By Oishy (Batch 40)
The fundamental
triangle of family (father- mother- child) and the didactic relationships
between sons and mothers, can reformat, transgress (as Sigmund Freud claims)
to the oedipal liaison of lovers. D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers can be alleged as a case study of Freudian oedipal
association of that sort. The merger between Gertrude Morel & her sons
(especially Paul), arises from the customary mother- son affection, as the
novel progresses, to an alarming phase, which Freud has termed as “oedipal
bond”. Through Paul’s early years to the novel’s end, his mother’s strong
stimulus, exclusion of the father, rejection of outsourced attractions and loss of identity in the mother’s absence, evokes Freud’s conception of Oedipus
Complex in this Lawrentian masterpiece.
According
to Sigmund Freud,
the boy wishes to possess his mother and replace his father, who the child
views as a rival for the mother's affections. The Oedipal complex (proposed in
1899, in The Interpretation of Dreams)
occurs in the phallic stage of psycho-sexual development between the
ages of three and five. Freud suggested that while the primal id
wants to eliminate the father, the more realistic ego
knows that the father is much stronger. According to Freud, the boy then
experiences what he called “castration anxiety” - a fear of both literal and
figurative emasculation. In order to resolve the conflict, the boy then
identifies with his father. It is at this point that the super-ego
is formed. The super-ego becomes a sort of inner moral authority, an
internalization of the father figure that strives to suppress the urges of the
id and make the ego act upon these idealistic standards. In the Morel family, first Gertrude – William, then
Gertrude - Paul oedipal relationships take power where, Walter soon became an
outsider in his own house, present in body but isolated entirely by Gertrude,
feared by his children. He doesn't understand completely how and why all this
has happened and tries to find silence in liquor, the kind that cannot dissolve
tragedy. Paul Morel, unable to find the strong father figure in Walter, to form
the egoistic identity, loses the balanced structural
unification with the mother, where the id takes over.
Within
the family, where Walter Morel has virtually no parental authority, moral or
otherwise, he is most unlikely to assert his right as the “object of
Gertrude’s desire” which according to Freud the role of the father
should be. So Gertrude is determined to live through her children, especially
her sons- Paul most of all. After William’s death he is desired by Gertrude not
as a son but as a husband, and he responses, in his eyes she becomes “a fine little
woman” (117). The consequences
are serious. Oedipal feelings prevail and allows the creation of symbolic
triangle (Father- Mother- Child) that constitutes the functional family
environment, in which identification with the father creates the child’s “ego-
ideal”, mother becomes the pole around which reality becomes constituted and
father becomes the catalyst for building “super- ego”.
The
primary constraint on Paul’s development is his mother, rather than his father.
It is Mrs. Morel that Paul resembles and loves and who forms the psychological
barrier that Paul repeatedly comes up against in his drive to know himself. Mrs.
Morel is central to Sons and
Lovers and it is fascinating to observe how Lawrence mingles and
presents the different facets of her personality ranging from the bright, young
and delicate woman captured by the vibrant animal magnetism of her dark, earthy
husband, to the unhappy wife, the woman trapped in an environment hostile to
her impulses and wishes, the caring mother who also makes huge emotional
demands on her sons, the constant sufferer and the relentless tormentor. The
woman trapped in a marriage that fails to be what it should - the sacred union
in the flesh - will become a familiar Lawrentian theme, but this trapped woman
will never break free, will not even try to, except indirectly through her
children, will constantly pursue
authoritative existence among her sons, Paul particularly. An obvious question
arises over the name Gertrude, who very much in nature resemblance the Gertrude
from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Both women (literally or figuratively) has killed
their husbands for a third influence & both having severe fixation over
their sons. Kinglsey Widmer describes Mrs. Morel primarily as a destructive
figure in Paul and William’s lives, writing:
“Her Protestant ethos
of self-denial, sexual repression, sexual
fixation toward her sons, impersonal work, disciplined aspiration,
guilt, and yearning for conversion-escape, not only defeats her already
industrially victimized coal-miner husband but also contributes to the defeat
of several of their sons.”
Nevertheless,
some of the usual consequences of the Oedipal complexes are known to have
flawed outcome, and Paul’s case is an extreme instance of such. Unable to
develop a mature relationship with his father, he is still the child of an –
absent, emotionally non- existing father, as Lacan defines to be the outcome of
Oedipus complex. Paul, as Lawrence describes “seemed old for his years”.
He was particularly attuned with how his mother felt: “When she fretted, he understood
and could have no peace…His soul seemed always attentive to her” (55).
And then during convalescence from bronchitis, Paul was allowed to share his
sick bed with his mother, which he relished, he finds: “Sleep is still most
perfect….when it is shared with a beloved” (64). The next stage follows
when Paul brings Gertrude a spray and a basketful of blackberries, she accepts
it, playfully, “in a curious tone of a woman accepting a love token” (65). Thus
Paul accepts his role as his mother’s confident, her life partner, listening
patiently to her musings and worries; and during his father’s hospitalization
with a broken leg, Paul fancies himself, “the only man of this house”, his
father’s replacement.
The
stark realism of the novel is relieved and complemented by poetic messages that
communicate this mysterious element, and portray the female in mystical
connection with the other. At the age 14, Paul has no significant goal for his
life, other than to earn 30 / 35
shillings by working somewhere near home and then “when his father died, have a
cottage with his mother, paint and go out as he liked, and live happily ever
after” (85). At his early adolescence, Gertrude’s overriding emotions
are still focused on Williams, which was soon changed when the double trauma of
Williams’ death and Paul’s brush with mortality solidifies Gertrude’s
determination to hold onto Paul; when Aurther has proven to be too much like
his father, inept to be repository of her hopes for the future. However
Gertrude’s designs are to be challenged by Miriam Leviers & Cora
Dawes.
Miriam
and Paul’s love blooms slowly, a large part of it being entirely unacknowledged.
Paul insists her as being a student and a friend, to complicate matters; he
feels anxiety, anger for the sexual feelings she arises in him. When he is
teaching her, he is impatient- derivative of his repressed Oedipal feelings and
the sense of guilt that follows. Gertrude, for her part recognizes Miriam as a
threat, a rival of Paul’s attachments & feelings. She vents her anger &
jealousy at Miriam, “She wants to draw him out and absorb him, until there is
nothing left…” In the description of the visit to Lincoln Cathedral Paul
depicts his mother with great, poetic sensibility. Here, once more, she is
shown as something otherworldly, a being akin to divinity, remote from this
world, strange and wonderful as an angel. It is impossible to avoid the thought
that, whatever else it may be, it is also Paul’s own fear of losing her that is
being reflected in this striking mythicization of her. At chapel, when Miriam,
Paul and Gertrude share the same pew, Paul seemingly succeeds in uniting his
both lovers: “wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit there for an hour and a half….
Uniting his two lovers under the spell of the place of worship” (183).
But his peaceful delusion doesn’t last long and he notices “a violent
conflict in him. His consciousness seemed to split”.
Neither
Miriam, during the week at her grandmother’s cottage and not Clara, during
their stay at Lincolnshire coast, can bring Paul more than ephemeral respite. The
affairs provide no more than an occasional play of the beloved’s role and yield
only momentary satisfaction- as his anger, anxiety, hatred, sense of betrayal
toward his mother quickly returns after the encounters. In time, when Miriam goes on with her life
without him, Cora continues with her husband, Paul reassures to Gertrude “You know, I
don’t care about them, mother” (350). And so after much effort, Gertrude
conquers her rivals, wins complete pyrrhic victory. In Gertrude’s death bed,
when Paul meets her, both he & Gertrude were “afraid of the veils that were
ripping between” (367). Upon learning that she’s dead, Paul rushes
upstairs “put his face to hers and his arms around her: My love- my love- oh, my
love! He whispered again and again” (379)
As a
character, Paul Morel has his own flaws, and tends to see many of these
personal defects (vanity, selfishness, etc.) in others, especially the people
closest to him – and these are often things he “detests” about them. This is
the psychological phenomenon Freud has called a “projection”: “a process of
dissimilation, by which a subjective content becomes alienated from the subject
and is, so to speak, embodied in the object. The subject gets rid of painful,
incompatible contents by projecting them” (Interpretation of Dreams 242). The practice tends to
exacerbate rather than alleviate Paul’s troubles. After his mother’s death,
Paul seemed to suffer the loss of identity, unable to sustain existence without
the duel authority of his mother and himself, which, in Paul Morel, takes the
shape of an intricate and consistent mythicization of the female. A notable
projection of a male personality and a process that satisfies both the author’s
wish to move beyond the narrowly personal and develop in his fiction his
dualistic metaphysics (centered upon the conflict between the mind and the
body, the Apollonian and the Dionysian), as well as Paul Morel’s need to
dramatize his internal conflicts.
Lawrence
seeks to discover the particular feminine essence, the female core in human
existence. This might be seen as an essentialist view, affirmation of a female
essence accessible to women as individuals. Lawrence believes in femaleness as
a universal principle and insists that it lies within the woman’s instinctive
wisdom to discover and preserve it as the most valuable gift of nature. Without
his mother’s sour but demanding presence and her daily disillusionment with the
world, Paul might not have developed his love for painting or his desire to
transcend his provincial roots. Paul’s tortured relationship with his mother
actually allows him to develop his own ideas about the meaning of individuation
and fulfillment.
“…the Oedipus complex
must collapse because the time has come for its disintegration, just as the
milk-teeth fall out when the permanent ones begin to grow…it is nevertheless a
phenomenon which is determined…when the next pre-ordained phase of development
sets in.” (Freud,
From The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex, 1924). Freud’s own optimism
about the delusional oedipal attraction to fall in like “the milk- teeth”
seemingly didn’t work on our protagonist. The freedom however, which Lawrence
provides at the end, proves to be fatal then amusing, turns into loss of
identity than the absence of chains. Still Paul moves on, with the mother “on
memories” - which providentially comprises fragility.
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