RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

65
William.
He dies. Mrs Morel's life up to this time has been
shared in terms of love with her two sons, Paul and William.
With the death of the latter, it can be said that Mrs Morel enters
in a kind of darkness for she is not able to feel life the same
anymore.
She comes to a state of deep depression and she seems
blind to the rest of her family (I mean her children).
Paul is
to a certain extent being once more rejected, for his mother does
not care for him.
She cultivates in her inner heart the light
of love for her dead son, only for William.
She refuses., to see
what is going on outside the invisible mask of pain she wears.
Her eyes can only see her dead son.
Paul feels unable to stand
this rejection mainly because he knows that his mother's love is
entirely directed to his dead brother.
Paul's mind seems to work
in a kind of projection of what happened to his dead brother
William.
We should say that Paul thinks that Mrs Morel loves her
dead son and that he died of pneumonia (plus erysipelas),
therefore, he (Paul) must have a (similar) illness to become
loved by his mother and that he must also die so as to feel his
mother's love fully directed to him. This is why he says "'I s '11
die, mother!' he cried, heaving for breath in the pillow" (p.175).
Thus, his health declines in such a way that his illness is the
same as William's: pneumonia!
This psychological trick plus
Paul's real illness achieves its goal:
Mrs Morel awakens from her
deep depression and turns to Paul.
The result could not be
worse: "Mrs Morel's life now rooted itself in Paul" (ibid. - My
underlining).
This is worse because this means that from now on
the mother will forget herself and live her son's life.
He will
never have peace till she dies.
When Paul gets better and feels able to return to work and
to his 'routine', he goes straightway to the Leivers.
Miriam and