Heros Psychology In Sons And Lovers English Literature Essay

This paper is a study of Paul Morel’s psychology in Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence on the theoretical basis of the Freudian Oedipus complex. It begins with a primary study of the Freudian theory and then turns to different analysis of several major characters associated with Paul and their relationships. The literary analysis of this paper is developed along with psychoanalytic analysis, which centers on the reasons why Paul is to develop the Oedipus complex and why he can never detach himself from this attachment.

I. Introduction

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) is a prestigious English novelist, essayist, pamphleteer and one of the most gifted and influential figures in the twentieth century literature. Along with E. M. Foster, James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf, he is one of the “makers” of modern English fiction. Sons and Lovers is his first major novel, which is also a remarkable picture of English working-class life and Lawrence’s first major study of personal relations. It is considered to be one of the most important and innovative novels of the twentieth century.1

Sons and Lovers is about the psychological development of a young man, Paul Morel. He attempts to understand and resolve the powerful ambivalence he feels towards his mother and the other women in his life and become an independent individual. It is a great tragedy that the possessive mother makes her sons as her lovers-first the eldest, then the second. But when her sons come to manhood, they cannot love other women, because their mother is the strongest power over their lives, and she holds their souls against any woman who fights for them. The story of this young man, Paul Morel, witnesses one of the Freudian theories-the Oedipus complex, which is one of the themes the novel is to illustrate.

This paper is a study of Paul Morel’s psychology in Sons and Lovers on the theoretical basis of the Freudian Oedipus complex. It will begin with a primary study of the Freudian theory and then turn to different analysis of several major characters associated with Paul and their relationships. The literary analysis of this paper will be developed along with psychoanalytic analysis, which will center on the reasons why Paul is to develop the Oedipus complex and why he can never detach himself from this attachment. For example, according to Freudian theory, most boys’ Oedipus complex will gradually pass off because of their development of castration anxiety. This factor is vital important for the passing of the complex and it will be discussed at length by means of the analysis of the influence from Paul’s father, Walter Morel, and their relationship.

II. Brief Introduction to Freudian Theory on the Oedipus Complex

The most influential psychologist in the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud, founded psychoanalysis and also established a new system for treating behavior disorders. His research in psychology brought out many revolutionary and controversial views on human behavior. One of the views he maintained is that hidden layers in the child’s mind are animated by sexual and hostile motives concerning its parents. A typical example is the Oedipus complex, consisting of sexual desire toward the parent of the opposite sex and jealous hatred of the rival.2

According to Freud, the evolution of the mature love instinct begins as soon as the child has sufficiently developed a sense of “the otherness”3 of its surroundings to pick out its mother as the object of its affections. At first this totally instinctive and unconscious affection begins as the natural result of the child’s dependence upon its mother for food, warmth and comfort. From the mother the child first learn how to express affection, and the maternal caresses and the intimate feeling which the child get from its mother by the easy analogies to love when the child feels a conscious passion for another individual of the opposite sex. Its mother, in a very real sense of the world, is its first love.

However, through abnormal circumstances experienced in infancy or early childhood, a male may develop an excessive love for his mother, usually accompanied by a corresponding hatred for his father. The passing4 of the Oedipus complex can be attained if the child develops the “castration anxiety”5 naturally by seeing the sexual organ of the opposite sex. In a boy’s mind, the genitals of girls’ have been virtually castrated. He is afraid of having the same fate. Owning to the castration anxiety, both his sexual desire towards his mother and hostility towards his father will be weakened or depressed. Finally, the Oedipus complex will gradually pass off. This is the most important and crucial factor affecting the passing of the Oedipus complex.

Moreover, there are other factors enabling the passing of the Oedipus complex, including the failure of the fulfillment of the child’s sexual desire towards his mother, disappointment from the child towards his mother and the child’s physical and psychological maturity. Although these factors can weaken the Oedipus complex respectively, yet it is the overall impact from all these factors that eventually eliminate the Oedipus complex. Thus, in the following analysis of the causes for the non-passing of Paul Morel’s Oedipus complex, the author of this thesis will take all these points into consideration.

III. Mother’s Strong and Abnormal Affections

Many factors concerning the Oedipus complex usually refer to the son. However, the mother takes the same responsibility for the consequence. In Sons and Lovers, without the strong love lavished by Mrs. Morel, Paul would not have been attached to her that much. So it is obvious that the strong impact from Mrs. Morel’s affections towards her son weighs much on the causes for Paul’s Oedipus complex.

We may wonder how it happens that the mother in this story come to lavish all her affections upon her sons. The right person she should have loved is her husband, while what she would have given to Paul is the pure and simple maternal love. It is the failure of her marriage with Walter Morel whom she had hardly loved makes her turn to the sons. First is the eldest one, William, and then the second, Paul.

In the opening chapter Mrs. Morel, the wife of a cool miner, is expecting her third child, the boy Paul. Actually, at that time, her life with her husband has already turned out to be a complete fiasco. He is a drunkard and a bully, a man with whom she “shares neither intellectual, moral nor religious sympathies”6. Mrs. Morel dreads the coming of the new baby, because she does not want to give birth to a child who is conceived in a loveless relation between its parents. “With all her force, with all her soul she would make up to it for having brought it into the world unloved. She would love it all the more now it was hers; carry it in her love.”7 Towards Paul she feels, as to none of the other children, that she is guilty of doing something unjust to him and that he must recompense her for all that she has missed in her shattered love for her husband.

Alfred Booth Kuttner, a well-known critic, considers the early relations between mother and child are full of a delicate and poetic charm.8 Paul admires his mother very much and her presence can always be attractive to him. Often, at the sight of her, “his heart contracts with love.”(p.67) Everything he does is for her, the flowers he picks as well as the prizes he wins at school. His mother is his intimate and his confidant. When his father is confined to the hospital by an accident in the mine, Paul joyfully becomes “the man in the house.”(p.88) The interaction between mother and son is complete, as if she lives in him and he in her.

In the end she shared everything with him without knowingÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ She waited for his coming home in the evening, and then she unburdened herself of all she had pondered, or of all that had occurred to her during the day. He sat and listened with his earnestness. The two shared livesÃ¢â‚¬Â¦”(p.114)

IV. Other Influences from the Family

In Sons and Lovers, among the other family members around Paul, his father and his elder brother is very influential on the shaping of his manhood, because they are the elder ones with the same sex. Actually, they are the models for the boy. Thus their different influences on Paul’s growth cannot be taken for granted.

A. The great influence from the impotent father:

In most early analysis of the Oedipus complex presented in Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, the influence of the father was not as equally discussed as the impact from the mother in its importance and decisiveness. However, the neglect of the father’s role in the oedipal relation is vital and is worthy of mention, because the major factor for the passing of the Oedipus complex-castration anxiety, consists in the involvement of the father.

Kuttner explains the father’s influence to the child as saying that: besides its mother’s, the influence of the father that other major constellation of our childhood is also felt. Though not so gracious, he too is mighty, mightier than the mother, since he dominates her. His presence brings about a striking change in the attitude of the child, according to its sex. The boy, seeing that the mother loves the father, strives to be like him. He takes his father as an ideal and sets about to imitate his masculine qualities.11 However, it is a different case with Paul Morel, because his father, Walter Morel is someone unwanted in the family. He is a man with many disadvantages-“poverty, inadequate education and limited class expectation, work that is physically exhausting while mentally undemanding, cramped housing and political impotence”12. He is a symbol of the working class, while Mrs. Morel was brought up in a middle-class family. So the conflict grounded in the difference of social status put Morel in an unnatural position in the family. However, the mother seems to have occupied an exceptional position in the family, and she evidently dominated the household. Her disappointment towards Morel, a man who clearly does not live up to her ideal of manhood certainly has influenced the children’s impressions of their father. She even communicates her judgment to the children. For instance, in scenes when the children learn from her to mock their father’s manner, to belittle his work at the mine, to sneer at his lack of formal education and in general to degrade his manhood, we can see that all the family members dislike him and turn everything against him. “Walter Morel exiled from the intellectual life of the family.”13 The home is dominated by the mother’s values and the father has no place there except when working about his chores.

Paul’s relationship with his father, or rather say lack of relationship, make it impossible for the boy to imitate his father. In Paul’s mind, his hostility towards his father can be more expressed by his discrimination and hatred.

One example in the early chapters, when Paul was reluctantly suggested by his mother to tell his father the prize he won in a competition, best shows his discrimination upon his father.

“I’ve won a prize in a competition, Dad,” he said.

“Have you, my boy? What sort of competition?”

“Oh, nothing-about famous women.”

“And how much is the prize, then, as you’ve got?”

“It’s a book.”

“Oh, indeed!”

“About birds.”

“Hm-hm!”

And that was all. Conversation was impossible between the father and any other member of the family. He was an outsider. He had denied the God in him.”(p.64)

Paul’s responses to his father’s questions are brief and unhelpful. In Paul’s eyes, his father can only think of prizes and reward in financial terms; culture, inquiry and the value of knowledge are alien to him. He is a man with shabby insights to the things which the other family members value much.

Paul’s hatred towards his father is quite obvious. Once he witnesses a violent quarrel between his father and his brother William. They are so furious that nearly started a fight, with fists ready and knees crouched. “Another word, and the men would have begun to fight. Paul hoped they would.”(p.p.59-60) “Paul hated his father. As a boy he had a fervent private religion. ‘Make him stop drinking,’ he prayed every night. ‘Lord, let my father die,’ he prayed very often. ‘Let him not be killed at a pit,’ he prayed when, after tea, the father did not come home from work.”(p.61) Had Paul been old enough then, he would have beaten his father in the face. Showing no respect to Morel, Paul feels that his father’s figure is weak to him though he is physically strong. There are few ideal masculine qualities in Morel. So Paul is not afraid of his father as he might feel himself much stronger than Morel. Unlike other boys, Paul cannot develop his anxiety of being castrated by his father for loving his mother too much. And his ignorance of the father’s dominance in the family is met and enhanced by Mrs. Morel’s depreciation of Morel’s manhood. Hence Kuttner points out that in Paul’s case, the abnormal fixation upon the mother is most obviously conditioned by the father, whose unnatural position in the family is responsible for the distortion of the normal attitude of the child towards its parents.14 The father ideal simply does not exist for Paul; where there should have been an attractive standard of masculinity to imitate, he can only fear and despise.

B. Paul’s imitation of his brother William:

William is the first victim of the Oedipus complex in the family. However, his death at his early age makes him detach his fixation upon his mother. Mrs. Morel is very proud of William, because she thinks that she has made him into a middle-class gentleman successfully through years of education and nurture. William shares the same feeling as Paul does in doing everything for his mother. When he won a first prize in a race, he “only ran for her. He flew home with his anvil, breathless, with a ‘Look, mother!’ That was the first real tribute to herself. She took it like a queen.”(p.53)

William is a good person who enjoys everybody’s appreciation. And “he never drank”(p.54), which shows a sharp contrast with his father. So the other children in the family love him dearly, particularly Paul. He sets William as a great model for himself, because he knows clearly that his mother loves William very much. And what Paul wants is to be like his brother-quite successful in his work and be loved by others. What masculine qualities cannot be found in his father can be found in his brother now. William becomes someone Paul can imitate. He wants to be another William to his mother and he tries very hard.

Another similarity which William and Paul share is that as soon as they come into contact with women, there is a split. Lawrence thinks that “William gives his sex to a fribble, and his mother holds his soul. However, the split kills him, because he does not know where he is. Then Paul gets a woman who fights for his soul and actually fights his mother. Paul decides to leave his soul in his mother’s hands, and like his elder brother go for passion. He gets passion where the split begins to tell again.”15 Paul really admires his brother and wants to do everything in the same way as he does. This is a natural stage in a boy’s growth of finding a model of the same sex to imitate. Here, William becomes Paul’s choice.

We can assume that Paul might share the same fate as his brother’s. Although he survives the same disease as his brother gets, he suffers the same-patterned fixation to his mother. In a letter to Edward Garnett, Lawrence told his friend about the story he wrote. He mentioned “Paul is left in the end naked of everything, with the drift towards death.”16 The “death” indicates the passing of Paul’s Oedipus complex cannot be achieved when he is alive. He is destined to suffer the frustrations along the other half way of his life.

V. Paul’s Dissatisfactions of His Love Affairs with Other Women

In Sons and Lovers, Paul’s failure in forming normal relationships with either Miriam or Clara is mainly attributed to two reasons: one is his own psychological immaturity, which is the major factor; the other is the block from Mrs. Morel.

A. The immaturity of Paul’s psychology:

If there were no strong love lavished by the mother and no great influence of the father’s impotence, would Paul still be so attached to the Oedipal relationship that ruins the two relationships with his two lovers- Miriam and Clara? There is no certain answer to this assumption. However, one thing can be sure that Paul, to some degree, will encounter difficulties in forming relationships with women too, because his psychology is still immature.

During the growth into his manhood, Paul has always been taken care of. Physically, Paul is more delicate than the other children so that his illnesses always tend to further his mother’s concentration upon him. His mother and for a time his sister Annie are his only real companions. His brother William is too old to be his playmate and other children play no role in his early childhood. He is growing in the intricate love from women and weak masculine qualities from men. He has always been a good boy of his mother and he always holds his childish fantasy of living with his mother. “But I shan’t marry, mother. I shall live with you, and we’ll have a servant.”(p.244) He thinks at twenty-two as he thought at fourteen, like a child that goes on living a fairy-tale. Even in the relationship with Miriam, he has been called a child of four by Miriam. And it is true that she treats him as a mother treats a perverse child. At the age of twenty-four, he still sums up his ambition as the same as before.

Unlike other boys growing into their manhood, Paul cannot develop a kind of independence a mature man should possess. He cannot live without his family and his mother. Although he is physically mature at twenty-five, he still maintains a heart of child. The self-maturity is one factor affecting the Oedipus complex according to Freudian theory mentioned at the beginning of the essay. And it is the major internal cause for the passing of the complex. Unfortunately, Paul does not possess the psychological maturity, which is, along with other causes, responsible for his deeply rooted Oedipus complex.

B. The failure of Miriam’s spiritual love:

Miriam Leivers is the first woman who attracts Paul outside his family circle. It might be regarded as his puppy love that Paul is fascinated but uneasy and fights shy of personal intimacy with Miriam. However, the intensity of her emotions frightens him and impresses him as unwholesome. He finds her growing absorption in him strangely discomfiting. Paul resists every intimation that he is falling in love with Miriam. “We aren’t lovers, we are friends.”(p.173) And Miriam has already gone so far. Paul can do nothing with her love because he cannot return it. Love seems to him like a very terrible thing. The honest and more impersonal passion that he feels for her frightens him.

However, Mrs. Morel makes her appeal. She fears that Miriam will absorb Paul and take him away from her. “She is one of those who will want to suck a man’s soul out till he has none of his own left.”(p.161) Her jealousy is being intensified. Her comments on Miriam grow spiteful and satiric, and she no longer takes the trouble to hide her jealousy. She makes the final, ruthless, cowardly appeal.

“And I’ve never-you know, Paul-I’ve never had a husband-not-really-“

He stroked his mother’s hair, and his mouth was on her throat.

“And she exults so in taking you from me-she’s not like ordinary girls.”

“Well, I don’t love her, mother,” he murmured, bowing his head and hiding his eyes on her shoulder in misery. His mother kissed him, a long, fervent kiss.

“My boy!” she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love.

Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.(p.212)

Thus she wins him back. But there is still some resistance in Paul. His emotions towards Miriam are constantly changing. But at last he tells her that he cannot love her physically. “I can only give friendship-It’s all I’m capable of-it’s a flow in my make-upÃ¢â‚¬Â¦Let us have done.”(p.220) “In all our relations no body enters. I do not talk to you through the senses-rather through the spirit. That is why we cannot love in common sense. Ours is not an everyday affection.”(p.250) Miriam is totally defeated in the fights for Paul’s soul.

At the same time, Lawrence makes clear that Miriam’s failure to attract Paul physically, has led to her defeat in the spiritual conflict. The girl’s sexual failure is deeply rooted, for example, in her own emotional make-up. As Lawrence demonstrates, she is unable to lose herself in any simple pleasurable occasion, her body is tense and lifeless, and her abnormal spiritual intensity is coupled with a genuine fear of things physical.

C. The failure of Clara’s sensual love:

The failure of the relationship between Paul and Miriam makes Paul turns to another try for sensual love. Clara Dawes is married, but lives separated from her husband. She shows a frankly sensual attraction upon Paul. Like Mrs. Morel, she is unhappy with her husband, which makes Paul feel less unfaithful to his mother. She takes care of Paul’s sexual needs, and leaves plenty of him over for Mrs. Morel. So the mother is not hostile to the idea of Clara. Paul is twenty-three when he meets Clara, and she is about thirty. Clara really admires Paul’s animal quickness: he brings her the promise of renewed vitality, and they draw close together and make love. Thus Paul receives the impersonal love he needs, and Clara comes to full awakening as a woman.

However, Clara is soon dissatisfied with impersonal love; like Miriam, she wants to grasp hold of Paul and to possess him personally, Paul is even more disturbed about another failure of relationship. At this moment, the novel turns to the death of Paul’s mother. Paul meets Clara’s husband and has a fight with him. Surprisingly, Paul brings Clara back to her husband and makes friends with Dawes, after knowing that the husband is desperate to win his wife back. Then Paul takes care of his dying mother and never leaves her until the end.

To sum up, Sons and Lovers presents Miriam not as a type of human love, but as a type of spiritual love, Clara as a type of sensual love, and neither of them can satisfy the heart of the young man who loves his mother.

VI. Conclusion

Psychoanalytic readings of Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence frequently discuss Paul Morel’s psychology in terms of the classic Oedipus complex, because the intimate nature of his relationship with his mother is so complete that he finds the quality of love he can give to and receive from other woman deficient and unsatisfying by comparison. Owing to this reason, there are different views on the novel’s conclusion, with some believing that Paul is at last moving towards an independent adult existence, and others contending that he is an emotional derelict drifting towards death out of a desire to remain with his dead mother.

Whatever Paul will be in the future, the passing of his Oedipus complex cannot be attained, due to the effects from different causes discussed above. Although his mother is dead, she still captures his soul, which symbolizes the ecstasy of their relationship and faithful love. The death of his mother cannot free him and life for him is only where his mother is and she is dead. “My love-my love-oh, my love!”(p.395) he whispered again and again. “My love-oh, my love!”(p.395) Paul cries with a lover’s anguish.

Paul is bound to be a failure in forming any normal relationship with other women. Because when he cannot go on loving his mother any more, “the next best thing he can do is to find a woman who resembles his mother as closely as possible.”17 Clara is such a case, for she is a married woman and unhappy with her marriage. She satisfies Paul’s sexual desire in the incest sense. The love they make resembles Paul’s expression of love towards his mother and hatred towards his father. When Paul is through the despair caused by his mother’s death, he will hope again and when he has compared one woman to his mother and found her wanting, he will go on to another, in endless repetition.

Paul will maintain his faith and preserve his love for his mother in other forms. With much faith and loyalty devoted by Paul to his mother, he can do anything which does not produce an actual feeling of betrayal and unfaithfulness. Although the autobiographical novel does not tell us clearly about in which form Paul will maintain his faith, we can seek the truth in the real life of the autobiography writer-D. H. Lawrence. One point of view which O’Connor holds through his analysis of the similarity of other autobiography writers such as Andre Gide and Marcel Proust with D. H. Lawrence, provides an assumption or better say it an answer.18 O’Connor mentions all of them feel deeply under the influence of their mothers, somewhat in the sense of the Oedipus complex. Gide and Proust remained homosexual for their entire lives, while Lawrence showed strongly marked homosexual tendencies. The difference only lies in the forms of preserving the faith and loyalty for the Oedipal affections to the mother, maybe in the form of self-abuse, or in the form of homosexuality. However, the truth is neither Lawrence nor Paul can ever escape the attachment and fixation to their mothers. What Paul will exactly do with the rest of his emotional life is uncertain, but the non-passing of his Oedipus complex will always define him as his mother’s son and lover.

Notes

1For the introduction to D. H. Lawrence and his first major novel Sons and Lovers, the author of this thesis is indebted to Horage V. Gregory, “D. H. Lawrence: Pilgrim of the Apocalypse”, The Encyclopedia Americana Vol. 17 (Connecticut: Grolier Incorporated, 1981), p.86.

2For the introduction to Sigmund Freud and his theory on Oedipus complex, the author of this thesis is indebted to Ernest Jones, “The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud”, The Encyclopedia Americana Vol. 12 (Connecticut: Grolier Incorporated, 1981), p.p.83-87.

3Alfred Booth Kuttner, “A Freudian Appreciation,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.83.

4The psychoanalytic term used here refers to something passes away or elapses; transient, transitory, fleeting; ephemeral, vanishing. And the other psychoanalytic term “non-passing” used in this thesis refers to the failure of achieving this passing of the Oedipus complex. Sigmund Freud, “The Passing of the Oedipus-complex” in Collected Papers, Vol. II (London: The Hogarth Press, 1933), p.p.269-276.

5For the description of the psychoanalytic term, the author of this thesis is indebted to Calvin S. Hall, A Primer of Freudian Psychology, trans. Chen Weizheng (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1985), p.98.

6Alfred Booth Kuttner, “A Freudian Appreciation,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.71.

7David Herbert Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), p.38. All the following parenthetic pages in this thesis refer to the same book unless otherwise indicated.

8Alfred Booth Kuttner, “A Freudian Appreciation,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgada (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.72.

9Frank O’Connor, “Sons and Lovers,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.147.

10Dennis Poupard and James E. Person Jr., ed., Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Vol.16 (Kansas City: Gale Research Company, 1985), p.292.

11Alfred Booth Kuttner, “A Freudian Appreciation,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.84.

12Dennis Poupard and James E. Person Jr., ed., Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Vol.16 (Kansas City: Gale Research Company, 1985), p.314.

13Niger Messenger, How to Study a D. H. Lawrence Novel (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1989), p.30.

14Alfred Booth Kuttner, “A Freudian Appreciation,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.88.

15Dennis Poupard and James E. Person Jr., ed., Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Vol.16 (Kansas City: Gale Research Company, 1985), p.276.

16Dennis Poupard and James E. Person Jr., ed., Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism Vol.16 (Kansas City: Gale Research Company, 1985), p.276.

17Alfred Booth Kuttner, “A Freudian Appreciation,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.86.

18Such critic as Frank O’Connor agrees that Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical work by D. H. Lawrence, as well as a reflection of his own life. Frank O’Connor, “Sons and Lovers,” D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, ed. Gamini Salgado (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1986), p.p.144-151.

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