Sons and Lovers

Gertrude competes with her son Paul for the mantle of the novel’s protagonist. Her perspective is favored in many of the earlier chapters in Sons and Lovers, but the death of her son William signifies a shift in the narrative perspective that allows Paul to take over. The death of William is a defining moment in Gertrude’s life, a capstone to the repeated tragedies that she has suffered. From an early age, Gertrude was an ambitious woman. Though she grew up in a society with limited opportunities for women, she sought to improve and educate herself. She was well-read and enjoyed discussions of profound subjects. When she met Walter Morel, however, she was charmed by a man who was the complete opposite of everyone else in her life. The rough, charming, likable young Walter thrilled her. He introduced an element of excitement into her life that was enough for her to fall in love with him. Very quickly after the marriage, however, she discovered that Walter was not the man she thought him to be. Once a teetotaler, he began to drink heavily. Though he swore to her that he owned his house and furniture, Gertrude discovered that he was deeply in debt to his mother. Once she has children, however, Gertrude cannot bring herself to leave Walter. She stays to be with the children and settles into a life of quiet resentment directed toward her husband, punctuated only by brief reunions that result in further pregnancies.

Each pregnancy is a moral conundrum for Gertrude. She hates her abusive husband and his dependency on alcohol, and so she fears the prospect of bringing a child into such a household. She is utterly devoted to William, as he is to her, and this bond of affection becomes her justification for having more children. With each child, the moral quandary diminishes. Each child becomes an opportunity for Gertrude to experience the love and ambition that she feels has been denied to her by Walter. The children become her chance to correct her life, even if they must deal with Walter at the same time. Gertrude concludes that she is justified in bringing children into a broken home because her extreme affection will make up for the deficit of love that they experience from their father. At first, William is the primary focus of Gertrude’s love. William is the prototype for a type of devoted love that she later replicates and exceeds with Paul. William eventually grows up, and he is distracted from his mother’s love by other women and the lure of London. Gertrude resents William’s girlfriend and dislikes his absence from the family home. Her resentment, she believes, is justified when William falls sick and spends days alone in a room with no one to care for him. William dies, and, with him, a small part of Gertrude dies as well. She is only revived when Paul, suffering from a similar sickness, survives. She then finds a new purpose in her life by devoting herself to Paul as she once did to William.

As Paul matures, his relationship with Miriam makes Gertrude worry that he is following a similar path to William. She ruthlessly polices his affections, manipulating his emotions so that he feels that he can never truly devote himself to another woman while his mother is still alive. Gertrude is jealous that anyone else should enjoy Paul’s affection; the intensity of her love changes Paul’s understanding of what love should be, so neither the physical nor the psychological love he receives from Clara or Miriam can ever measure up to that offered by his mother. Gertrude casts a long shadow over Paul’s life and, in doing so, creates a boundary between Paul and the rest of the world. She traps him inside her affections, keeping them to herself. Only with her passing is Paul able to comprehend a life beyond the love of his mother.

Miriam is a local girl. She grows up on a farm near the Morel house, suffering under the cruel regime of her bullying older brothers. Paul meets Miriam when they are both teenagers, and, very quickly, a bond develops between them. Miriam is introduced to the novel through her literary tastes. She is well-read enough that she casts herself in the role of the heroine in the story of her life. This romantic view of the world alludes to Miriam’s tendency toward emotional intensity, showing a likeness to Paul when it comes to The Immediacy of Emotion. When she experiences anything, she does so in an intense manner. Whether cupping a flower in her hand or spending time with Paul, she feels a need to experience the strongest possible version of any emotion. This love of intense but abstract emotion contrasts with Miriam’s comparative dislike of physical sensations. To Miriam, love is an abstract idea that can be debated back and forth. When she and Paul begin to fall in love, she resists his desire to physically love her because this form of love is alien to her. Instead, she loves him in an intellectual and intense manner, causing him to eventually resent the manner of her love because he feels as though she is trying to own him. To Miriam, this physical love is a sacrifice, an act in which she loses a part of herself to gain more of Paul’s intellectual self.

The deep intellectual connection between Miriam and Paul transcends their various tragedies and travails. They do have a physical relationship, but, as Miriam foresaw, their relationship ends soon after. Miriam remains in Paul’s life; he can never quite abandon her because she has seen into his soul unlike anyone else, even his mother. The connection between the pair endures because Miriam believes that she is the only person who comprehends the true, emotional version of Paul. She knows that this will bring him back to her. At the same time, however, her knowledge of his character means that she knows that they can never be happy together. The same intellectual intimacy that binds them together is what reveals to her that they will only make each other miserable. Rather than dooming them to a miserable marriage—like Gertrude and Walter’s—Miriam refuses his final, desperate romantic overtures. She turns down Paul’s final proposal, as she knows that they will only obliterate one another’s happiness. Ultimately, the bond between Miriam and Paul is so intense and so profound that it is not feasible. When she comes to recognize this, the refusal of his love becomes another sacrifice in which she forgoes the romantic idea of her ideal lover.