RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

characteristics as she had.
in what Paul wished to do.
She was always present, interfering
She was there, always haunting him,
making him feel guilty and making him see her through Miriam.
Paul could never marry Miriam because "He could not have faced
his mother" (p.340).
Moreover, Mrs Morel in her possessive love,
made Paul think that any woman "was like their (men's) mother,
and they were full of the sense of their mother" (p.341). It is
definitely Paul identifying Miriam (or any other woman) with his
mother.
As he cannot marry his mother, he can never marry Miriam.
Therefore, Mrs Morel has, besides destroying Paul's love for
Miriam, also destroyed Miriam's life.
The girl will never be
able to love another man while Paul exists and as he does not
want her, she will keep herself waiting for him, the eternal life
of self-sacrifice and annulment.
Paul, unconsciously because of his mother, has destroyed
his relationship with Clara because she was a married woman, and
for him "Marriage was for life" (p.340).
It is necessary to stop
feeling guilty and thus, he returns Clara to Baxter.
His mother has divided his own consciousness into two parts:
the soul which is opposed to the body.
So, in transforming Paul
into a divided man, she has directly made her son (or sons) fail
in his emotional life.
This feature of Mrs Morel is where
Lawrence establishes the main conflict of his own life and the
battle to put soul and body together becomes the major subject of
his novels.
What is left for Paul at the end of Sons and Lovers is
impossible to say since, as I said previously, Paul is a man who
is totally contradictory.
He goes from one extreme to the other.
He loves or hates. He wants life or death. He is sad or happy.