaphorical
scenes and actions which express his convections as the priest of love.
The metaphor is informed with meaning that gives key images a quasi-
symbolic connotation, especially by force of recurrence in variant forms.
Such writing is particularly characteristic of that fecund period when
creativity of ideas was stimulated by fruition of love with Frieda
Weekley and by the novelty of colourful scenes in the Alps and northern
Italy. Their fictional effect is to be found in Sons andLovers, The
Rainbow and Women in Love. (Pinion 32-33)
To illustrate this statement, Lawrence presents the scenes that portray the
characteristic values of his characters such as Walter Morel and his wife, Paul Morel,
Miriam and Clara, and also other minor characters the novel. Such symbolic scenes are
investigated and evaluated in this section of the thesis:

2.4.1 Scenes relating to Walter Morel and Gertrude Morel:

It is well noted that the scenes involving the Morels symbolically represent the
contradictions between the father’s vitality and the mother’s moral and religious
restrictions.
At the end of the first chapter Morel thrusts his pregnant wife out of doors and
locks her out (pp. 21-22). Before the birth of Paul, Mrs. Morel is once locked outside
house after a quarrel by her husband into the garden. For Mrs. Morel and all women of
her time, the house represents the container that contains her activity and her world. She
considers house as her own territory. As her role as a mother and housewife, she always
does her duties inside the house. However, she feels protected and at peace in nature.
Here she feels the presence of nature under the ‘blinding’ August moon. Lawrence in this
scene uses the moon imagery and the flowers of the garden to embody the life forces
which soothe Mrs. Morel’s turmoil. They equate in a sense the vital forces in her husband
which she does neglect. She is going to give birth to Paul and she feels herself melting
away in the moon light along with the child.
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 Later, when she is allowed into the house by Morel, she is happy with herself
seeing her face smeared with the pollen dust of lilies. The yellow dust is symbolic of the
kiss of nature’s benediction for both the mother and the child. It also confirms their
vitality. When she enters the house, she smiles at the image of her face in the mirror. This
scene symbolically discloses the psychological and social context so that it is a symbolic
scene.
Moreover, this scene symbolically dramatizes the social class problem and how a
person suffers from social fetters when trying to intercross the social hierarchy. Gertrude
Morel’s marriage beneath her class is of significance in terms of the social division. Her
consciousness of superior class than that of her husband causes the estrangement and
misunderstanding in the relationship between the husband and the wife. When Mr. Morel
returns home drunk, Mrs. Morel gives him some sarcastic remarks. She does not
appreciate his manners and tries to bring him to be her equal. Here rises the problem of
the individual’s spontenaity and uniqueness threatened by the social culture and
traditions. Mrs. Morel, with her education and social consciousness wants her husband
come to her standards, but he refuses to suppress his uniqueness as an individual. Thus, in
seeking to make him nobler than he could be, she destroyed him. Lawrence through these
scenes emphasizes his belief that each individual has his own spiritual and psychological
needs which must be respected in order to establish an organic society.
The scene outside is impregnated with implications. Her recollection of what
happened to her is ‘like a brad red-hot down of her soul’ (p. 23). Although Gertrude and
Morel meet on antagonistic terms, Lawrence managed to connect them through this
episode with Gertrude’s pregnancy which comes as a result of some intimate moments in
their life. In the presence of nature, Mrs. Morel’s feeling is more joy and swoon than fear
and terror.
Later on in another event, Morel flings a drawer at his wife and cuts open her head
(pp. 38-39). However, there are the scenes that have a shift in focus to represent the
mother’s bullying quality such as her trying to change him to her standards and makes his
children hate him and excluded him and he becomes an outsider. Thus, sympathy turns in
favor of the father. Morel’s activities represent his diverse identity; he can be a drunken
person, a sick child, a loving father or even a loyal husband for he does not betray his
wife with any other woman. That is to say that he is not identified with his class but with
his activities. These scenes and other similar ones symbolize his brutality and thus
sympathy is directed in favor of the mother.
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 Similarly, the events related to Paul and his mother imply the contradictory
dominant relationship between the two. Each episode has its own attendant moral
implications. Lawrence portrays a symbolic scene in which the boy Paul goes to the
colliery to collect his father’s money. He is reduced by the adult people to incompetence
(pp. 70-71). The scene symbolizes the difference of morals between Paul’s strict moral
growing up and the colliers’ coarse manners. This difference in values between Paul and
the colliers comes from his mother’s education and cultural standards. Stephen J. Miko
rightly observes the child is blind to the fact that the colliers including his father are war
vital and warm, because his mother has taught him to look at their dirt.(Miko 74) This
scene symbolically shows that there should be a sense of balance in judgment between
appearance and real truth and between moral and vital. The events of the narrative are
presented in an objective way so much as they contradict each other and, thus, the desire
is not to blame any character but to get an understanding of the conflicting values implied
by those events.
Another symbolic scene which symbolizes Oedipus complex, Paul’s abnormal
relationship with his mother, takes place in the last part of the 18th Chapter. Paul in this
scene burns the bread while he is talking to Miriam and Beatrice. When his mother comes
back home, there is a quarrel with his father, and then follows a conversation between
Paul and his mother. This scene ends with a like-love scene between the mother and her
son. She told her son that she had never had a real husband. He strokes his mother hair
and his mouth is on her throat (p. 262). This scene is clearly evocative of passion. After
Paul kisses his mother, the father comes in. The father’s words are suggestive of a jealous
challenge when he says, ‘At your mischief again?’ (p. 262) Then, Paul has a quarrel with
his father. The scene ends with Paul, like Hamlet, says to his mother, ‘Do not sleep with
him, mother’ (p. 264). The fight between Paul and his father can be seen as a result of
jealousy.
The very first word of the novel is ‘The Bottoms"’. The word itself symbolizes the
working class strata. Lawrence starts his novel with a symbolic statement: ‘The Bottoms
succeeded to ‘Hell Row’ (p. 1). The images of the ‘Bottoms’ and the ‘Hell Row’ suggest
contrast between the physical world and the metaphysical one. The verb ‘succeed’
implies movement from the physical world to the metaphysical as a result from the
intellectual, mechanical advancement of industry. Thus, it can be interpreted that it
denotes the lowliness of the locality and the low standard of the life of the colliers. This
descent from position to another is accompanied by descent of character, namely Mrs.
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Morel, from middle class status to a low class. The Bottoms represent the container, while
Mrs. Morel and her husband are the contained. Elizabeth A. Campbell argues that
Lawrence conventionally moves from the general to the specific, from the social to the
personal, but it is noted that Mrs. and Mr. Morels who are the contained within the social
container become containers for contradictory, conflicting values (Campbell 118-119).
Lawrence portrays the life of the colliers almost as a cattle-like existence:
The few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth,
making queer mounds and little black places among the corn the corn fields
and the meadow. (p. 1)
Paul’s hatred for the dominant suffocating mother is embodied through several
symbolic events in the novel, culminating in her actual death at his hands.
The conflict that was discussed above between the container and the contained is
also symbolically dramatized by Paul’s paintings and his explanation of his paintings. He
tells Miriam that she likes his painting because he tries to show ‘the shimmering
protoplasm in the leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of the shape’ (p. 152).
Thus, Paul calls the shape ‘dead crust’ and the content substance ‘the real living’ (p. 152).

2.4.2 Anna’s Doll Scene:

One of the key episodes that symbolize Paul’s hatred for the dominant possessive
woman is the sacrifice of Annie’s doll, Arabella in Paul’s childhood, in the chapter ‘The
Young Life of Paul’. This important scene represents Lawrence’s attitude towards the
dominant woman. It is the first episode in which Paul shows apparently motiveless
violence:
‘Let's make a sacrifice of Arabella,’ he said. ‘Let's burn her.’ She was horrified, yet
rather fascinated. She wanted to see what the boy would do. He made an altar of
bricks, pulled some of the shavings out of Arabella’s body, put the waxen
fragments into the hollow face, poured on a little paraffin, and set the whole thing
alight. He watched with wicked satisfaction the drops of wax melt off the broken
forehead of Arabella, and drop like sweat into the flame. So long as the stupid big
doll burned, he rejoiced in silence. At the end, he poked among the embers with a
stick, fished out the arms and legs, all blackened, and smashed them under stones.
‘There is the sacrifice of Missis Arabella,’ he said. ‘An' I’m glad there is nothing
left of her. (pp. 82-83)

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 This event shows a powerful anger against the mother. The word ‘sacrifice’ reveals
the act of desecration against a figure who should be revered. John Worthen and Andrew
Harrison state:
This is apparent in the building of an altar, the title "Missis Arabella,’ and
the aura of ‘wicked satisfaction’ that emanates from defying a taboo. The
body of the mother is, in fantasy, dismembered and destroyed,
disintegrating in a flash of fiery consuming anger, and liquefied into the
wax and sweat of elemental fluids. When already blackened and ‘dead,’ the
fragments are retrieved with aggressive phallic curiosity by means of a
poking stick, and then further pulverized into nothingness, not ‘with’ stones
but "under" stones, suggesting both a final horror that cannot be looked at
and the gravestones that cover the dead, which in turn have in their origins
and impetus of aggression against the dead. (Storch 142)
In the structure of the narrative, the smashed doll scene is followed by the scene in
which Mr. Morel, in a drunken mood, gave a black eye to his wife. Paul came home from
the Band of Hope, finding his mother with her eye swollen and discolored, was aghast.
Then, William came and was so exasperated that he clenched his fist and was ready to
pounce upon his father. Morel’s blood also boiled and swung round on his son. This is
one of the central scenes in the novel that shows Paul’s opposition to his father and the
children’s support of their mother against their father. This juxtaposition of the significant
episodes is completed by the description of the ash-tree, which adds to the symbolic
significance of the whole scene.
The scene vividly depicts Paul’s sadistic behaviour against the mother. The
presence of Annie in the scene is of symbolic significance. In this scene, Annie, like the
son, strains against the mother’s moral strictures. Her witnessing of the event and her
connivance at Paul’s action implies that anger against the mother is not only limited to
male members, but also extended to female members of the family. We note that violence
is common between father and Paul in the doll-burning scene, but while Mr. Morel’s
violence is directly practiced against the mother, Paul's violent anger is practiced against
Annie's doll.
The doll scene can be read from a different angle. It can symbolize Paul’s
psychological aspect which keeps him intensely and unnaturally tied to his mother. The
doll can also stand for Miriam who has been broken by Paul. The Doll is described as
‘stupid big doll’. If Paul is to establish a healthy relationship with a woman, he must get
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rid of that part of himself. Thus, the doll image in the scene has several shades of
meanings; it stands for the mother’s dominating possessiveness, Miriam’s spiritual
religious morbid love and Paul’s psychological ties to his mother. John Worthen and
Andrew Harrison state:
In the welter of emotions that are the condition of the boy's life, he must
deny himself identification with this creative force and also with his
father as a strong male. The emptiness, vastness, and sense of unknown
menace in the darkness, described above, make apparent his personal
experience of psychic disintegration in the face of such conflicting
pressures. The ambivalence of his response is, however, made plain in the
treatment of Annie’s doll, where Paul is behaving towards the mother in a
way that reflects the father. Beneath the relatively superficial oedipal
structure, we see more fundamental feelings at work. Paul cannot identify
with this liberating masculinity. His attempt to obliterate his mother’s
emotional hold over him is crushed, paralleling the father’s futile act of
aggression. The father’s shame reflects the damaged masculine pride of
father and son.(Storch 143)

2.4.3 The Swing Scene:

The Swing at Willey Farm is symbolic of the 'love-hate' relationship that is
characteristic of ‘Paul-Miriam’ relationship. The swing moves backward and forward,
and, similarly, Paul loves Miriam for one thing but suddenly hates her for another thing.
His hatred for her is also transitory and is soon replaced with love. Thus, the movement of
the swing symbolizes the two extremes of their attitude towards each other i.e. love for
one moment and hate the other moment. D. S. Dalal comments:
In all, their relationship is marked by the alteration between love and hate which
is symbolized by the swing that advances to a point and then moves backward
and so on but it makes no progress. (D.S.Dalal 45)
The swing also expresses their inability to hold on to each other for a very long
time. Miriam refuses to take the first go in the swing. She is always afraid and this shows
her hesitation and shrinking from going deep in her relation with Paul. Miriam insisted
that Paul should have the first go and Paul had it to his great joy and satisfaction. Miriam
is reluctant to go higher with the swing. Her dread at going too high with the swing may
be quite natural to a girl, yet we notice that Lawrence is trying to convey something more

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than it might appear on surface. Miriam's inability to attain a certain height on the swing
is symbolically significant for it shows her inability to attain sexual pleasure. It reveals
her sexual frigidity. On the swing she fails to go higher and could not derive so much of
pleasure. It is perhaps symbolic of Miriam’s sexual inhibition. Similarly, she fails to
attain the sexual heights in her physical relationship with Paul and performs it as a
religious duty. Thus, she fails to provide Paul with the physical fulfillment that he is
desirous of. As the swing is hanging in the air with a rope, so their relationship is not
standing on a stable sound ground but rather it remains platonic and romantic.
The swing symbolically represents the element of duality which is an essential
part of Lawrence’s philosophy. It represents the elements of dualism which is the central
feature of thought and vision in Lawrence. It symbolically illustrates the two waves of
the relationship between the male and the female. The swing symbolizes the duality of the
conflicting forces within the characters and in the world as well.
The swing services as a symbol to reveal the extreme form of duality and the
conflicting opposites in Miriam’s character. Essentially, the real self of Miriam is
characterized by the swing at Willey Farm, because the swing, like her in her relationship
with others, it moves to a point forward and then moves backward and so on but it never
makes any progress. Thus, her inner conflict never allows her to be better than a swing
that oscillates but never makes any progress. She ‘almost fiercely wished she were a man
and yet she hated men at the same time’. (p. 204) Miriam revolts at the thought of human
physical intimacy yet she wants to marry. Another example of her duality is that she
appears to enjoy but she is still in a position where she is likely to suffer. Similarly, the
swing illustrates the alternation in Paul’s character between his love to Miriam and to
Clara on one side and to his mother on the other side. Thus, Miriam-Paul relationship is
marked by an alternation between love and hate.
Paul, like the swing, keeps moving in the changing rainbow of his love
relationships between the spiritual-minded Miriam Leivers and the body-minded Clara
Dawes. He felt dreary and helpless between the two.
Moreover, the swing mirrors Mrs. and Mr. Morel relationship. They live together
yet they are as far apart as icebergs. Gertrude hated Walter Morel yet loved the children
by him. She does not love him yet she does not want her children to misbehave with their
father. Once, Walter and William were about to punch each other. She intervened though
Walter called her ‘a nasty little bitch’ (p. 98) and added that the children were like her.
After the father left, William wanted to know why she did not let him punch his father.
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She was surprised that William wanted to beat his own father. She pointed out that she
‘could not bear it’ and therefore he should ‘never think of it’. (p. 98) The swing
movement forward and backward is an image of Mrs. and Mr. Morels relationship. They
are two opposite poles. He is an instinctive person while she is an intellectual one. ‘She
was too much his opposite’.(p. 51) Mrs. Morel does not want her children to follow their
father yet she wished and prayed that her sons should have the iron constitution of their
father. She wanted Paul to glow quite like his father.
Mrs. Morel, like the swing, moves in her relationship between her sons and her
husband with the same consequence that as the swing movement does not make any
progress, so Mrs. Morel destroyed all lives of her children and husband and causes the
ruin of the whole family. Just as she first troubled and then destroyed Walter Morel ‘in
seeking to make him nobler than he could be’ (p. 51), she played havoc in the lives of
William and Paul by asserting her own standards in the choice of their female
companions. As the sons come into manhood they become like the swing moving forward
but being tied with the mother robe that hold them and force them to go backward as the
robe holds the swing.

2.4.4 The Symbol of the Hens:

In Chapter VIII ‘Lad-and Girl-Love’, Paul and Edgar let a hen pick grains from
their palm. But Miriam, in spite of being assured by Paul that it does not hurt, it just nips
nicely, is too afraid of the hen to let it come near her. The symbolic pecking of the hens at
the hands of Paul and Miriam stands in juxtaposition to the sexually thwarted relationship
that Miriam is going to have with Paul in the later part of the novel. Miriam’s sexual
inhibition is emphasized here in this episode, in spite of Paul’s persistence that it does not
hurt, it only nips when Miriam is afraid to let the hen peck at her hand. This scene
symbolically forecasts the disastrous failure that Miriam is going to face in attaining
sexual fulfillment with Paul.

2.4.5 The Burnt Loaf Scene:

In addition to the smash of the doll scene which symbolizes the son’s hatred
against the possessive, suffocating mother, there is also the event of the burning and
symbolic scene of the loaf of bread in the ‘Strife in Love’ chapter. This event is of
particular symbolic significance. Paul burns the bread because he is busy talking to
Miriam and Beatrice. It is followed by a talk between Paul and his mother, a quarrel

77
between Paul and his father and a conversation between Paul and his mother. This series
of symbolic events are culminated in the death of Gertrude Morel by an overdose of
morphia administered by Paul.
Like the smash-doll scene, the burning of the loaves by Paul symbolically reveals
the emotional configuration of hatred against the bullying mother. Paul burns loaves of
bread that his mother has given him the responsibility of tending as they bake in the oven.
Paul is at his home with Miriam one evening during a phase of their relationship when he
feels most strongly drawn to her and realizes how important it is for him to discuss his
work with her. They are joined by Beatrice, a high-spirited and flirtatious young woman
who teases them both and temporarily monopolizes Paul. She kisses him and disheveled
his hair. Paul enjoys it but begins to think with some regrets that Miriam could not be so
natural; she could never press his body with her two hands. At this stage, Miriam draws
his attention to the fact that the loaves are burning. Beatrice in her flippant and mocking
way aids in covering up his neglect, grating the one badly burned loaf with a nutmeg-
grater and then wrapping the loaf in a damp towel for Paul to hide in the scullery, or small
back kitchen.
When they had all gone, Paul fetched the swathed loaf, unwrapped it, and
surveyed it sadly.(p. 216)
The loaf is referred to as ‘swathed loaf.’ The use of the word ‘swathed’ and the
wrapping of the loaf to enclose it in a small dark space, the pantry, reflect a fantasy of
killing and burying the mother. As with the episode of Annie’s doll, in each of these
versions of the loaf sequence, the son is accompanied by young women of his own
generation, who offer him sensuous pleasure and escape from the mother’s emotional
dominance. The loaves of bread are a suggestive symbol of maternal power, since they
are associated with the fundamental experience of nourishment, the center of the infant-
mother relationship and its inherent conflicts.
The image of the burnt bread has a symbolic significance. It has a double function.
On one hand, it symbolically suggests the offending unphysical love between Paul and
Miriam that is burnt and spoilt by Mrs. Morel. Here their love is compared to a piece of
bread that they grind its flour and mix it with their friendship but it is burnt at the last
stage where it should have been culminated in love. It is worn out, instead. The
complexity of Paul’s emotional situation is reflected in the two distinct young women
who are associated with the scene. Beatrice offers a clear promise of liberation into sexual
fulfillment, while the deep emotional conflicts surround Miriam. It is Miriam who is
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blamed for the burning of the loaves. Although Beatrice is apparently the object of Paul,
it is clear that his deep erotic feelings are more seriously directed towards Miriam.
However, since his erotic feelings towards Miriam are frustrated as a result of complex
guilt in turn related to the mother, he gives rein to sensual impulses with Beatrice, who
represents a condition of amoral emotional freedom.
On the other hand, it also implies the strange fervent burning bond between Paul
and his mother. The burning of the bread incident very symbolically reveals the Oedipus
Complex. John Worthen and Andrew Harrison states:
The close connection between his feelings for Miriam and the loaf-burning
episode, intertwined with awareness of maternal power, is very apparent. As Paul
turns a fresh batch of baking loaves, he appears brutal and distant to Miriam:
There seemed to her something cruel in it, something cruel in the swift way he
pitched the bread out of the tins, caught it up again. (p. 247).
The soft and vulnerable Miriam feels that he does not belong to her world but
rather is a cohort of his mother, doing her harsh work, in which the baking pans become
an implement of psychic control of dependents. Paul himself becomes a mother figure
from whom the tender nursling Miriam desires loving sustenance but feels that he gives it
grudgingly. As they study poetry together later, ‘She was really getting now the food for
her life during the next week,’ while we are told that certain poems ‘nourished her
heart’(p. 248). Paul's final emotional loyalty to his mother makes Miriam experience the
uncertain affections of a harsh mother. In other words, Paul takes on the dominance of his
mother through his bond with her. (Storch 145)
We notice, earlier in the novel, that Beatrice, the woman who is free from the
sensual restraints associated with the mother, exerts her own control over Paul. "As she
and Paul tussle in a teasing, flirtatious way, she pulls his hair and then combs it straight
with her own comb, tilting back his head to comb his moustache also"(243). This tussle
signifies her female command of his maleness, as his moustache stands for masculinity. It
also shows that Paul submitted to Beatrice's command. Paul accepts Beatrice's treatment
of him because it gives him access to her sensuality. The episode is redolent of passion
and overtones of male sexuality: ‘It1's a wicked moustache. 'Postle,’ she said. ‘It's a red
for danger.-Have you got any of those cigarettes?’(p. 243)

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2.5 Conclusion:
To sum up, this chapter of the research work deals with the Symbols and Images
in Sons and Lovers. It foregrounds the symbols and images in this novel. This chapter is
divided into four parts: Introduction, Symbolic Characters, Symbolic Scenes and
Symbolic Nature vs. Industry. The first part of this chapter introduces the main themes,
main and minor characters, the events and the main structural stylistic characteristics used
in the novel, for this help in investigating and analyzing the symbols and images in the
novel.
Then, the second part of the chapter deals with the symbolic significance of the
characters in the novel. Lawrence, in Sons and Lovers, combines the dramatic
presentation of characters in speech and action with a poetic expression of their
consciousness. Almost all the characters in the novel are used as symbols to stand for
some of the leading ideas of Lawrence. Gertrude Morel symbolizes the mother figure in
D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers. Walter Morel symbolizes the father figure in
the novel. Paul Morel, Miriam and Clara are discussed from a symbolic perspective to
show how they are used to convey Lawrence’s ideas and thought. In addition the minor
characters such as William Morel, Anna Morel, Arthur Morel, Louisa Lily (Gipsy), Mr.
Leivers, Mrs. Leivers, Baxter Dawes, Thomas Jordan, Miss Jordan and Fanny are
investigated to show the symbolic roles they played in the novel.
After that, the symbols and images taken from nature and their counterparts in the
industrial world are studied. He draws his images from every aspect and every
phenomenon of nature. Trees, flowers, plants, birds, moors, hills and dales downs and
rivers, different natural phenomena as the sunrise and the sunset , the moon, the sun, the
stars, the different sound, forms, colours of nature all inspire Lawrence to a wealth of
similes and metaphors. We quite often notice images which are drawn from the most
commonplace of nature. His images from nature arrest the attention and excite the
admiration of the readers. They are notable for their imaginative range, their
suggestiveness, their original and illuminating power and perfect precision. In contrast to
the symbols and images taken from nature, there are also images and symbols related to
the industrial world. These industrial symbols and images are evaluated and analyzed.
Ultimately, the symbols and images used in the main symbolic episodes of the
novel are investigated and analyzed. The scenes in Sons and Lovers are presented to
symbolize the individual’s truths of characters in which their inconsistencies make the
readers’ sympathies shift from one character to the other. To illustrate this statement,
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Lawrence presents the scenes that portray the characteristic values of Walter Morel and
his wife in the first half of the novel.

81
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