Assignment Topic: Sons and Lovers

Subject: Modern Novel

Roll Number: 10104

Submitted To: Nosheen Yousaf

Submitted By: Rimsha

Class: BS (English Literature)

Semester: 5th (Morning)

GOVERNMENT COLLEGE UNIVERSITY FAISALABAD

  Character sketch of Mrs. Morel

 How the modern novel favoured a frank modern treatment of real human

passions.

In Sons and Lovers, Mrs. Morel is 'of a good old burgher family’ who is proud and

unyielding by temperament inherited from her puritan upbringing. She is the wife of Mr. Morel,

a coalminer and mother of William, Paul, Annie and Arthur. She is very intellectual, passionate

and religious woman in contrast to her husband Mr. Morel who is illiterate, ill-tempered, weak-

willed and alcoholic. She marries Walter Morel whom she meets at a country dance and gets

impressed by his joyous glamour, handsomeness, sensual appearance, warm, friendly manners.

At the beginning she was very happy with her husband but later gradually Mr. Morel’s bad

temper and especially class difference made her despise him as stated in the book 'for three

months she was perfectly happy; for six months she was very happy' (p.19). Although Mr.

Morel was drunken and absent coalminer with no aspirations in life that Mrs. Morel despised but

he was not the only reason of disillusionment between them but it was the class superiority

complex of Mrs. Morel. She was a woman who thought she married a man in the middle-class

but instead married a working-class man who had no ambitions in life. She was very proud lady

but when Mr. Morel lied about home and debt she felt it disgrace to her proud soul. This class

superiority complex can also be seen in the plot when morel family moved to the mining

community of The Bottoms, where ‘she shrank a little from the first contact with the

Bottoms women.’

Dissatisfied with her husband, she turns to her sons incorporating them as husband substitutes for

emotional satisfaction and consequently she destroys her sons emotionally. 'She turned to the
child, she turned from the father. She becomes a very loving, domineering, over-protective

and possessive mother. Her love for her sons turns out to be very unhealthy that they can’t start a

marital relationship with another women. In the narrative, we can see an example of a woman

who lives her life through her children. Mrs. Morel’s chiding girls who come to see William,

mocking his love letters received from girls, and later her dislike for William’s fiancé, Lily

affected William to the extent that he started to hate her, and his relationship with Lily started to

fail.

Similarly, Mrs. Morel also comes in way of Paul when he wants to establish a relationship with

Miriam by saying “She is one of those who will want to suck a man’s soul out till he has

none of his own left”. As Paul later starts to see another girl, Clara, the same procedure happens

again, with Mrs. Morel being jealous and doing her best to destroy the relationship that is going

on.

In her relationship with her sons she cannot provide mature guidance and both William and Paul

develop weak emotional selves. William is unable to decide what is best for him; 'he was

accustomed to having all his thoughts sifted through his mother's mind.'

Throughout the book she remains Puritan, spiritual, passionate, strong-minded and loving but

her jeering at her husband cannot be seen as refined. Even she abuses her power as a mother to

enlist them against their father which results into Paul hating his father even to the extent that he

prayed for the death of his father.

D H Lawrence is regarded as one of the most modern writers who frankly treated human

instincts and passions i.e. sex and love unlike Victorians who were repressed regarding sexuality,

and prudish to the point of hiding the legs of tables by long tablecloths.
In sons and lovers, we have seen many evidences of this frank treatment. First, the unconscious

sexual bond between mother and son is established early on. Paul loves his mother in a way that

certainly includes a sexual element. "Paul loved to sleep with his mother." When she

accompanies Paul to the interview for his first job, at Jordan's factory, she behaves "like a

sweetheart" and both of them feel "the excitement of lovers having an adventure together”.

The incestuous undercurrents come to the surface in chapter 8, with a "long, fervent kiss". At

the end of chapter 7, he tries to persuade his mother not to sleep in the same bed with his father.

“Don't sleep with him, Mother."

Paul-Clara relationship is entirely physical and their sex-relationship has been dealt with frankly

without any reserve and concealment. Sex words have been employed freely. There are frequent

reference to kissing such as “long passionate kisses”, Paul “having her frequently”, “her firm

breast”, “her breast rising and falling”, “their hardness”, “touching his body” etc.