Sons and Lovers

- D.H.Lawrence

Assistant Professor,
Indo -American College, Cheyyar.
Available @ : 9751660760
E-mail: rajmohan251@gmail.com
 Born : 11 September 1885 Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England
Died : 2 March 1930 (aged 44), France
Occupation : Novelist, poet
Studied at : University of Nottingham
Genre : Modernism

Novels : Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love,

John Thomas and Lady Jane
Short
Stories : Odour of Chrysanthemum, The Virgin and the Gypsy, The
Rocking-Horse Winner

David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire, England where

his father was a miner.

His experience growing up in a coal-mining family provided much of the

inspiration for Sons and Lovers.

Lawrence had many affairs with women in his life, including a

longstanding relationship with Jessie Chambers (on whom the
character of Miriam is based), an engagement to Louie Burrows, and
an eventual elopement to Germany with Frieda Weekly.

Sons and Lovers was written in 1913, and contains many autobiographical details.

Many of Lawrence’s novels were very controversial because of their frank

treatment of sex it is evident in Sons and Lovers.

Lawrence’s fear of negative public opinion may have been one reason for his vague use of
language and the obscure treatment of sex in the novel.
Plot summary
Part I
The refined daughter of a ‘good old burgher family,’ Gertrude
Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner, Walter Morel, at a Christmas dance and
falls into a whirlwind romance characterised by physical passion. But soon after
her marriage to Walter, she realises the difficulties of living off his meagre salary
in a rented house. The couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats to the pub
after work each day. Gradually, Mrs. Morel's affections shift to her sons
beginning with the oldest, William.
As a boy, William is so attached to his mother that he doesn't enjoy
the fair without her. As he grows older, he defends her against his father's
occasional violence. Eventually, he leaves their Nottinghamshire home for a job
in London, where he begins to rise up into the middle class. He is engaged, but he
detests the girl's superficiality. He dies and Mrs. Morel is heartbroken, but when
Paul catches pneumonia she rediscovers her love for her second son.

Part II
Both repulsed by and drawn to his mother, Paul is afraid to
leave her but wants to go out on his own, and needs to experience love.
Gradually, he falls into a relationship with Miriam, a farmer's
daughter who attends his church. The two take long walks and have
intellectual conversations about books but Paul resists, in part because
his mother disapproves. At Miriam's family's farm, Paul meets Clara
Dawes, a young woman with, apparently, feminist sympathies who has
separated from her husband, Baxter.
After pressuring Miriam into a physical relationship,
which he finds unsatisfying, Paul breaks with her as he grows more
intimate with Clara, who is more passionate physically. But even she
cannot hold him and he returns to his mother. When his mother dies
soon after, he is alone.
 Characters List

Gertrude Morel Baxter Dawes Louisa Lily Denys

Paul Morel Mrs. Radford Mr. &Mrs. Leivers

Walter Morel Fanny Miriam Leivers

William Morel John Field Edgar

Annie Morel Jerry Purdy Geoffrey

Arthur Morel Mr. Heaton Maurice

Agatha Beatrice Wyld

Clara Dawes Thomas Jordan

Character Sketch:
Paul Morel
Paul is the protagonist of the novel, and we follow his life from infancy to his early twenties. He is
sensitive, temperamental, artistic (a painter), and unceasingly devoted to his mother. They are inseparable;
he confides everything in her, works and paints to please her, and nurses her as she dies. Paul has ultimately
unsuccessful romances with Miriam Leiver and Clara Dawes, always alternating between great love and
hatred for each of them. His relationship fails with Miriam because she is too sacrificial and virginal to
claim him as hers, whereas it fails with Clara because, it seems, she has never given up on her estranged
husband. However, the major reason behind Paul's break-ups is the long shadow of his mother; no woman
can ever equal her in his eyes, and he can never free himself from her possession.

Miriam Leiver
Miriam is a virginal, religious girl who lives on a farm near the Morels, and she is Paul's
first love. However, their relationship takes ages to move beyond the Platonic and into the
romantic. She loves Paul deeply, but he never wants to marry her and ‘belong’ to her, in his
words.
Rather, he sees her more as a sacrificial, spiritual soul mate and less as a sensual,
romantic lover. Mrs. Morel, who feels threatened by Miriam's intellectuality, always reinforces
his disdain for Miriam.

Clara Dawes
Clara is an older women estranged from her husband, Baxter
Dawes. Unlike the intellectual Miriam, Clara seems to represent the
body. Her sensuality attracts Paul, as does her elusiveness and
mysteriousness. However, she loses this elusiveness as their affair
continues, and Paul feels she has always ‘belonged’ to her husband.
Character Sketch...

Walter Morel William Morel

Morel, the coal-mining head of the William, Mrs. Morel's ‘knight,’ is her favourite
family, was once a humorous, lively man, son. But when he moves away, she disapproves of
but over time he has become a cruel, selfish his new lifestyle and new girlfriends, especially Lily.
alcoholic. His family, especially Mrs. Morel, His death plunges Mrs. Morel into grief.
despises him, and Paul frequently
entertains fantasies of his father's dying.

Baxter Dawes
Annie Morel Dawes, a burly, handsome man, is estranged
Annie is the Morel's only daughter. from his wife, Clara Dawes, because of his
She is a school teacher who leaves home infidelity. He resents Paul for taking Clara, but
fairly early. over time the men become friends.

Arthur Morel
Arthur, the youngest Morel son, is exceptionally
handsome, but also immature. He rashly enters the military,
and it takes a while until he gets out. He marries Beatrice.

Louisa Lily Denys

Lily, William's girlfriend, is materialistic and vain.
Her condescending behaviour around the Morels irritates
William, and she soon forgets about him after his death.
Lawrence's finest achievement:
Sons and Lovers (1913) novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence,
originally published by B.W. Huebsch Publishers. The Modern Library
placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. While
the novel initially received a lukewarm critical reception, along with
allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a regarded as Lawrence's
finest achievement.
The third published novel of D. H. Lawrence, taken by many to be his
earliest masterpiece, tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and budding
artist.

Lawrence began working on the novel in the period of his mother's

illness, and often expresses this sense of his mother's wasted life
through his female protagonist Gertrude Morel.

Letters written around the time of its development clearly

demonstrate the admiration he felt for his mother – viewing
her as a 'clever, ironical, delicately moulded woman' — and
her apparently unfortunate marriage to his coal miner
father, a man of 'sanguine temperament' and instability. He
believed that his mother had married below her class
status.
Lawrence rewrote the work four times until he
was happy with it. Although before publication
the work was usually titled Paul Morel,
Lawrence finally settled on Sons and Lovers.
 Themes

Men and Masculinity

Women and Feminity Art and Culture

Technology and Modernisation

Drugs and Alcohol

Family Pride

Love
Oedipus complex
D.H. Lawrence was aware of Freud's theory , Sons and
Lovers famously uses the Oedipus complex as its base for
exploring Paul's relationship with his mother.

Paul is hopelessly devoted to his Lawrence writes many scenes between

mother, and that love often the two that go beyond the bounds of
borders on romantic desire. conventional mother-son love.

Completing the Oedipal equation, Paul murderously hates

his father and often fantasizes about his death.

Paul assuages his guilty, incestuous feelings by transferring

them elsewhere, and the greatest receivers are Miriam and
Clara (note that transference is another Freudian term).

However, Paul cannot love either

woman nearly as much as he does his
mother, though he does not always
realize that this is an impediment to his
romantic life.
Twist to the Oedipus complex

Lawrence adds a twist She desires both William She, too, engages in transference,
to the Oedipus and Paul in near- projecting her dissatisfaction
complex: Mrs. Morel romantic ways, and she with her marriage onto her
is saddled with it as despises all their smothering love for her sons.
well. girlfriends.

He intentionally overdoses his dying mother with

At the end of the novel, Paul
morphia, an act that reduces her suffering but also
takes a major step in releasing
subverts his Oedipal fate, since he does not kill his
himself from his Oedipus
complex. father, but his mother.
Bondage
Lawrence discusses bondage, Mrs. Morel feels bound by her status as a
or servitude, in two major woman and by industrialism. She complains of
ways: social and romantic. feeling ‘buried alive,' a logical lament for
someone married to a miner, and even the
children feel they are in a ‘tight place of anxiety.’

Romantic bondage is given far more emphasis in the

novel. Paul (and William, to a somewhat lesser extent)
feels bound to his mother, and cannot imagine ever
abandoning her or even marrying anyone else.
Treatment of jealousy
Complementing the Mrs. Morel is constantly Morel, too, is jealous over
theme of bondage is the jealous of her sons' his wife's closer
novel's treatment of lovers, and she masks relationships with his sons
jealousy. this jealousy very thinly. and over their successes.

Paul frequently rouses jealousy in Miriam with his flirtations with Agatha Leiver
and Beatrice, and Dawes is violently jealous of Paul's romance with Clara.

Contradictions and oppositions

Lawrence demonstrates how Paul vacillates between hatred and
contradictions emerge so love for all the women in his life,
easily in human nature, including his mother at times.
especially with love and
hate.
Lawrence also uses the opposition of the
body and mind to expose the contradictory
nature of desire; frequently, characters pair
up with someone who is quite unlike them.
 Nature and flowers
Sons and Lovers has a great deal of
description of the natural environment. Often,
the weather and environment reflect the
characters' emotions through the literary
technique of pathetic fallacy.

Lawrence's characters also experience

moments of transcendence while alone in
nature, much as the Romantics did. More
frequently, characters bond deeply while in
nature. Lawrence uses flowers throughout the
novel to symbolize these deep connections.
However, flowers are sometimes agents of
division, as when Paul is repulsed by Miriam's
fawning behaviour towards the daffodil.
"Sons and Lovers" as a Psychological Novel

Sons and Lovers belongs to the category of psychological fiction.

The psychology of the characters and the typical problems, emanating from a
particular psychological pattern form the staple of a psychological novel.
This psychological novel has been ushered in by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

The psycho-analytical novel, as the very name implies, lays stress on psycho-analysis.
The novelist becomes a psychoanalyst and he brings into focus, the subtle and
intricate psychological cross currents.
The analysis of the psychology of the characters is what constitutes the motif of a
psychoanalytical fiction.

The novelist goes deeper and deeper into the innermost crevice of the
psychology of his characters and he brings out or externalizes the subtle
psychological framework of the characters.
It was undoubtedly the great creative fecundity of D. H. Lawrence, which
was responsible for the intention of psychological novel.

The psychological theories and concepts enunciated

and disseminated by Freud and Jung revolutionized
the world of conventional human thought.
Stream of consciousness
The psychological novelist including D. H Lawrence has resorted to
a new technical device has rendered immense help to the novelists
in their bid to lay bare the psyche or the soul of the characters.

This ‘stream of consciousness’ technique The plot is rescued from the

has made possible for the novelists who bondage of time. The action does
experimenting on time and place. not proceed forward chronologically.

The novelist very often flouts the norm and propriety with
regard to the logical consistency of time. But this resultant
incoherence or inconsistency of structure has been more
than compensated by the exquisite delineation of subtle
psychology of the characters.

In order to suit the artistic purpose, the novelists

make the action move forward and backward.

In this context, the pertinent observation of David

Daichess merited: “The stream of consciousness
technique is a means of escape from the tyranny
of the time dimension.”
 Lawrence’s style:
Lawrence’s bold originality is exemplified by his style,
which is impressionistic. His style is more poetic than the
prosaic style of others. He has used plants of vivid images and
symbols.

Long before the efflorescence of ‘the stream of consciousness novels,

Lawrence foreshadowed the style of consciousness novels; Lawrence
foreshadowed these style of this type novels. Lames Joyce and Virginia
Woolf perfected it with their mature artistry.

Impressionistic experiment

Lawrence was primarily concerned with the He has displayed rare artistic
inner mind of his characters. excellence in vivifying the most
It was the interior and not the exterior that complex and complicated
attracted him. thoughts of the characters
He sought to portray the ‘shimmeriness of figuring in his novel.
life’ and he considered this to be the essence.

This impressionistic style helped him

In order to suit his greatly to reveal the inner life of his
purpose, Lawrence characters. It helped him to transgress
has had resource to a
the bounds of language and therefore
completely new style,
known as his characters have become capable of
impressionistic giving vent to their complicated feelings
experiment. and emotion.
D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers – Traditional The ‘Oedipus Complex’ constitutes a
Novel or Experimental Novel? psychological problem and this forms the
nucleus of the novel, Sons and Lovers.
D. H. Lawrence has displayed a bold
originality of his genius and his consummate
artistic finesse in Sons and Lovers.

With his pioneering artistry, he deviated from the

traditional patter of fiction and tried to break fresh His sharp or distinct departure from
grounds. the conventional type of fiction is
evident in the theme of this novel and
His originality paved the way for the in the presentation of the theme.
emergence of a new literary genre, unknown
The primary concern of the conventional 19th
to nineteenth century literary circle.
century novelists was with the story-telling aspect.
Lawrence gave due emphasis
Lawrence had a rare gift to the story-telling aspect.
psychological insight
Hence, the novel is more Lawrence has deliberately flouted the
experimental than traditional and rule concerning the unity of time.
Lawrence’s genius flashed with
rare originality in Sons and Lovers. But at the same time he was very much
conscious of his genius who was apt to
strike a new note, hitherto unexplored
and untouched by the so-called
conventional novelists. Lawrence did not
sell himself as a traditional raconteur.
Autobiographical element in the novel
D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers Examined the Oedipus complex or Mother-
Fixation theory of Freud – Sons and Lovers is the masterpiece of D.H. Lawrence
which may be said the priest psychoanalytical novel in English.
The most
striking
The roots of Sons and Lovers are His childhood coal-mining town of Eastwood was
clearly located in Lawrence’s life. changed, with a sardonic twist, to Bestwood. feature of
Lawrence’s
Walter Morel was modelled on
characters is
Lydia became Gertrude Morel, the
Lawrence’s hard-drinking, intellectually stifled, unhappy mother who the
irresponsible collier father, Arthur. lives through her sons. resemblance
they bear to
The death by erysipelas of one of Both Ernest and his fictional counterpart, their creator.
Lawrence’s elder brothers, Ernest William, were engaged to London Thus, the
depicted as William. stenographers. protagonist
Paul morel in
Sons and
Jessie Chambers, a neighbour with Lovers is
whom Lawrence developed an cruelly a
intense friendship, and who would
become Miriam Leiver in the novel.
projection of
Lawrence
himself. The
scene of the
Lawrence’s future wife, Frieda von Richtofen, novel is set in
partially inspired the portrait of Clara Dawes. the mining
 Considered Lawrence’s first
masterpiece, most critics of
the day praised Sons and
Lovers for its authentic
treatment of industrial life
and sexuality.

There is evidence that

Lawrence was aware of
Sigmund Freud’s early theories on
sexuality, and Sons and Lovers deeply
explores and revises of one of Freud’s
major theories, the Oedipus complex.
(Lawrence would go on to write more
works on psychoanalysis in the 1920s.)

Still, the book received some criticism

from those who felt the author had gone Compared to his later works,
too far in his description of Paul’s however, such as The Rainbow,
confused sexuality. Women in Love, and Lady
Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and
Lovers seems quite modest.
 Oedipus complex: The idea of the Oedipus complex is derived from the legend
of King Oedipus of Thebes in ancient Greece. Oedipus unknowingly killed his
father and married his mother. He begot two sons and two daughters from her.
Freud, a German psychologist, used the term Oedipus complex to signify the
manifestation of the sexual desire of the child for the parent of the opposite sex.

Webster’s Dictionary explains the Oedipus complex as “the unconscious tendency

of a child to be attached to the parent of the opposite sex and hostile towards the
other parent: its persistence in adult life results in neurotic disorders.”

Sigmund Freud, was an Austrian neurologist the father of

psychoanalysis (a clinical method for treating
psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a
psychoanalyst), was a physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist
and influential thinker of the early twentieth century. Working
initially in close collaboration with Joseph Breuer, Freud
elaborated the theory that the mind is a complex energy-
system, the structural investigation of which is the proper
province of psychology.

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who

founded analytical psychology. His work has been influential
in psychiatry , in anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and
religious studies. He came to the attention of the Viennese founder
of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. The two men conducted a lengthy
correspondence and collaborated on an initially joint vision of human
psychology. He created some of the best known psychological concepts,
including synchronicity, archetypal phenomena, the collective unconscious,
the psychological complex, and extraversion and introversion.
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