Short Notes of Sons and Lovers

Character of Paul

 The second son, and the third child, of Mr. And Mrs. Morel.  He shows himself to be a very promising lad.  He is the hero of the novel.  The portrait of this man is a kind of self-portrait drawn by Lawrence, because Lawrence had himself in mind while portraying this character.  The most outstanding trait of the character of this young man is his overwhelming love for his mother.  In fact, he suffers from what is known as “mother-fixation”.  His mother has a possessive attitude towards him, and he willingly submits to that attitude  because he finds her to be indispensable to his life and his happiness.  This mother-son relationship is one of the most important themes of the novel.  Paul falls in love with a girl called Miriam, but the love affair somehow does not lead to a marriage between them.  He also falls in love with a married woman by the name of Clara who fully responds to his love.  But nothing comes to this love affair also.  At the death of his mother,. Paul feels heart-broken.  However, he picks up courage and makes up his mind to face the ordeals of life with fortitude.

Q : Paul’s love affair with Miriam

            At the age of fifteen, Paul fell in love with a girl, named Miriam, who was at that time fourteen.  Though scornful towards him in the beginning, Miriam too began afterwards to respond to his love.  In course of time, they became very intimate with each other.  However, Paul’s mother did not like Miriam.  His mother was of the view that Miriam would not suit him as a wife.  But Paul continued his intimacy with the girl, and this friendship continued for several years.  During this period of intimate friendship, Paul tried to establish a sexual relationship with Miriam.  But Miriam was, by nature and by upbringing, a puritan.  She was very particular about preserving her virginity.  Paul started putting pressure upon her to agree to a sexual relationship with him.  Ultimately Miriam surrendered to him, but she did so most unwillingly.  In fact, she at this time behaved as if she had performed an act of great self-sacrifice.  Yielding to Paul’s passion was like an act of self-immolation of her.  Paul felt repelled by this attitude.  The sexual relationship continued for some time though both  he and she began to feel dissatisfied with each other.

Paul, therefore, terminated his sexual relationship with Miriam altogether, though he continued meeting her occasionally or writing a letter to her now and then.  Thus the love affair proved a failure.  Paul had proposed marriage of Miriam on one occasion, but she had said that they were too young for marriage.  This had been a flimsy excuse because Paul was at this time twenty-four and Miriam was twenty-three.  One reason for the failure of this love affair was the temperamental disparity between the two, but a stronger reason was the opposition of Paul’s mother to Miriam.

 First chapter of Sons & Lovers

 This first chapter of the novel is very important as it gives us a true and very illuminating introduction to the whole book.  We are introduced to the main characters and  before that we get  a brief but an authoritative sketch of the setting or the background of  these persons.  The very first sentence of the novel – “the Bottoms” succeeded to ‘Hell Row’ is really significant. The old order was changing.

Then we have the chief theme of the novel in this chapter – the antagonism between the two opposites, the husband and wife.Again in this very chapter we find the justification for the typical name of this novel- - ‘Sons and Lovers;.  William, her first child came when her faith in life was absolutely shaken and her own bitterness of disappoint was hardest to bear.  So all the love and affection of a disappointed soul flowed towards the lovely child.  Mrs. Morel loved him passionately as Mr. Morel became more and more an outsider to her.  And gradually we find that when his sons grow up she sees them as her lovers.  After the tragic death of William she had to be strongly attached to Paul, her second son.

Lastly, it must be noted that Sons & Lovers is largely an autobiographical novel and this first chapter is quite significant in this respect.  In fact Bestwood stands for  Lawrence’s native village Eastwood and Mr. And Mrs. Morel very closely resemble his parents with their sad and disillusioned married life.

Q         Critically comment on the chapter named passion.

Ans :    This chapter has been very aptly titled – ‘passion, as it almost entirely deals with Paul’s supreme physical urge and passion for Clara and their physical consummation.  We may note that the chapter comes in the nature of dramatic relief after the tense and constricted atmosphere in which we found Paul and Miriam as lovers.  Here we find Paul and Clara giving themselves up to each other freely in gay abandon without any sense of guilt or mental reservation.  This sense of freedom and feeling of ecstasy in the relationship between  man and woman is one  of the most cherished values that has been boldly presented in Lawrence’s various works.

            The other thing that has been very aptly suggested in this chapter is that Paul in his quest for physical and emotional fulfillment has gone to the other extreme.  He has forgotten that man cannot live by passion alone.  As spiritualism or romanticism alone cannot satisfy so also all-powerful passion is defective by itself.  Sooner or later he is bound to tire of this all-consuming relationship with Clara.  The mother’s heart of Mrs. Morel has realized it at the very beginning when she frankly told Paul :  “ But you’ll tire of her, my son; you know you will.”

Critical comments on the chapter the Release?

  The title of the chapter is very apt and suggestive.  We find Mrs. Morel at last released from the pangs and miseries of life.  It also brings about Paul’s release from his very strong emotional bondage to his mother.  In the end we also find Paul’s final release from his ties with Miriam and Clara.Paul and Mrs. Morel’s relationship in the last phase is rather uneasy and full of pathos.  Paul suffered from a sense of guilt, as he did not keep a close watch on his mother’s health.  He came to know about her tumour only when she came to stay with Annie.  Paul’s restlessness and distraction has been very deftly revealed to us.  The last days of Mrs. Morel and her death scene have been most powerfully depicted, unfolding the very depth and poignancy of the situation.  Paul’s administering of a heavy dose of morphia to her to bring about an end  to all her excruciating pangs and sufferings reveals to us his supreme and uncommon love and affection for his mother.

At the end of the chapter we find reconciliation between Clara and Baxter.  In fact it is Paul who restores her to her husband.  He knew Clara could be of no help to him to fill in the void.  So he parts company with her and gives her back to her legal husband.

Critically comment on the Chapter named ‘Derelict’

Ans At the beginning of the chapter we find Paul, the hero of the novel, in an appalling mood of dejection and depression. A sense of vacuum overwhelms him almost completely. This is but natural.  His mother was sheet anchor of his life – she was the only thing  that held him up.  He even rejected Miriam’s sincere offer to sacrifice herself to save him from doom and destruction.  It was the last hold for him and it was gone.  He gravitated towards death and darkness.

  In his famous letter to Edward Garnett Lawrence wrote about Paul – “He is left in the end knocked of everything with the “drift towards death”.  But in the end of the book we find him turning sharply and walking “towards  the city’s gold phosphorescence”, instead of drifting towards death.  In spite of this contradiction we feel Lawrence must have changed his mind to end his great novel on a bright note of hope and optimism.

Q : Sons and Lovers is a transitional novel.

Ans :    Sons and Lovers is a great transitional novel : it begins as a traditional nineteenth century novel and ends as a modern one.  The conventional elements are more prominent in the early part of the novel.  The family life of the Morels and the early environment of domestic strife in which the children grew has been described more or less in the conventional manner of orderly sequence of events.  Though the main interest of the novelist is with the emotional life of Paul, yet each of the characters has been vividly described externally.  In the traditional manner, we are told of their appearance, their ways and their habits.  The novel again exhibits traditionalism in the author acting  as an omniscient personality and summarizing the action and directing our attention to its significance. Though, he does not try to impose upon the reader his own philosophy and morality.  In spite of this characteristic feature of the traditional novel, the novel strikes a modern note, in it’s being largely free from intrusive moral didacticism.  Like a modern novel, it rejects surface reality which is often deceptive and misleading, it refuses to view characters from outside, instead it seeks to get inside them, to know their inner problem, to comprehend the quality of their feelings and experiences to repeat what goes on in their minds.  One of the most important modern elements imbibed in Sons & Lovers is the free and frank treatment of sex.  The Oedipus complex Imbroglio dealt within the book, in which both the mother and the son are involved not only depicts the findings of the psychoanalysis  but also the innumerable novels of the past which have dealt explicitly with the same basic situations.

 Sons and Lovers is a social novel

The early part of the novel which deals with the life of the Morels is remarkable for its vividness and realism.  Lawrence  shows unusual insight in bringing to life scenes from the life of the common people;  the scenes of love and quarrel of the Morels.  The excitement caused by the fair in the small village of Bestwood; of the children’s games around the solitary lamp post; of Morel washing himself in the scullery or mending shoes or his pit bottles; of Mrs. Morel wandering in the garden at night; of Paul receiving his father’s wages are realized with remarkable vividness.  In brief episodes closely related  to the story of the Morel family we learn much about the social and economic  background of miners lives in for instance, the scenes depicting the Friday evening division of the pay in the pub or home by a senior butty and the bustling activity of the market shopping and baking on this Friday pay-night.  We observe the close bonds between the miners resulting from their close working relationship, the bread winning role of the father, the matriarchal authority of the mother.  We see, too the continuing menial role of women, typified in the lace-making episode at Clara’s home where the exploitation of female labour encourages questioning women like Clara to join the new Woman’s Movement.

The Oedipus Complex in the Novel :

Ans      Oedipus Complex is “a state in which a person shows excessive affection for the parent opposite in sex to him or herself and a corresponding distaste  for his other parent.”  D.H. Lawrence himself was a victim of a deep-rooted  Oedipus Complex.  His mother Lydia Lawrence had a very strong hold on him, and he too treated his mother like a lover.  His orientation into life and literature also depended on the inspiration she gave him.  Lawrence himself confessed to Jessie after the death of his mother, saying,” I’ve loved her like a lover that’s why I could never love you.”  Similarly, in Sons and Lovers, Gertrude  Morel, disillusioned with her husband Walter Morel gradually casts him off and takes her two sons William and Paul as husband-substitutes one after the other, thus wrecking their emotional life.  The mother-fixation becomes so deep rooted in the sons that it becomes  difficult for them to develop a normal healthy relationship with other women.

CHARACTERS :       WILLIAM MOREL

Ans : William Morel is the eldest  son of Walter and Gertrude.  He is  in some ways an early version of Paul.  What Paul faces after William’s  death is a repeat of what William had already gone through and paid for with his life.  He represents the hard working boy from the provinces who ‘makes good’ in London. Our first introduction to William is  of a seven year old very active lad, fair-haired spotted with the touch of the Norweign about him”.  He is mother’s blue-eyed boy and bubbling with excitement, eager to experience the joys of life.  At school, he is a topper who secures several medals and prizes.  At thirteen, he finds a job in the co-operative office and supports himself through a night school.

 William being a rival challenger of his mother’s love gets the worst of his father.  He is repelled by his father’s gross animalist and the coarseness of his manners.: As a child, William hero-worships the mother who appears to be so  lady-like, tender and fascinating.  He expresses his devotion in so many ways as a child.  He rejects an offer to go on a trip to the Mediterranean so that he may visit his mother instead. The damaging effect of Oedipus complex becomes evident when  William grows up and there is need to establish outside relationships.  He is so enmeshed in his mother’s love and her clingy personality that he cannot break loose those ties and realize his own  individuality.  She transferred all her affections from her husband to William quite early in life and took a strong hold over his emotions.  He does fall in love with Gypsy and really wants to marry her.  But since his mother doesn’t  approve of her, he is foolish enough to let go of her.  It is a painful realization that his life is rooted in his mother and he cannot wrench himself away from her.  He contracts pneumonia in London and dies and one is left feeling that he falls a victim to his mother’s claustrophobic love.  The mother’s love that should be one’s strength has become William’s cross.  He is weakened by it and is unable to strike out on his own and establish his manhood.

MIRIAM :      Miriam is said to be the novelist’s beloved Jessica Chambers.

Miriam was a sensitive girl who was repelled by the grossness of her father and brutishness of her brothers.  This biased her again all the men and she felt inhibited to enter into any outside relationship.  Unnecessary bulling and belittling by her brothers made her withdraw into her shell and become an introvert.

Her isolation from the mundane world makes her “romantic in her soul”.  This makes her live at such an intense level that she cannot identify herself with commonplace things.Her ambitious nature does not allow her to ‘be scooped up among the common fry.’  So her claim to distinction is going to be through learning.  That is what draws her to Paul initially – his knowledge of painting and algebra. Her strict upbringing breeds extreme religiosity in Miriam.  She is like those women who “ treasure religion inside them, breath it in their nostrils.”  So this heightens her sense of mystical and she starts viewing everything through a spiritual aura.  Her love for nature is also mystical.  The beauty of flowers, the glorious colours of sun-set, the splendour of the rising sun all send her into raptures which is akin to religious ecstasy.The love of the spiritual makes her shrink from the physical contact.  Her religious fervour impedes the natural flow of her emotions and  causes sexual inhibition that threatens her natural  relationship with others. She is not a companion.  She refuses to melt and blend with her lover.  She seems to be standing on edge and pulling Paul towards her.

WALTER MOREL :  Walter Morel is the father figure in the novel ‘Sons and Lovers.  He represents the common people full of physical life who rejoice in the sensuousness of  life and nature.  His uninhibited delight in singing, dancing and drinking is a celebration of life.The early impression one gets of him is that of a man who is bubbly, riding the crest of life.  The dialect that he speaks is associated with persons of vitality in Lawrence. He is adept at manual work and is the happiest 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.

It was unfortunate that Walter married a woman who created an emotional vacuum in her life and that of her family by denying his personality.  He is just not included in the family circle.  So the resulting behaviour is that of a wounded animal.  He is harsh, quarrelsome, noisy and out to be nasty.  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.

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.

Gertrude Morel :         She is 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 it.  Physically, she is short-stature, frail but her defiant blue eyes betray a proud, unyielding temper which proves her family’s undoing.

Gertrude married Walter knowing fully well that he is a miner.  She cannot forgive him for a little lie regarding his financial standing.  Her resentment is so harsh that she casts off her husband and involves herself totally with her children.  She is hardened and does not realize that a miner after a hard day’s  needs love and care at home.

  The love that Gertrude should have spread evenly in the house centers around her children only 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.  The reality is that she has used her sons as “husband-substitutes’ and destroyed their capacity to establish any outside relationship.   She labours hard all her life, does not even let go of her sons when they are grown up and is overcome by a fatal disease.  Her pain due to cancer is unbearable.  Paul is unnerved by her suffering and misery and gives her an overdoes of morphia to end her life.  This pathetic end does generate some sympathy in our hearts.  But one is troubled by the same question which plagued Paul :     “She’s dead.  What was it all for – her struggle?”.

CLARA DAWES :

Clara is not a real-life creation like other characters of the novel.  She has been created as a foil to Miriam so that a diametrically opposite viewpoint could be presented.  She is the other side of the coin.  Clara is body where Miriam is soul.

Since she is the tempting Eve and  is present in the novel to depict the necessity of sex-angle, she has all the assets of a bewitching female.  Paul is attracted by her w

hite, honey like skin, full mouth,  the firmness and softness of her upright body.  Her physical appeal is  repeatedly stressed in the book.

Clara is the modern, emancipated woman who has the courage to walk out of an unhappy marriage.  She supports herself by working.  She even identifies  herself with the Suffragette movement thinking that this is the way to women’s salvation.  She is still simple, affectionate and unambitious girl.  She lives like an ordinary being, not cluttered by any conflicting emotions or demanding intellect.

She is the embodiment of flesh so she is gifted with passion and sensuousness.  That is why Paul finds her provocative.  Their love scenes emanate a sense of freedom, spontaneity, relaxation and gaiety.  That is because Clara is pure passion, untarnished by any reservations, any false inhibitions.Since Paul is a man of intellect, an artist in  need of mental compatibility, a physical person like Clara fails to hold him.  She cannot satisfy his soul.  Such a relationship can only be superficial, a trivial satiation of momentary needs.  After that, there seems to be anxiety and uncertainty.  So she feels that Paul is paltry, lacks substance and not an alternative to her life with her husband.  So Clara has her well defined  role to play  in the scheme of the novel and is appropriately moulded according to that.

BAXTER DAWES :  Baxter Dawes is one of the minor characters in the novel.  He is physically quite and good but his behaviour is repulsive.  He uses dialect like Walter Morel but like him his speech doesn’t have any tenderness.  It is coarse and Vulgar.  It is laced with swear words.  He calls Paul little swine; ‘belittle devil’.  He is quarrelsome and rough. Baxter is the dark, cowardly force of life which must sully all that it encounters.  He hates Paul also not only because he is rightly jealous but because he knows he is inferior to him in status and intellect.  Himself lacking the culture that Paul possesses, he spouts his hatred in physical assault.

Despite a negative beginning, Baxter grows in stature towards the end.  He is not an unmitigated villain.  Those are his rough edges only. Beneath resides a human heart, which is capable  of forgiving and understanding.  Clara already realizes that she prefers him as a lover.

He displays a rare generosity in accepting Clara back and reveals his human side when he requests Clara to stay with him and asks ‘do you want me again?’  This is his moment of elevation – from a brute to a loyal husband.

Sons & Lovers is a Psychological Novel :      Sons and Lovers is largely a psychological novel.  In fact, we have in this novel an unusual combination of outward  events and

inward action.  Generally, we have psychological novels which are deficient in external  action;  or we have novels of action, having hardly any psychological content.  In this novel,  on the other hand, we get a balance between these two elements.  The inner life of the various characters has vividly been described by the author.  Mrs. Morel’s thoughts, Miriam’s thoughts, Clara’s thoughts and, above all, Paul’s thoughts at various stages in the story have been described in considerable detail.  All these leading characters in the novel are always brooding over their problems.  They are always at war with themselves and with others.  There are any number of passages in the novel depicting the states of the minds of these persons.  The others – Mr. Morel, Annie, Arthur, Beatrice, etc- have hardly any inner life.  They are extroverts, taking things as they come.  The passages of psychological analysis greatly enhance the interest of the novel,  and lend a certain weight and solidity to it.  But it has to be pointed out that the psychological  passages appeal only to the thoughtful readers, or to readers who have a reflective turn of mind.  Most novel-readers are interest only in outward action, and therefore they tend to skip the psychological passages.

The domination of mother’s affection :       Sons and Lovers is probably still the best-known of Lawrence’s novels, and it is certainly a great achievement.  The earlier part of his novel is largely a circumstantial record of the authori’s own early life and environment.  It indicates the source of the emotional fixation between himself and his mother, a fixation which was subsequently to make him a man divided against himself, and unable to adjust himself in a fully integrated love-experience.  The novel tells how a family of  boys are so dominated by their mother’s affection that, when they grow up, they cannot love, but only lust.  That was the fate which the author had narrowly escaped.  Nevertheless the interest in the Morel family, especially in Paul the artist, is admirably sustained;  and this achievement is all the more remarkable because, though the characters are  always doing or saying something, our attention is fascinated by their underlying thoughts.  However, the novel is too much of a confession.  Lawrence has not yet learnt  to efface himself in the many-sided spectacle of human nature.  In fact, he never learnt that.

Q : Lawrence’s Synopsis of Sons and Lovers?

            Letter to Garnett ?

Ans : He went on to give Garnett his well-known synopsis of the novel:

            It follows this idea: a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life.  She has had a passion for her husband, so the children are born of passion, and have heaps of vitality.  But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers – first the eldest, then the second.  These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother – urged on and on.  But when they come to manhood, they can’t love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives, and holds them.  As soon as the young men come into contact with women, there’s split.

The split kills him (William), because he doesn’t know where he is.  The next son gets a woman who fights for his soul – fights his mother.  The son loves the mother – all the sons hate, and are jealous of, the father.  The battle goes on between the mother and the girl, with the son as object.  The mother gradually proves stronger, because of the tie of blood.  The son decided to leave his soul in his mother’s hands, and, like his elder brother, goes for passion.  He gets passion.  Then the split begins to tell again.  But, almost unconsciously, the mother realizes what is the matter, and begins to die.  The son casts off his mistress, attends to his mother dying.  He is left in the end naked of everything, with the drift towards death.

Q : Describe the family background of Mrs. Morel ?

Ans :    Gertrude’s Parentage :           

            Gertrude Coppard came of a good old burgher’ family.  The family was well-known, though it had fallen on evildays.  Gertrude’s grandfather had gone bankrupt in the lace-market in Nottingham when so many lace-manufacturers were financially ruined in that city.  Her father, George Coppard, was an engineer, and a large, handsome, haughty man, proud of his fair skin and blue eyes, but still more proud  of his integrity.  He became foreman of the engineers in the dockyard at Sheerness.  Gertrude resembled her mother in her small build.  But her temper, which was proud any unyielding, she had got from her father’s  family.  Gertrude was the second daughter of her parents.  She loved her mother more than anyone elese; but she hated her father’s bullying manner towards here mother who was a gentle, humorous lady with a kind heart.

Q : Comment on the incident in which the hen pecks corm from the palm of Miriam.

Ans      The scene describing a hen’s pecking at Paul’s palms for eating corn is so skillfully done that while it playfully describes a country-side activity of feeding a hen, it conveys the animal dynamics that is the urgent phase of the phallic power in the boy and the girl.  This symbolic act of feeding a hen is one thing for a critical and troubled boy and mother for a timid and troubled girl.  This scene also presages their inability to have  satisfying sexual experience.  This is yet another  instance of Lawrence’s successful objectification of the emotions he wishes to project.  ‘ She seemed to be in some way resentful to the body’ (p.159).  The whole of this episode carries rather disturbing Freudian undertones.

Q : Comment on Mrs. Morel/Willian relationship?

Ans                  William, so brilliant and distinguished, and who promised to do so well, falls  a victim to the possessive love of his mother.  Mrs. Morel disgusted with her husband turns  to her first born for emotional fulfillment.  William, too, lover her dearly, for she is so lady-like, so tender and fascinating.  In the fair, even though a mere child, he buys presents for her with his scanty allowance, and his enjoyment of the fair is much heightened by her presence in it for sometime.  He cannot enjoy the fair after she has left it, and is wretched and miserable.

However, this mother-love ruins the happiness of his life and ultimately kills him.  His mother makes him a husband-substitute, not physically, but emotionally and spiritually.  She wants to poised his soul and does not permit him to form an alliance with any other woman, for she is afraid that such an alliance would weaken her hold on him.  It is for this reason  that she is jealous of every girl with whom he has any contacts.  She does not like his relationship with ‘Gyp’ for this very reason, and urged on by her, he insults his sweet-heart in his.

Q : Why does the holiday at Mabletherope end in disaster ?

Ans :    When Paul  reaches the age of twenty, the family decides to spend a holiday be sea at Mablethorpe.  Paul along with Miriam and other friends joins his family in the outing with a great spirit of adventure.  Mrs. Morel’s dislike for Miriam further increases.  Paul, too, starts dislikes her as she does not respons to his advances.  He kisses her several times as they walk together by the sea under the full moon.  But she remains unresponsive.  The holiday ends in disaster for Miriam as Paul, for some perverse reason, holds Miriam responsible for this feelings of guilt and unhappiness.

Q : Role played by Jessie Chamber ?

Ans      Lawrence’s mother on one occasion took Lawrence  to a farm, situated at a distance of a couple of miles from their house in the village.   One of them was a girl Jessie, who  was fourteen years old at the time.   Thereafter, Lawrence became a regular visitor at the farm, and soon he became quite intimate with Jessie.   Jessie has its counterpart  in Paul’s attachment  to Miriam, a daughter of the Leivers family.   Miriam possesses many of the traits of the character of Jessie.  A conflict  soon developed between Lawrence and Jessie because Jessie was not inclined towards a sexual relationship0 with Lawrence without marriage.  In the same way conflict develops between Paul and Miriam because Miriam is puritanical by  temperament and does not eaily yield to Paul’s sexual desire for her.  Lawrence on one occasion wrote to Jessie: “ This is exactly what Paul tells Miriam in the novel.