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Fiction

Notes of her son will oust her: “She’s not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in
him. She wants to absorb him.” Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable
of committing himself in either direction: “Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?... And
why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam
caused his mother suffering, then he hated her—and he easily hated her.” Soon thereafter he
even confesses to his mother: “I really don’t love her. I talk to her, but I want to come home
to you.”
The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette, Clara Dawes,
who fulfills the sexual component of his ascent to manhood but leaves him, as ever, without
a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. As Paul voyages from the working-
class mining world to the spheres of commerce and art (he has fair success as a painter), he
accepts that his own achievements must be equally his mother’s. “There was so much to come
out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled... All his work
was hers.”
The cycles of Paul’s relationships with these three women are terrifying at times, and Lawrence
does nothing to dim their intensity. Nor does he shirk in his vivid, sensuous descriptions of
the landscape that offers up its blossoms and beasts and “shimmeriness” to Paul’s sensitive
spirit. Sons and Lovers lays fully bare the souls of men and earth. Few books tell such whole,
complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. It’s nothing
short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner.

23.5 Summary

• Lawrence believed in the ‘life force’, in Nature, its beauty and its power.

• The Oedipus complex takes its name from the title character of the Greek play Oedipus
Rex.
• 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.
• Sons and Lovers has a great deal of description of the natural environment.

23.6 Keywords

Bound : going towards some where.
Eroticized : give erotic qualities to.
Transcendence : not realizable in experience.

23.7 Review Questions

1. Write about the features of Lawrence’s characters.
2. Discuss the themes of “Sons and Lovers”.
3. Enumerate the plot construction of “Sons and Lovers”.

Answers: Self Assessment

1. Bildungs roman 2. Life force

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