Analysis of Paul Morel în D H Lawrence's - Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence is the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. In this essay I will try to follow the Oedipus complex that is very well illustrated by the protagonist of the novel, Paul Morel, but also the evolution of this character. The evolution of the protagonist is the main characteristic of a Bildungsroman.

As we know, Sons and Lovers was published in 1913, the same year that Freud´s The Interpretation of Dreams was first published in English translation. The Oedipus complex is introduced by Freud as “referring to the two Greek legends: the Theban hero Oedipus who unknowingly slew his father and married his mother, and its female analogue, Electra who helped slay her mother. If the child can't smoothly pass through this mental stage, there should occur an ‘infantile neurosis’ that is an important forerunner of similar reactions during the child’s adult life. The superego also has its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus complex. Freud considered the reactions against the Oedipus Complex the most important social achievements of the human mind.”

Sons and Lovers is an example of a Bildungsroman, an autobiographical novel about the early years of a character’s life, and the character’s emotional and spiritual development. The term derives from German novels of education, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, which details the experiences of an innocent young man who discovers his purpose and passions in life through a series of adventures and misadventures. As Brian Finney mentioned in his critical study about Sons and Lovers, Lawrence offers up a rendering of his own first twenty-five years of life in more or less chronological order, showing how Paul Morel must negotiate the pull of family and culture to cultivate his individuality.

As it is defined, also by Brian Finney in his critical study about Sons and Lovers , “the Bildungsroman is a novel which describes the youthful development of the protagonist who normally attempts to integrate his or her experience by the end of the book.” The protagonist of the novel is Paul Morel. We know this because Lawrence opens Sons and Lovers at the time when Mrs Morel is expecting Paul and proceeds to follow Paul’s progress from his birth to about his twenty-fifth year. The way in which the author orders the material of a story in a basically chronological fashion is a standard feature of the Bildungsroman. We could have known that the protagonist is Paul Morel even before reading the book, because we know that Lawrence before calling it Sons and Lovers, called it Paul Morel.

As we can see both concepts have to do with the main character, so in the next paragraphs I will follow the evolution of Paul Morel and at the same time his relations with women, but especially with his mother, Gertrude Morel.

The first part of the novel focuses on Mrs Morel and her unhappy marriage to a drinking miner. As Brian Finney mentions in his study about Sons and Lovers, from the first chapter we assist at an important event in the evolution of the character. Mrs Morel is locked out in the garden by her drunken husband and she has an “experience resembling a Joycean epiphany” which is shared by the child she is carrying. She feels herself “melted out like scent into the shiny, pale air” and in the next sentences continues

“After a time the child, too, melted with her in the mixing-pot of moonlight, and she rested with the hills and lilies and houses, all swum together in a kind of swoon.”³ This could be the first moment when a connection could be established between what had happened with Mrs. Morel before Paul’s birth and his consequent development and character.