Page 274 - DENG404_FICTION

Fiction

Notes D.H. Lawrence was aware of Freud’s theory, and 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 mother, and that love often borders on romantic desire. Lawrence writes many
scenes between the two that go beyond the bounds of 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. The older, independent Clara,
especially, is a failed maternal substitute for Paul. In this setup, Baxter Dawes can be seen as
an imposing father figure; his savage beating of Paul, then, can be viewed as Paul’s unconsciously
desired punishment for his guilt. Paul’s eagerness to befriend Dawes once he is ill (which
makes him something like the murdered father) further reveals his guilt over the situation.
But Lawrence adds a twist to the Oedipus complex: Mrs. Morel is saddled with it as well. She
desires both William and Paul in near-romantic ways, and she despises all their girlfriends.
She, too, engages in transference, projecting her dissatisfaction with her marriage onto her
smothering love for her sons. At the end of the novel, Paul takes a major step in releasing
himself from his Oedipus complex. He intentionally overdoses his dying mother with morphia,
an act that reduces her suffering but also subverts his Oedipal fate, since he does not kill his
father, but his mother.

Task Define Oedipus complex.

Bondage

Lawrence discusses bondage, or servitude, in two major ways: social and romantic. Socially,
Mrs. Morel feels bound by her status as a woman and by industrialism. She complains of
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.” Though she joins a women’s group, she must remain
a housewife for life, and thus is jealous of Miriam, who is able to utilize her intellect in more
opportunities. Ironically, Paul feels free in his job at the factory, enjoying the work and the
company of the working-class women, though one gets the sense that he would still rather be
painting.

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. He is preoccupied with the notion of lovers “belonging” to each other,
and his true desire, revealed at the end, is for a woman to claim him forcefully as her own.
He feels the sacrificial Miriam fails in this regard and that Clara always belonged to Baxter
Dawes. It is clear that no woman could ever match the intensity and steadfastness of his
mother’s claim.
Complementing the theme of bondage is the novel’s treatment of jealousy. Mrs. Morel is
constantly jealous of her sons’ lovers, and she masks this jealousy very thinly. Morel, too, is
jealous over his wife’s closer relationships with his sons 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.

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