The Quest for the Whole in D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers

Abstract

David Herbert Lawrence portrays a complex husband-wife, mother-son, and man-woman relationship in his novel Sons and Lovers. This article studied the relational motifs of the major character Paul Morel with other characters and the dire upshot resulting from this relation. The study found that Paul strove for happiness through the concerted entertainment of body and soul with his beloved people, but he failed because his mother’s unusual attachment to him negatively impacted on his building up a normal relation with others. Mother’s failure to find happiness in her conjugal life led her to pouring her love into Paul, exploiting him, making him sub-serve her own need and denying him the right to his own independent life. As a result, the son’s relation with other women proved a disastrous failure. The women with whom Paul had relation underwent part of the sufferings somehow or other. Finally, Mother’s death made him hopeless and left his life in nothingness.