RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

4b
in this suffering is the fact that Mrs Morel could free her
children from this pain.
This does not mean that she could hide
from them the problems of her marriage, but to say that she
seems pleased to share with the sons the problems for which she
and her husband have the entire responsibility:
they have
decided to marry; they have the guilt of their failure (though I
believe that she is more responsible than Walter due to the fact
that being more 'rational' she should have avoided the marriage).
What actually happens in the development of the novel is
that Morel becomes a n ’ absentee father in his own home.
Nobody
is tender to him. Nobody tells him anything.
He is an outsider
in his family.
It is as Lawrence points out:
He was shut out from all family.affairs. No one
told him anything. The children, alone with their
mother, told her all about the day's happenings,
everything. Nothing had really taken place in
them until it was told to their mother. But as
soon as the father came in, everything stopped.
He was like the scotch in the smooth, happy
machinery of the home. And he was always aware of
this fall of silence on his entry. But now it was
gone too far to alter, (p.81)
How can he go along with all these troubles? I believe that he
can only turn to drinking in order to forget the lack of love,
of interaction with his family.
Out of his home, with his
'friends', he can find peace, friendship and companionship.
All
he does not have at home he finds in his work and at the bars.
He feels he is not welcome at his home, so, why go home sober?
What would be the advantages? To come home, sit on his chair,
terribly guilty and see that "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.82) ?
Mrs Morel makes little effort to minimize this situation,
but she cannot be blamed for it entirely.
Sometimes she tries