THE THEME OF OEDIPUS COMPLEX IN D. H. LAWRENCE’S SONS AND LOVERS

THE THEME OF OEDIPUS COMPLEX IN D. H. LAWRENCE’S SONS AND LOVERS

By Lisbern Shawn Fernandes,

EG-1913,

MA-II,EGO122 (D.H. Lawrence as a Novelist)

Oedipus Complex was postulated by Sigmund Freud - it is a complex of emotions whereby a child develops an unconscious sexual desire for his mother and secretly wishes to eliminate his father. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers deals with this complex and it forms one of the themes. However, Lawrence’s treatment of this complex is problematized in order to create a dramatic effect.

The novel is about the relationship between Gertrude or Mrs. Morel and her children, particularly her three sons, borne out of her disastrous marriage with Mr. Morel. Although it is a love marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Morel, their marriage starts to go down the hatch, no sooner than later Mrs. Morel finds Mr. Morel incompetent to be a good husband to her. She is aghast at her drinking habits, squandering his earnings and loitering with his friends. He also beats her in order to assert her dominion over her, even throwing her out of the house on a chilly night, during one of her pregnancies. Naturally, Mrs. Morel feels “buried alive” in this failed marriage.

As a result, Mrs. Morel transfers her love onto her children and here is the first problematization presented by Lawrence in Oedipus complex, in that the relationship here is reciprocal – the mother too loves the sons. The sons are more close to their mother as Mr. Morel is an unsympathetic father, who returns late at night from the mines only to argue with their mother. They naturally harbour a repressed desire to eliminate the menace that is their father.

The oedipal relationship between William and Mrs. Morel is made explicit in the first chapter itself. William, as a child, enjoys the wakes only with his mother and feels dejected after his mother has left him. He shows his mother two egg-cups he won and gives them as a present to her. Perhaps, Mr. Morel is aware of the deep attachment between mother and child and hence, when he cuts William’s hair, Mrs. Morel takes it to her heart and grows estranged from her husband. The role of Morel in the household is nothing but a breadwinner slash squanderer – his significance wanes over the years to the extent that he is considered a mere member of the family, his presence in domestic talks is not even acknowledged. It is the relationship between the mother and the sons that continues to grow and become more complicated.

Mrs. Morel gives birth to her second of three sons – Paul, when she was ill. As the baby was brought into this world in a dire state, she vows to love Paul with “all her soul." There is something about Paul’s weak and effeminate character that always melted Mrs. Morel towards him. However, at this juncture, Mrs. Morel loves William more, as he is synonymous to her image of knight in shining armour. Again, the instance of dedication of a trophy or prize to one’s lover is brought here, when William wins a running race and he gives the trophy to his mother.

One of the classical facets of love is jealousy and the oedipal relationships here are not bereft of it. Mrs. Morel is particularly envious of the love letters William receives from young girls and burns them, before he leaves to take up a job in London. This departure puts a veil of sadness over Mrs. Morel’s face as she is now going to be distanced from her lover. Mrs. Morel if further disappointed when William courts a girl in London. When he brings her to his family, Mrs. Morel takes an immediate disliking for the girl. This is possibly due to the reason that she sees the girl’s beauty as a competition for her own. Nonetheless, the courting fails and even Mrs. Morel loses William as he dies at a young age.

Just as when Mrs. Morel is mourning, Paul falls ill with pneumonia and she realizes that she should have "watched the living, not the dead.” With William gone, Mrs. Morel transfers her love to her second son: “Mrs. Morel’s life now rooted itself in Paul.” Paul’s closeness towards his mother is also palpable from an early stage. He stays home to be with his mother, draws inspiration from her for his paintings and they discuss the shopping bargains. He is uncomfortable in any situation distanced from his mother. For instance, he has a highly nervous time waiting in a queue to receive his father’s payment. This brings into the fore, the second facet of love and that is dependence. Paul is dependent on his mother even when he appears for an interview at Thomas Jordan, as he needs her accompaniment. They even have their little moments of romantic escapades, going about the town, buying things and dining at restaurants,"feeling the excitement of lovers having an adventure together." Paul shares Mrs. Morel’s anxiety about his father and he secretly wishes to eliminate him. When Mr. Morel is hospitalized after a mine accident, Paul proclaims himself the man of the house and dreams of living with his mother in a cottage, when his father dies.

However, this incestuous relationship would be an ignominy in the society, therefore Paul’s emotions are repressed and it finds an outlet in his pursuit of a suitable life partner for him. It turns out that the presence of his mother figure is all-prevalent and thus, it becomes difficult for him to forge any meaningful relationship. His first attempt is with the pastoral, Miriam, whom he considers more spiritually-inclined, although he loves spending time with her at her farm. Mrs. Morel is envious of Miriam, possibly due to the reason that she sees competition in the latter as she is also independent and free-willed. Mrs. Morel admonishes Paul when he returns late from the Leivers farm and he is forced to cloak his relationship with Miriam as that of friends. Paul feels torn between Miriam and his mother, and resents Miriam because she makes his mother suffer. When Paul tries to confess his love for Miriam to his mother, she hugs him, cries, and expresses her animosity toward Miriam, who she believes will take Paul from her.Her interaction with Paul is full of intimate physical contact. She says "I've never had a husband, not really." Paul's desire that she not sleep next to Morel sounds like more than merely a son's concerned view. It also recalls Hamlet’s wish for his mother not to sleep in his uncle’s corrupt sinful sheets. Co-incidentally, Hamlet’s mother bore the name Gertrude, which is Mrs. Morel’s first name. Eventually, Paul decides to abandon Miriam because he realizes that his mother“…was the chief thing to him, the only supreme being.”

Paul takes on Clara Dawes, a middle-aged married woman who has been separated from her husband for years due to some marital tensions. Paul is attracted to Clara’s physicality as opposed to Miriam’s spiritual innocence. It is interesting to note that Mrs. Morel gets on with Clara pretty well, due to the reason that she doesn’t see a rival in her like she did in Miriam. Nevertheless, Clara is akin to a mother-figure for Paul but it is evident that their relationship won’t last long.  Paul gets into a brawl with Clara’s husband and the former beats the later. This is considered to be his repressed energy of eliminating his father coming onto its surface. Later, he makes truce with ailing Baxter and it can be interpreted as his guilt operating for killing his father figure. This relationship with Clara also ends as she cannot promise marriage to Paul and hence he has to leave her too.

Therefore, Mrs. Morel has an upper-hand control on Paul and its consequences are far-reaching on him. Paul discusses love with his mother and says that perhaps something is the matter with him and that he can’t love. She says that he has not met the right woman, and he replies that he will never meet the right woman while she is alive. This is prophetic. Not only does Paul never forge any relationship, his future also remains bleak.

A final problematization of the Oedipus complex is when Paul gives an overdose of morphia as anaesthesia to end his ailing mother’s sufferings on her death-bed. Paul says that her mother’s control over him is even strong on her death-bed: “And she looks at me, and she wants to stay with me . . . She’s got such a will, it seems as if she would never go - never!”

Even though he says he wishes she would die, Paul’s strong bond to his mother remains. He feels as though a part of him were dying also. After she dies, Paul still feels this connection: “Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go.”When Paul visits Mrs. Morel's body again at night, his near-necrophiliac kissing and stroking reveals his pent-up desires. He wants her to be "young again" not only so she can be a youthful mother but the ideal partner Paul could not find in Miriam or Clara.

Even after death, the echo of his mother’s love remains in Paul’s life. Paul doesn’t desire a sacrificial marriage like that of Miriam or a sensual affair like that of Clara. He wants someone like his mother who would claim him strongly with a love smothering, jealous and destructive. Paul says of his mother that, “She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her.” His future without his mother is described as having an artificial feel of freedom and hope in the image of the city’s "gold phosphorescence."

REFERENCES

·         Lawrence, D H. Sons and Lovers. London: Penguin, 2012. Print.

·         Ananthi, M. "The Oedipal overtones in D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers" The Dawn Journal 3.1 (2014). Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://thedawnjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/21-Ananthi-Devaraj.pdf>.

·         SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Sons and Lovers.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.