Analyse the character and
personality of Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers.
Introduction: Paul
Morel, a coal miner’s son in D. H. Lawrence's Sons
and Lovers (1913) whose mother has great ambitions
for him, was
‘caught between two worlds' quite early in life. As a result of discord and
strife between his parents, the home environment was uncongenial and agonizing,
and this put an excessive emotional strain on the growing child. He was pale
and sickly, and had frequent fits of depression and melancholy, and would weep
without cause. The father would come home drunk and would often give a black
eye to the mother. Paul would lie awake in his bed attentive, listening to
every sound, praying for the safety of his mother and guessing as to what his
father will do next. The silence terrified him all the more, for it seemed to
him to be the silence of blood. The result was that became neurotic
hypersensitive introvert, who shrank form least contact with the outside world.
Lacking Responsibility
and Unsatisfactory Emotional Adjustment: The more Paul grows
up, the more he hides his face. it is torture for him to go to the co-operative
office to look up the 'wants column' in news papers, or to go out to collect
his father's wages. It is his mother who launches him into life and takes him
to Jordon’s factory’s he goes through agonies of self-consciousness, he remains
tongue-tied, cannot write or answer a single question, and it is sheer good
luck that he is appointed. One feels that life is too large for this neurotic
and he will never be able to shoulder the responsibilities of his life. As the
matters get more worse, his mother turns to him for emotional fulfillment and
makes him husband-substitute. Excessive mother-love makes him incapable of
reaching satisfactory emotional adjustments with any other woman. All his life
he wants to be mothered, taken care of and wants some one to shoulder the
responsibility of his life. The feelings of sincerity and fear over-power him
so much so that his is the mother the very pole and axis of his life.
