Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers?ÿwas the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mothers love and full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrences young protagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. In his 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him all his life–for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, and for his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrences own account, a book aimed at depicting this womans grasp: “as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers–first the eldest, then the second. These sons are?ÿurged?ÿinto life by their reciprocal love of their mother–urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they cant love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives.”
Of course, Mrs. Morel takes neither of her two elder sons (the first of whom dies early, which further intensifies her grip on Paul) as a literal lover, but nonetheless her psychological snare is immense. She loathes Pauls Miriam from the start, understanding that the girls deep love of her son will oust her: “Shes 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?ÿdont?ÿlove 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 mothers. “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 Pauls 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 Pauls sensitive spirit.?ÿSons and Lovers?ÿlays fully bare the souls of men and earth. Few books tell such whole, complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. Its nothing short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner.?ÿ–Melanie Rehak