kecir dh lawrence

DEMOCRATIC AND POPULAR REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA MINISTRY OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

MENTOURI UNIVERSITY CONSTANTINE

FACULTY OF LETTERS AND LANGUAGES

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the magister degree in civilization and literature

Option: literature

By: Mrs. Aicha KECIR Supervisor: Pr Hacene SAADI Board of examiners :

Chair man : Pr. Lamine KOULOUGHLI University of Constantinei

Member : Mr. Zouaoui AGGABOU University of Oum El Bouaghii

May 2007

The Symbolic Significance of the women's role in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

N° :……………..

Série :…………..

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Acknowledgment I would like to convey my heart-felt thanks to my supervisor Pr. Hacene Saadi for his help and intellectual advices which permitted me to achieve this research. I am particularly indebted to Mr. Abdelhak Nemouchi who helped me and whose scrupulous engagement with this thesis merits my special thanks. My greatest thanks go to Pr. Lamine Kouloughli who accepted to preside the jury. My thanks go also to Mr. Zouaoui Aggabou who has read and judged this work. I wish to extend thanks to Dr. Donald Mackenzie from the University of Glasgow who enthusiastically approved my topic and encouraged me in my first steps. I have benefited a lot from his advices and documentary support. My thanks go also to Pr. Claude Grimal from the University of Paris VIII (Villetaneuse) for being interested in my work and whose intellectual advices were highly relevant. Her orientations were a precious help. Finally I am grateful to Mentouri University of Constantine for the help provided during my work on the thesis.




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ABSTRACT

Keywords: Women as realistic and mythical symbols, in D.H.Lawrence Sons and Lovers

The primary aim of this paper is to question the situation of a man's

relationship with the women of his life. We ask ourselves exactly what is the role of women in D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers? What do women symbolize for him and what is their mythical importance within that symbolic framework in terms of our current literary analysis?

What we already know is that a significant number of novels are simply books

by male novelists with a great degree of pretension to be first-hand accounts of women's lives. However, the difference as will be discovered within this work is that D. H. Lawrence actually speaks with a great deal of credibility because much of his work was aided by the real women in his life. He often read and adapted some of their writings from journals and notes in order to achieve more realism than previously thought possible. We realize that it is within the world of women that D.H. Lawrence seems to be in his true element and our task here was simply to understand why.

This work will approach the question in three ways. In the first chapter, we will begin with a brief survey on some women's

importance in the author's life including their literary collaboration in the writing of Sons and Lovers. The second chapter will deal with an intensive psychological analysis of the three most important women in the novel- Mrs. Morel, Miriam and Clara- and particularly the inner meanings of their close relationship with Paul Morel. Finally, in the third chapter we will perform a brief, but, calculated mythological study women in general especially concerning their use as mythological symbols in Sons and Lovers.

The Conclusion reviews the major points of the analysis and raises the

question of where we can situate Paul Morel's true relationship within the novel and where the author became in his later works. The method used in analyzing Sons and Lovers is temptingly psychoanalytical though we tried to also remain somehow descriptive. No doubt, women in D.H. Lawrence's novels is a subject which has witnessed an impressive growth of literature- D. H. Lawrence being one of the greatest and one of the most controversial writers of the 20th Century- thereby, making this work not something incredibly new to the field but hopefully at least a modest contribution in the understanding of one of the most fascinating writers of all times.




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Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………..………………..….2-8 Chapter One………………………………………….………….……….9-26

D. H. Lawrence: a biographical survey

1- What does woman represent for D. H. Lawrence? 2- What is Jessie Chamber's literary co-operation in Sons and Lovers? 3- Frieda: Lawrence's Woman and collaborator in Sons and Lovers 4- What is the novel about?

Chapter Two: …………………………………………………………...26-72

The Psychological Study

1- Miriam: Lover as Mother 2- Clara: The Sexual Initiator 3- Mrs. Morel: Mother as Lover

Chapter Three: …………………………………………………………73-90

The Mythological Study

1-Woman: Her Mythological Importance 2- Use of Myth in Sons and Lovers

Conclusion………………………………………………………………91-94 Bibliography……………………………………………………………95-98




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"A las! The lov e of w omen! I t is know n

To be a lov ely and a fear ful thing."

Lord Byron (Don Juan, Canto 2, 199)




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Introduction

1- General aim and structure of the dissertation

Introducing any of D.H. Lawrence’s works is a delicate and highly demanding task. Much critical work has appeared on Lawrence as a writer, an artist, a novelist and a critical thinker whose essays are a complex mixture of philosophical and psychoanalytical stances, and our feeling is that everything worth saying has already been said. We have no pretension to discuss the writer’s work as art or aesthetic creation but through this dissertation we try to understand his meaning, in other words to see what Lawrence wants to say in his novel Sons and Lovers. Is his true life somehow to be reflected in that novel? That is the question we will attempt to answer to. Sons and Lovers has always been Lawrence’s most popular novel, and in analyzing it we try to trace in its contours the shape of Lawrence’s own experience of the world, exploring the hypothetical idea that the novel is about his problems, his own personal problems. Our first concern is with the importance of women in Sons and Lovers, and consequently the aim of this dissertation is to question the situation of a man’s relationship with the women of his life. Our primary objectives in this study are: first to ask ourselves exactly what is the role of women in Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers? A subsequent question can be stated as follows: what do women symbolize for Lawrence? Finally we will trace women’s mythical importance within that symbolic framework in terms of our current literary analysis. The two above- stated questions constitute the hypothetical approach to the novel and the writer.

The present research will approach the questions in three ways. In the first chapter we will begin with a brief survey on some women’s important roles in Lawrence’s life including their literary collaboration in the writing of Sons and Lovers. Indeed, we all know that a significant number of novels are simply books by male novelists with a great degree of pretension to be first hand accounts of women’s lives. However, the difference, as will be




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discussed within this work, is that Lawrence actually speaks with a great deal of credibility because much of his work was aided by the real women in his life. He often read and adapted some of their writings from journals and notes in order to achieve more realism than previously thought possible. In a word, it is within the world of women that Lawrence seems to find refuge and to be in his true element, and our task here was simply to understand why. The second chapter will deal with an intensive psychological analysis of the three most important women in the novel and particularly the inner meanings of their close relationships with Paul Morel. Mrs Morel, the mother, who will be analyzed as lover, Miriam, the lover who proved rather to be considered as the symbolic mother, and finally Clara who appears as the sexual initiator. Finally in the third chapter we will perform a brief but calculated mythological study women in general especially concerning their use as mythological symbols in Sons and Lovers. We will see, for example the mythical importance of Mrs Morel, the terrifying mother, through the Greek myth of Cybele. The conclusion reviews the major points of the analysis and raises the question of where we can situate Paul Morel’s true relationship within the novel and where the author became in his later works. 2- Theoretical background Focusing particularly upon Sons and Lovers we have tried to approach Lawrence as an artist, a novelist, an innovator and a critical writer influenced by psychoanalysis, and to treat his fiction as a coherent response to personal circumstances.

Is Lawrence an artist? If we accept the view that the great purpose of art is to reveal to man what he is, in this case Lawrence’s literary genius is simply supreme. As a creative writer, Lawrence’s greatness as an artist is a fact admitted by all his critics, in particular by Aldous Huxley who wrote in his introduction to The Letters of D.H. Lawrence that “Lawrence was above all a great literary artist… one of the greatest English writer of any time.”(1)




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As a great novelist, the changes which Lawrence wrought in the novel form, especially in characterization and narrative structure prove that his vision as an artist is fully realized. And if his contemporaries could not follow him, they at least admit his genius. For F.R. Leavis “to appreciate Lawrence is to revise one’s criteria of intelligence and one’s notion of it,” and he adds “that the novels that succeed Women in love are not achieved enough to be wholly impersonal works of art because something like the involvement of the author is evident in them.”(2). And in Sons and Lovers Lawrence’s involvement is so evident that as readers we too feel obliged to be involved. So for Lawrence the novel is really a work of art because it contains no didactic absolutes and it is in this context that Lawrence recommends his readers to “trust the tale never the artist”. Lawrence’s originality also resides in his characterization. In fact it would be hard to find out a major character in any of his novels who is not, in some way, Lawrence himself. His heroes and heroines are not presented to the readers as models to be accepted or admired, what Lawrence advocates is totally included in the structure of the novel and in no case is he concerned with forcing our sympathies for or against any particular character. So, as a novelist, Lawrence presents to us dramatised experience so organised that it helps us see ourselves and the world we live in more clearly. But if he tells us what we are or could be in no case does he offer solutions or cures for mankind’s ills.

What does make Lawrence an innovator? Answering to the works of Freud in Fantasia of the unconscious and Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, Lawrence claimed that “there is only one sin in life, and that is the sin against life.” For him real living is the only truth. And that “the problem of truth is: how can we most deeply live?”(3) In fact Lawrence’s innovation is in his philosophy about life. For him man can do nothing with his life except live it, in other words every man has to be himself, his real spontaneous self. According to Lawrence with a certain control every deep desire can be completely fulfilled and the only thing that is really important is life. Life is nothing but man alive. And it is because Lawrence




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Chapter sources cited

1- Letters of D.H. Lawrence (ed. Aldous Huxey, London; William

Heineman, 1932) p.107

2- Leavis, F.R. D.H. Lawrence: Novelist (Chatto & Windus,

London, 1955, p.147)

3- Moore, Harry T. The Collected Letters of D.H. Lawrence (ed.

Harry T. Moore, Heinemann, 1962) p.826.

4- Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, ed. Edward

D. MacDonald (1978) p.296.

5- Moore, Harry T. The Collected Letters of D.H. Lawrence, 2 vols,

1962, p.1047)




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CHAPTER ONE : D.H Lawrence : a biographical survey

“WOMAN, German woman or American

woman or every other sort of woman …was

something frightening. As every man knows.”

D.H. Lawrence.

1- What does woman represent for Lawrence?

Lawrence was obviously affected by the women he met in his own life: whether it was

his mother Lydia Beardsall, his friends Jessie Chambers, Louie Burrows, Agnes Holt, Helen

Corke, Alice Dax, or ultimately Frieda Von Richtofen and her sisters. The comments about

these women in his letters give interesting clues to his feelings about them and we realize the

depth of those feelings from the women he portrayed in his novels. It is obvious that his

fictional women did not come out of thin air. They are a composite of his own

ideas, the ideas of the times, and the expression of those ideas as lived by the real women that

he loved.

Through our readings of Lawrence’s work, we realize that the roles played by women

in his fiction are of various types and yet are all important to our understanding of Lawrence

himself. We find the “suffragist”, the “dreaming woman”, the “dominating female” and other

contemporary sexual stereotypes in his work. In addition to the above mentioned types, we

meet in Sons and Lovers the “unsatisfied woman” because the most important three women in

the novel, are highly frustrated and never seem to realize any satisfaction in their lives.

Nevertheless, all of them seek to escape the narrow bounds of their existence, either through

education, religion, political activity or through men.

The frustration of these women certainly has a common source. To explain this




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further, it is crucial to note that during the latter decades of the 19th century and the first

decades of the 20th century, women’s education expanded faster than the social opportunities

which were available to them, their political awareness increased while they remained

politically impotent which of course all contributed to their rising self-induced inner conflict

because of their seemingly perpetual low status in society. These contradictions in the social

condition of women developed during the decade before the war into a militant and violent

feminist movement.

In Sons and Lovers, it is Clara who symbolizes the current tide of feminist revolts

which relates to his early work using young women who consistently expressed feminist or

near feminist views and ideas as to their status or their expectation of life. Their interest was

like Clara’s, the constant search for responsibility and independence. Feminism in this period

emphasized equal rights, primarily in the recognition as human beings rather than just as

sexual objects to be used at every whim of man. One of Lawrence’s key credits in the novel is

his concern and support towards feminism especially of the idea that woman had an equal

right to work outside the home.

Many of the women Lawrence knew well when he was young, were like him,

working-class or lower-middle class in origin and training or working as teachers. Among

these women we have Jessie Chambers, Louie Burrows, Agnes Holt and Helen Corke. Even

his own younger sister Ada became a teacher. It was not an accident that he knew such

women, they were from his “milieu”. These women, unlike their mothers, belonged to the

generation which could acquire a measure of freedom and independence from their career as

well as personal and professional status. They were in many ways the first lower-middle class

and working class independent women.

It is striking, however, that Lawrence when using characters drawn from the real

women in his life in his fiction, ignored, almost completely, their professional careers as well

as their specific social roles. An example of this can be seen in Sons and Lovers, in the




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character of Miriam, which closely represents Jessie Chambers, whom in real life was a

teacher which was crucially important to her and to her break away from her family.

However, Miriam in the novel has no career. Miriam, in fact, has no job at all until the very

last chapter of the novel, when it is mentioned that she is earning her own living, is “going to

the farming college and will probably be kept on as a teacher there.” (S.L p.504) In other

words, her career as a teacher is represented as a minor portion or outcome of her life rather

than as a force by which she lived as freely as was possible for her in the period in which she

lived.

Clara, too, whom was drawn from at least three originals among Lawrence’s best

friends, has a job, but it is a manual one in a Nottingham factory: in no sense can such a job

liberate her! This is illustrated perfectly when she returns to her husband Baxter, at the end of

the novel and as they go together to Sheffield, she agreeably gives up her job. It is as though,

she fails in realizing her role as the feminist icon of the story easily and willingly which

hardly seems to be true of the real life women that she represented.

Nevertheless, it is also worth noticing that Lawrence wrote about women with great

conviction and credibility. According to S. Macleod :

“ It is in the world of close emotional and domestic relationships, the world of

women that he seems to be in his true element : On firm ground, but

following the thread blindly and intuitively through the labyrinth of

indefinable self. And it is Lawrence’s women rather than his sadly incomplete

and ineffectual men who compel belief.”(1)

It should be remarked that it was discovered through our study of Sons and Lovers that

Lawrence used women as actual or potential collaborators and he used their writing as source

material especially related to their personal writings such as journals. This is a particular

technique of Lawrence and reveals his constant collaboration with women and his reliance on

their writing which remained a continual feature of his method throughout all his novels.




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Thus, Harry T. Moore’s writing of the “Miriam Papers” (notes by Jessie Chambers which

formed the basis for scenes in Sons and Lovers) says:

“Although Lawrence had taken from the feminine elements in his own nature a

remarkable intuitive understanding of women, he would sometimes ask the

women he knew to write down what they had felt or possibly would feel in

certain situations: in this way various women provided him with some of his

‘sources’ ”(2)

Here, we can firmly establish that Lawrence solicited notes and reminiscences from Jessie

Chambers, Louie Burrows, Frieda and others and it is even proved that sometimes he took

over his women’s manuscripts and rewrote them as it happened once or twice with Helen

Corke and Mollie Skinner. For a writer like Lawrence, what he did was something very usual,

because it is known that a novelist may make use of others to check details or provide facts.

However this, on the other hand, seems to show that Lawrence must have thought it crucial

that female experience should find expression in the novel and he never gives the impression

of consciously wishing to repress women’s writing. His letters to Catherine Carswell are a

sufficient proof to show us his forceful encouragement to the women he knew, in their own

literary work.

We have seen that Lawrence sometimes used women as collaborators, but women as

source of inspiration have a particular importance in Lawrence’s work, even though the fact is

not specific to Lawrence because it is now generally acknowledged that the history of the

novel as a literary form is in many ways closely bound up with the history of women. To an

extent which had no real parallel in other genres, where women had been as conspicuous as

the authors, the readers and the subject matter of novels. It can be said that Lawrence has to

an unusual degree organized his work specifically around women’s experience.

A significant number of early English novels are books by men with the pretension




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that they are in some way first-hand accounts of women’s lives. The orientation of the male

novelist of Lawrence’s period is complex because as Carolyn Heilburn has noted,

“For a period of nearly fifty years such major writers as Ibsen, James, Shaw,

Lawrence, Forster were to find that, at the height of their powers, it was a

woman hero who best met the requirements of their imaginations”(3)

Carolyn Heilburn also defines the “woman hero” as specifically the creation of male writers

who:

“Found in the predicament of modern woman, in the peculiar tension that

exists between her apparent freedom and her actual relegation to a constrained

destiny, a metaphor for a more general existential dilemma.”(4)

Concerning Lawrence, what motivated him to cooperate and collaborate with women in his

literary work? The answer is in his early letters to Louie Burrows, where he told her what he

thought of her, Jessie Chambers and himself as all in some sense good young writers. In one

of them he says:

“I write to you as a would-be aspirant after literature, for I know you are

such… I think you will do well. You are brighter than Jessie, more readable,

but you are not so powerful. You will doubtless succeed far better than I who

am so wilful… Let me see what you do- I am all interest.”(5)

After Lawrence became engaged to Louie Burrows, in December 1910, her involvement in

his literary work lessened. By this time Lawrence was writing Paul Morel later to become

Sons and Lovers, and his crucial literary collaborator was Jessie Chambers, at that time his

relationship with Jessie Chambers was crucial not only in his psychological but also his

literary development. His reliance on her was so great that once, during one of their many

quarrels, Lawrence tried to persuade Jessie to allow him to marry a woman who would be a

purely physical wife to him, while continuing his intellectual relationship with her.




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Chapter Sources Cited

1- Sheila Macleod, Lawrence’s Men and Women, (ed. William

Heinemann Ltd, 1985) p.95.

2- Harry T. Moore, The Collected Letters of D.H. Lawrence, ed.

Harry T. Moore, Heinemann 1962 Letter to Arthur Macleod, 2

June 1914, Letters Vol. 2, p.181.

3- Carolyn G. Heilburn, Towards Androgyny: Aspects of Male and

Female in Literature(Victor gollancz, London, 1973), p.49.

4- Ibid; p.p.93-94.

5- Letter to Louie Burrows, September 1906, Letters, Vol. 1, (ed.

James T. Boulton, Cambridge, 1979), p.30.

6- Jessie Chambers, D.H. Lawrence: A Personal Record, E.T.

(Jessie Chambers), cape, 1935; cass, 1965, p.141.

7- Ibid; p.190.

8- Ibid; p.192.

9- Ibid; 193.

10- Ibid; p.p.197-198.

11- Ibid; p.200.

12- Harry T. Moore, The priest of Love, (revised

edition,Heinemann, London, 1974), p.103.

13- Frieda Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind…, (Heinemann, London,

1935), p.13.

14- Achsah Brewster, D.H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and

Correspondence, Earl and Achsah Brewster, seckes, 1934, p.41.

15- D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, p.192.

16- D.H. Lawrence, Foreword to Sons and Lovers.




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"God made the woman for the man,

And for the good in increase of the world. "

A. Tennyson (Edwin Morris)




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CHAPTER TWO : The psychological study

“ in her first passion woman loves her lover,

In all the others all she loves is love.”

Lord Byron ( Don Juan, Canto3)

1- Miriam : Lover as mother

Miriam’s nature is developed throughout the novel on the psychological as well as the

mythological level. From the psychological level, Miriam’s character is more interesting and

complex than either Paul Morel or the narrator will allow in their description of her. Miriam is

depicted as a girl who prefers the life of the imagination to the mundane aspects of everyday

reality. She loves reading books and has a pantheistic worship of the natural world. These are

among the numerous aspects of her personality.

In part I, Miriam is quietly introduced, in the natural, harmonious setting of the farm:

"Mother and son went into the small railed garden, where there was a scent of

red gillivers. By the open door were some flowery loaves, put out to cool. A

hen was just coming to peck them. Then, in the doorway suddenly appeared a

girl in a dirty apron. She was about fourteen years old, had a rosy dark face, a

bunch of short black curls, very fine and free and dark eyes; shy, questioning, a

little resentful of the strangers, she disappeared" (1)

This aspect of Miriam is depicted by Julian Moynahan as,

“revelations of Miriam’s diminished vitality, her tendency to shrink back from

life, whether she’s making love, feeding chickens, trying to cope with Mrs

Morel’s dislike of her, or merely looking at flowers”. (2)

Miriam emerges in the novel, at first, as a kind of saint, very much her mother’s

daughter, the child of her heart “a person who seeks unflinchingly the sadomasochistic




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psychological flagellation that Paul feels increasingly compelled to dole on.” (3) The more he

torments her, the more she suffers, the more he is drawn to her. It is not, as Lawrence projects

it, a healthy, or even a happy relationship. For example, we can illustrate this through the

following passage,

“often, when he went again into the kitchen, Mrs. Leivers would look at him

reproachfully, saying, Paul, don’t be so hard on Miriam. She may not be quick,

but I’m sure she tries”.“I can’t help it,” he said rather pitiably. “I go off like it”.

“You don’t mind me, Miriam do you? he asked of the girl later. “No”, she

reassured him in her beautiful deep tones –“ no, I don’t mind”...It was strange

that no one else made him in such fury. He flared against her. One he threw the

pencil in her face. There was a silence. She turned her face slightly aside. “I

didn’t _____” he began, but got no further, feeling weak in all his bones. She

never reproached him or was angry with him. He was often cruelly ashamed. (4)

In this scene, Miriam’s silence and submission, as Lawrence establishes early in the

novel, seemed but a variant example of her usually well concealed sense of superiority and

pride, her sense of her own differentness, traits which she shares with Paul Morel. If she

resists him through argument or anger, one of them would triumph over the other, or the

situation would end in a draw. By submitting to Paul’s irrational cruelty, Barbara A. Miliaras

believes that,

"She fares far better than she could in a rational discussion because she

intuitively seems to be aware that in the spiritual debasement he suffers as a

result of his physical cruelty, she will always emerge the victor".(5)

Then to reflect Miriam’s “mistiness”, Lawrence goes into describing her remoteness from life.

He says,

"Her great companion was her mother. They were both brown-eyed, and




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inclined to be mystical, such women as treasure religion inside them, breathe it

in their nostrils, and see the whole of life in a mist thereof. So to Miriam,

Christ and God made one great figure, which she loved tremblingly and

passionately when a tremendous sunset burned out the western sky, and Ediths,

and Lucys, and Rowenas, Brian de Bois Guilberts, Rob Roys, and Guy

Mannerings, rustled the sunny leaves in the morning, or sat in her bedroom

aloft, alone, when it snowed. That was life to her. For the rest, she drudged in

the house, which work she would not have minded had not her clean red floor

been mucked up immediately by the trampling fram-boots of her brothers…

She fought with her brothers, whom she considered brutal louts; and she held

not her father in too high esteem because he did not carry any mystical ideals

cherished in his heart, but only wanted to have as easy a time as he could, and

his meals when he was ready for them." (6)

Miriam is a girl who neglects and ignores her physical being,

"Her beauty which was that of a shy, wild, quiveringly sensitive thing seemed

nothing to her. Even her soul, so strong for rhapsody, was not enough. She

must have something to reinforce her pride, because she felt different from

other people".(7)

At the same time, her misty emotions lead her towards a desire to dominate Paul.

Miriam’s attempt to spiritualize Paul, her attempt to subdue his sensual side, is not by any

means a purely unconscious act of will; rather it is part of a subtle plan to feel up her own

feelings of vacancy and ambivalence. Desperately seeking some form of compensation for

such feelings, “she lovingly smothers Paul with the compact aggressiveness and fixed will of

a ruthless hawk going after its helpless prey “(8). The above depicted feelings and the strong

desire to dominate Paul are clear, for example, Lawrence states,

"Then he was so ill, and she felt he would be weak. Then she would be stronger




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than he. Then she could love him. If she could be mistress of him in his

weakness, take care of him, if he could depend on her, if she could, as it were,

have him in her arms, how she would love him!"(9).

We see that Paul, quickly succumbs to her influence, unconsciously yields more and

more to Miriam’s consuming spirituality, teaching her foreign languages, tutoring her in

arithmetic, showing her this and that, telling her the secrets of his heart, sacrificing more and

more of himself to the vacuity of her being. As their friendship deepens, Miriam’s influence

clearly takes on muse-like proportions. The fact is that Paul needs Miriam for his true

development. This is revealed through the following passage,

"A sketch finished, he always wanted to take it to Miriam. Then he was

stimulated into knowledge of the work he had produced unconsciously. In

contact with Miriam, he gained insight, his vision went deeper. From his

mother he drew the life-warmth, the strength to produce; Miriam urged his

warmth into intensity like a white-light." (10)

Miriam is often grimbling about the limitations of being a girl. Miriam, who is little more than

a servant to her numerous brothers, tells Paul that she does not want to live at home -a fact

which she has difficulty in comprehending because she does not like her lot as a girl,

“I am all day cleaning what the boys make just as bad in five minutes, I don’t

want to be at home”. “What do you want then? I want to do something. I want

a chance like anybody else. Why should I, because I am a girl, be kept at home

and not allowed to be anything? What chance have I? Chance of what? Of

knowing anything – of learning, of doing anything. It’s not fair, because I am a

woman. She seemed very bitter, Paul wondered because in his own home,

Annie was almost glad to be a girl."(11)




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"My little love, my dearest,

Twice you have issued me,

Once from your soul, to be

Free of all hearts, my darling,

Of each heart’s entrance free "

D.H. Lawrence (Pansies 1929)




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3- Mrs Morel: Mother as lover

In a letter to the poet Rachel Annand Taylor, D.H Lawrence provides her with a highly

subjective, as well as highly mythic history of his parents married life:

“I will tell you. My mother was a clever, ironical, delicately moulded person of

good, old burgher descent. She married below her. My father was dark, rudy,

with a fine laugh. He is a coal miner. He was one of sanguine temperament,

warm and hearty, but unstable: he lacked principle, as my mother would have

said. He deceived her and lied to her. She despised him- he drank. Their

married life has been one carnal, bloody fight. I was born hating my father: as

early as ever I can remember, I shivered with horror when he touched me. He

was very bad before I was born. This has been a kind of bond between me and

my mother we have loved each other, almost with a husband and wife love, as

well as filial and maternal. We knew each other by instinct."

She said to my aunt about me:

“But it has been different with us. He has seemed to be part of me.” – And that

is the real case. We have been like one, so sensitive to each other that we never

needed words. It has been rather terrible and had made me, in some respects

abnormal. I think this peculiar fusion of soul (don’t think me high – falutin)

never comes twice in a life- time-it doesn’t seem natural. When it comes it

seems to distribute one’s consciousness far abroad from oneself, and one

understands! I think no one has got “Understanding” except through love. Now

my mother is nearly dead, and I don’t quite know how I am.” (68)

And then goes to explain to her his relationship with his mother and adds “Nobody can

have the soul of me. My mother has it, and nobody can have it again. Nobody can come into

my very self again, and breathe me like an atmosphere.” No doubt that the framework within




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which Lawrence works in Sons and Lovers is his literary response to the biographical

conditions of his life.

In Sons and Lovers, Miriam threatens Mrs. Morel’s domination on Paul but in fact Mrs.

Morel’s fear is that Paul’s friendship with Miriam will effect his transformation into a man,

over whom she can no longer have such relentless influence and power. She fears Miriam’s

liberation of Paul’s spirit because she senses their spiritual and emotional affinities and is

inherently jealous of her possible displacement in Paul’s affections by this young girl. Paul

has an enormous capacity to love and be loved. Mrs. Morel wants to reserve that abundance

exclusively for herself. In no way does she wish to share it with Miriam.

The antagonism between Mrs. Morel and Miriam in the novel continues to grow

unabated, as Paul turns more and more to Miriam for spiritual understanding and

encouragement. Miriam, despite her potential power, is too weak to struggle successfully

against the potent weapons Mrs. Morel hold over her son. Against the means which Mrs. Morel

is prepared to use in her relentless determination to wrest Paul away from her, Miriam really

has no defense. Even Paul is not aware of how to defend himself against his mother’s

determination to retain her control over him.

His mother turns toward Paul as her only remaining hope after William’s death: “I

should have watched the living, not the dead”, she told herself. (SL. p. 140). Paul’s illness in a

way saves his mother. Early in childhood Paul had sensed his mother’s suffering as that of a

brave woman deprived of vital rights:

“It hurt the boy keenly, this feeling about her that she had never had her life’s

fulfilment : and his own incapability to make up to her hurt him with a sense of

impotence, yet made him patiently dogged inside. It was his childish aim.” (69)

Throughout our reading of Sons and Lovers, we notice that Paul and his mother

often behave together as if they were partners and may be interpreted by their




25

readers as actually expressing incestuous desires: whereas in fact Lawrence is

treating them as characters whose

To his mother’s suggestion that he probably hasn’t yet met the right woman, his sharp

response is:

“And, I shall never meet the right woman while you live.”(86)

Shortly afterwards Paul learns his mother has cancer. He attends to his ill mother, knowing

that she is going to die and that the bond, which has till now held them together must break.

So as soon as she has been overcome by death, he falls into a sentimental loverlike

relationship with her. This has been explicitly stated in the instructive exchange between them

on the trip to Lincoln: “why can’t a man have a young mother? What is the old for?” The

final scene between Paul and his mother is definitive:

"She lay like a maiden asleep … She lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her

love. The mouth was a little open, as if wondering from the suffering, but her

face was young, her brow clear and white as if life had never touched it. He

looked again at the eyebrows, at the small, winsome nose a bit on one side. She

was young again. Only the hair as it arched so beautifully from her temples

was mixed with silver, and the two simple plaits that lay on her shoulders were

filigree of silver and brown. She would wake up. She would lift her eyelids.

She was with him still. He bent and kissed her passionately.”(87)

"The sleeping connotations of this make clear the acknowledged fact that Paul was his

mother’s true husband. It is a symbolic picture of the essence of their relationship, but purified

and idealized. The reality is that his mother’s death comes as a blow to him. He feels all

crumpled up and lonely and draws himself together smaller and smaller:

“his mother has really supported his life. He had loved her, they two had, in

fact, faced the world together. Now she was gone and forever behind him was




26

the gap in life, the tear in the veil, through which his life seemed to drifed

slowly, as if he were drawn towards death” (88).

After his mother’s death, at the end of the novel, we remark that Paul’s final rejection

of Miriam represents then his unalterable commitment to his mother and recognition of his

son-lovership. Out of the ashes of his mother’s memory, he will construct his future,

diminished as it must be, but he will never render unto any living woman what he has

irrevocably pledged to the dead: his physical, emotional and spiritual loyalty.




27


1- D.H. Lawrence: Sons & Lovers ( penguin book 1974 ) p. p. 155-

156.

2- Julian Moynahan: The Novels and Tales of D.H. Lawrence (

Princeton, 1963 ) p. 17.

3- Barbara A. Miliaras, Pillar of Flame. The Mythological

Foundations of D.H. Lawrence’s sexual philosophy.( ed. Peter

Lang- New York, 1980 ) p. 134.

4- D.H. Lawrence: Sons & Lovers, p. 194-195.

5- Barbara A.Miliaras, Pillar of Flame. The Mythological

Foundations of D.H. Lawrence’s Sexual Philosophy. ( ed. Peter

Lang, New York 1980 ) p. 136.

6- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers, p. 177-178.

7- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers, p. 178.

8- Leo J. Dorbad, Sexual Balanced Relationships in the Novel of D.H.

Lawrence, ( ed. Peter Lang, New York 1991 )

9- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers p. 178.

10- Ibid, p. 196.

11- Ibid,

12- Ibid, p. 192.

13- Sheila Macleod, Lawrence’s Men & Women,( ed. William

Heinemann Ltd. 1985 ) p. 100.

14- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers. P. 198.

15- Dorothy Von Ghent, The English Novel: Form and Function, (

New York, 1953 ) p. 256




28

16- D.H. Lawrence, Sons &Lovers, p. 199.

17- Ibid, p. 267-268.

18- Ibid, p. 272-273.

19- Ibid, p. 214.

20- John Worthen; D.H. Lawrence, ( ed. Edward Arnold. London

1991 ) p. 27.

21- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers, p.197.

22- John Worthen, D.H. Lawrence, ( ed. Edward Arnold London

1991 ) p. 27.


24- Sheila Macleod, Lawrence’s Men & Women, p. 101.


26- Ibid, p.239-240.

27- Daniel A. Weiss, Oedipus in Nottingham: D.H. Lawrence, (

Seattle, 1962 ) p. 53.


29- Yudhistar, Conflicts in the Novel of D.H. Lawrence, ( ed.

Gliver & Boyd, Edimdurg, 1969 ) p. 89.

30- Leo J. Dorbad, Sexual Balanced Relationships in the Novel of

D.H. Lawrence, p.52-53

31- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers, ( Paul Lang, New York, 1991 )

p. 53.

32- Ibid, p. 350.

33- Ibid, p. 354.

34- Leo J. Dorbad, Sexual Balanced Relationships in the Novel of

D.H. Lawrence, ( ed. Peter Lang, New York, 1991 ) p. 56.

35- John Worthen, D.H. Lawrence, ( ed. Edward Arnold, London

1991 ) p. 28.




29

36- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers, p. 198-199.

37- John Worthen, D.H. Lawrence, p. 29

38- D.H. Lawrence, Sons & Lovers, p.361

39- Ibid, p. 362-363

40- Ibid, p. 426-427

41- Ibid, p. 427

42- Ibid, p. 321

43- Ibid, p. 297

44- Ibid, p. 248

45- Sheila Macleod, Lawrence’s Men & Women, ( ed. William

Heinemann Ltd, 1985 ) p. 107.

46- Anne Smith, Lawrence and Women, ( Vision Press, 1978 ) p.

132.


48- Ibid, p. 361-362.

49- Ibid, p. 363.


53- Sheila Macleod, D.H. Lawrence Men & Women, (Paladin Grafton

Books, London, 1985 ) p. 115.


55- Ibid, p. 283.

56- Ibid, p.323.

57- Ibid, p.430.

58- Leo J. Dorbad, Sexually Balanced Relationships, ( Peter Lang,

New York 1991 ) p.


60- Ibid, p. 430-431.

61- Ibid, p. 431.




30

62- Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, ( Hart-Davis, London 1971 ) p. 254.


64- Ibid, p. 429-430.

65- Hilary Simpson, D.H. Lawrence and Feminism, ( ed. Northern

Illenois, University press, Dekalb

Illenois 1982 ) p. 35.


67- Sheila Macleod, Lawrence’s Men &Women, p. 105.

68- D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Rachel Annand Taylor, 3 December

1910, The Collected letter of D.H.

Lawrence, ( ed. Harry T. Moore London; Melbourne; Toronto:

Heinemann, 1960 ) Vol I, p. 69-70.


70- Ibid, p. 261-262.

71- Jessie Chambers, Personal Record, p. 184.

73- Sheila Macleod, D.H. Lawrence Men & Women, p. 39.


75- Ibid, p. 87.

76- Frank Kermod, Lawrence, ( Richard Clay Ltd, Suffolk 1973 ) p.

20.


78- Yudhishtar, Conflict in the Novel of D.H. Lawrence, ( ed. Olivier

& Boyd. Edinburg 1969 ) p. 87.

79- Ibid, p. 87.

80- D.H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious. P. 125.

81- D.H. Lawrence, Collected Letter, Vol I, p. 161.


83- D.H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, p.165.




31


85- Ibid, p. 420.

86- Ibid, p. 427.

87- Ibid, p.485-486.





32

CHAPTER THREE : The mythological study

“ Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match’d with mine.

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.”

A. Tennyson ( Locksley Hall, 151)

1- Woman : Her mythical importance:

In our imaginary system, the place of the “motherly figure” is fundamental. In all the

civilizations, through all the world, the role played by the “mother” is crucial.

The psychoanalyst represents the mother according to three fundamental archetypes: the

terrible mother, the suffering mother and the loving mother.

The terrible mother forbids her children the access to the adult status, she maintains

them in a permanent infantilism and to a certain degree, she destroys them psychologically

and physically. This type of character, the despotic mother, the mother who martyrizes

tyrannically her son, maintaining him deliberately in an immature state, is a character we very

often find in the novels of the 20th century.

What is sure is that the maternal tyranny is always related to a real or symbolic

absence of the father. We often find a mother’s hatered toward the father because of the

weakness of his personality or because the mother needs him no more.

The suffering mother: the representations of the martyrised maternal love go as far as

to the antiquity. The best example is Niobe changed into a rock and crying her dead daughters

killed by Appolonius. The maternal suffering is due to a double representation whether it

refers to the innocence of the victim or to her guilt. This dualism is taken into account in

modern literature. On one hand we find the mother who sacrifices for the safety




33

of her children or simply for their happiness and on the other hand we have the mother who

pays, even through remorse, for a secret fault. Such an expiation disturbs her behaviour and

her relationship with the others. These are the kinds of tormented relationships Queen

Gertrude and her son Hamlet had in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Generally speaking the fault

to expiate for is “the conjugal infidelity.”

The loving Mother: it is a kind of “protective love” marking for ever the adult who had

been loved in such a way. The loving mothers are characterized by their possessiveness. Their

love for their children is ambiguous, somehow incestuous. The loving mother is also very

close to the “wife-mother”. The former sees her maternal feelings deriving towards love and

the latter sees her love changing into protective tenderness. In both cases their relationships

with the others are ambiguous. Mrs. Morel is this loving mother we find in Sons and lovers.

From the mythological point of view, the mother is also symbolized according to three

fundamental natural elements: sun, earth and water.

Mother as sun: it is with contrast to the moon that the sun conquered its important

place in our “imaginary”. In fact, the moon is characterized by its cyclical repetitions and the

changes in its phases. So by contrast the sun offers an image of stability: day after day it does

not change its shape. The sun has an energetic role, it has a fundamental function for life: it

gives life. Moreover, from its stability and autonomy derive strength, intelligence and

sovereignty. From the Pharaohnic Egypt to the modern age, the sun is represented as a star

with either destructive or purifying virtues.

Mother as earth : here we are referring to the myth of Cybele. According to Greek

mythology, only women were allowed to have access to and to celebrate the mysteries of

agriculture. Core, Persephone and Hecate represent the triad of the moon under its three

phases and was given the name of Demeter, the one who also protects wheat under its three

phases. The rape of Core by the god of Hell, recalls the access of the males to the fields and

their usurpation of the mysteries: this is to show how from the mythical point of view, earth is




34

closely assimilated to the woman. With the Romans, the earth symbolizes fertility itself

since it rules the skies and the sea. Whereas, according to the Biblical book of Genesis, it

is from the same movement that the earth and the firmament had been created. For the

Chinese, the earth is the Yang: passive, obscure, feminine, by opposition to the Yin: the sky-

active, lighting, masculine.

In Literature, the importance given to the earth is fundamental. It is considered in our

“imaginary” as the source of all our wealth. We believe that our true origin is in the earth (we

have just to see the various and innumerable rites of fecundation either with a sacred stone or

a magic cavern) while the mother is just a receptacle:

“I am the earth, your mother whose veins rock were full of joy when from my womb you

came.” (1) The earth symbolizes also strength.

Mother as water: its importance is vital, it is the natural element which gives life itself.

Water first is Nature; it attracts the dreamers and the poets. It gives the image of eternity.

Water fertilizes or purifies, it is our first “milieu”. Water is referred to as rain: “God will come

to us as the rain, as a spring shower which waters the earth.” (Genesis 5) From the Koran we

have:

“Man has to consider from what he has been created: a drop of water spread.” (Surah

YASSIN)

The above mentioned definitions concentrate on the origin of myth. Many other definitions

concentrate on the relation of myth to art and Literature. There are two main extremes: the

first one claims that myth is literature. In 1949, Richard Chase argued that myth is:

“a certain kind of literature, namely that kind in which the characters and

events are instinct with a super-human or quasi-transcendent force of

brilliance, and have above them an aura of unusual and portentous

significance.”(2)




35

Various other scholars, on the other hand, have asserted that myth is not literature.

“Literature is analogous to myth… but is not literature,”(3) writes Stanley Hyman. The main

tendency, however, is to regard myth as a form of narrative or story. Isaac Asimov defines

myth as

“a particular kind of story; one which contains fanciful or supernatural

incidents intended to explain nature or one which deals with the gods and

demons that were invented by man”. (4)

Northrop Frye defines myth as “primarily a certain type of story in which some of the chief

characters are gods and other beings larger that humanity.”(5) And finally, it could easily be

said that Lawrence viewed myth as “descriptive narrative using images”. (6)

Despite the disagreement over the definition of myth there is no reason to deter us

from using myth as a device to explain literature. The fact is that we do not need to wait until

scholars agree on a unified definition of myth. Whether the definition of myth is ritual,

history, or the unconscious does not matter very much to the literary critic. Even the variety of

definitions does not harm literary criticism.

Lawrence did not invent a mythology, but he was deeply concerned with the revival of

the ancient mythic vision. Lawrence’s doctrine was primarily the sum of various elements and

ideas that he derived from other mythologies mixed together with some of his personal

insights. I shall attempt a summary of Lawrence’s doctrine. The most important part of his

doctrine is his animism. Lawrence saw things alive or he personified them as they were

personified by the mythic view. He saw some kind of mystic relation between man and the

cosmos and recognized the sacredness of creation as the mythological cultures did.

For Lawrence, behind nature was the impenetrable mystery, which he approached with

awe, fear and wonder. Thus for him, the creative mystery is both fearful and attractive. God is

eternal and unknowable but man’s relation with Him is continually changing. Although

Lawrence’s vision was basically polytheistic, he conceived a supreme God behind all




36

creation. He recognized the basic unity of all mythologies and advocated a free worship of

local gods. He believed that originally the world had one religion and hence his belief that

“the great myths relate to one another.” (7)

Lawrence was attracted to mythology. As T.S. Eliot said, Lawrence was a “restless

seeker for myths.” (8) He was particularly fascinated by the myths of creation, the myth of the

lost continents, the flood myths, the annual cycle, the myths of the saviour-gods, the Golden

Age, the Fall and the cycles of Creation and many other myths. He believed that the best way

for the salvation of modern man lay in the restoration of the mythological consciousness, a

task to which he devoted himself and his art.

2- Use of myth in Sons and Lovers Although Lawrence uses autobiographical material as the basis of Sons and Lovers,

nevertheless it is possibly the greatest modern dramatization of the Oedipal myth. The

Oedipal complex has been recognized as a universal archetype existing, according to

psychologists and to Lawrence himself, in every age and everywhere. It is the classic

rendition of the tormented and unhealthy mother and son relationship.

Freud asserted that the Oedipal myth is an expression of a permanent and universal

psychical attitude, whereas, Jung saw it as a universal archetype. Harry .T. Moore tells us that

“Lawrence wrote in an unpublished foreword that was meant only for Garnett’s eyes, the

old son-lover was Oedipus. The name of the new one is legion.” (9) Generally speaking, the

Oedipal myth symbolizes the eternal child and signifies the old primordial condition where

the relations between father and son, and mother and son were not clearly defined.

In its category as an Oedipal myth, Sons and Lovers contains most of the elements that can be

found in this universal myth. There is first the antagonism between father and mother,

culminating in the father becoming a stranger or a mere outsider.




37


1- Shelley: Promethus Delivered. Book 7.

2- Richard Chase, Myth as Literature English Institute Essays

(1948), p.10.

3- Stanley Hymon, The Ritual view of Myth and The Mythic, Myth

and Literature, (ed) John B. Vickry ( Lincoln: University of

Nebraska Press, 1966), p.57.

4- Isaac Asimov, Words From the Myths (London: Feber and Feber,

1963), p.12.

5- Northrop Frye, Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology,

(New York: Burlingam: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc; 1963),

p.31.

6- D.H. Lawrence, Phoenix, p.296.

7- D.H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious and Psychoanalysis

and The Unconscious,(Melbourne, London, Toronto: William

Heinemann Ltd; 1961), p.8.

8- T.S. Eliot, After Strange Gods, (New York: Harcourt and

Company Inc; 1934), p.48.

9- Harry T. Moore, The Life and Works of D.H. Lawrence, (London:

Unwin books, 1963), p.74.

10- D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, (Penguin books, 1974),

p.501.

11- Evelyn J. Hinz, Sons and Lovers: The Archetipal Dimension of

Lawrence’s Oedipal Tragedy, The D.H. Lawrence Review,

5(Spring 1972), p.33.




38

12- D.H. Lawrence, Letter to Edward Garnett, January 1913, The

letter of D.H. Lawrence (ed) Aldous Huxley (London: William

Heinemann, 1932), p.97.

13- Evelyn Hinz, p.33.

14- D.H. Lawrence: A Personal Record, p.200.

15- D.H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, p.58.

16- Ibid; p.342.

17- D.H. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy, (Penguin books, 1969), p.42.

18- Daniel A. Weiss, The Mother in The Mind, D.H. Lawrence:

Artistand Rebel, (ed) E.W. Tedlock (Albuqureque: The

University of New Mexico Press, 1963), p.129.

19- Charles Rossman, The Gospel According to D.H. Lawrence:

Religion in Sons and Lovers, The D.H. Lawrence Review, 3

(Spring 1970), p.32.

20- Ibid; p.33.

21- Ibid; p.32.

22- Ibid; p.p. 33-34.

23- George H. Ford, Double Measure, p.p. 30-31.

24- Ibid; p.30.




39

"Woman! In our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade,

By the light quivering aspen made;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou! "

Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 6, 30)

Conclusion




40

Through our analysis of Sons and Lovers we reached some important truths about

human experience which are not necessarily at once obvious. We remarked that Lawrence proves to be in Sons and Lovers a writer of exceptional sensitiveness and that his portrayal of the three women we have chosen is exceptionally original.

Our study of Sons and Lovers leads us to draw some conclusions which are in fact of three

holds.

First, we realize that Sons and Lovers is inevitably a novel about failing relationships

rather than triumphant ones. It is a novel in which Paul cannot achieve a new and fulfilling

relationship with Miriam, with Clara or with his mother. We also realize that Paul’s inability

to establish a satisfactory relationship with a woman is directly related to the excessive

attachment between him and his mother and it is why we conclude that Paul cannot cope with

women except in their maternal aspect or as faceless objects of passion.

Secondly, the excessive attachment of Paul to his mother and vice-versa in the novel,

appears to us as a reaction to Lawrence’s own mother’s love – Lawrence was very obedient to

his mother who was the stable centre of his life – it also appears as an attempt to reclaim the

masculine heritage she denied him and the selfhood she absorbed. He admits clearly in his

Foreword to Sons and Lovers that the novel was largely inspired by, “the tragedy of thousands

of young men whose lives, he found, were being ruined by the possessive love of their

mothers”.(1) Certainly, Lawrence did gain confidence from his mother, his moral sureness,

his spiritual strength, but he was tired of maternal righteousness. He speaks of the need, “for

men to die, to be born again with a different courage”.(2) And he shows this courage at the

end of the novel Sons and Lovers when he announces the first steps of a change for a faith in

him self. In the novel, Paul returns from the dead to construct his future: “But no, he would

not give in turning sharply, he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence.” (Sons and

Lovers. p. 511).

Thirdly, and it is what we really consider the most interesting fact in the novel, we find




41

that the true love in Sons and Lovers is between Paul and his father. In the sense that true love

was forced or coerced in anyway against his will but of his own free will and desire. An

example of Paul’s love for his father is his deepest desire to resemble him: Paul’s adolescent

desire is to be a painter, a creator and a celebrator of life like his father; this is on one

hand, and on the other hand, as a child, Lawrence himself, like his hero, was unable to

appreciate his father’s qualities even though he unconsciously admitted them- since this

would have been seen as treachery by his mother whose emotional security and self-esteem

were vital for him. In Sons and Lovers, we saw for example that as a child Lawrence shared

his mother’s disgust at the father’s drinking, but as we will learn he saw it differently later. In

fact, Paul [Lawrence] loves his father – the portrait of Walter Morel is rather a sympathetic

one - and he could only internalize his father’s pain, his bewilderment and resentment.

In Sons and Lovers, the central relationship between mother and son is so powerfully

realized that one may forget the fact that Paul is also his father’s son, however, we are

convinced that there is a father-son relationship, but it is a relationship which remained as an

unfinished business in Sons and Lovers to be worked through in later novels. Lawrence

himself admitted clearly, “that he had not done justice to his father in Sons and Lovers and

felt like rewriting it”.(3) In growing older, Lawrence had to come to see his father in a

different light; to see his “unquenchable fire” and “relish for living”.(4)




42

Conclusion sources cited

1- Moore Harry T. The Collected Letters I, 1962, p.161

2- Ibid, p.162

3- Ibid, p.162

4- Ibid, p.163




43

BIBLIOGRAPHY I- D. H. Lawrence’s Works LAWRENCE, D. H. Sons and Lovers. (Penguin Book, 1974) LAWRENCE, D. H. Foreword to Sons and Lovers.(The Works of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, Cambridge University Press, 1992) LAWRENCE, D. H. Fantasia of the Unconscious and Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious. (Melbourne, London, Toronto: William Heinemann, Ltd; 1961) LAWRENCE, D. H. Letter to Edward Garnett, January 1913, the Letter of D. H. Lawrence. (ed. Aldous Huxley, London: William Heinemann, 1932) LAWRENCE, D. H. Twilight in Italy. (Penguin books, 1969) LAWRENCE, D. H. The White Peacock. (Penguin Books, 1985) II- Works on D. H. Lawrence ASSIMOV, Isaac. Words From the Myths. (London: Faber and Faber, 1963) BAYLEY, John. The Characters of Love. (Constable and Company Ltd, London 1962) BLACK, Michael. D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers. (Cambridge University Press, 1992) BREWSTER, Achsah. D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence. (Earl and

Achsah Brewster, seckes, 1934) CAMPELL, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. (London: Souvenir Press,

1973) CHAMBERS, Jessie. D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record. (E.T. Jessie Chambers, Cape,

1935) CHASE, Richard. Myth as Literature. (English Institute Essays, 1948) COWAN, James C. D. H. Lawrence’s American Journey: A study in Literature and Myth. (Cleveland and London: The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1970) DELAVENAY, Emile. D. H. Lawrence: The Man and His Work, The Formative Years: 1885- 1919. (ed Heinemann, London, 1972) DERVIN, Daniel. “A Strange Sapience” : The creative Imagination of D. H. Lawrence. (The University of Massachussets Press, Amherst, 1981)




44

ملخص

النساء كرموز و أسطورة في روایة األبناء والعشاق ل د ش . لورنس الھدف األول من ھده المذكرة ھو طرح إشكالیة وضعیة الرجل في عالقتھ مع نساء حیاتھ ونسأل أنفسنا عن دور النساء في روایة د.ش. لورنس األبناء والعشاق ومالذي ترمزن إلیھ وكذا قیمتین

األسطورة في ھذا العمل الرمزي في ما یخص التحلیل األدبي الذي نحن بصدده. الشائع في ھذا المجال كون أغلب الرویات كتبھا روائیون رجال ملئھم الغرور إذا یمتازون باألولویة

في سرد وترجمة حیاة النساء غیر أن الجدید في ھذا العمل األدبي كما سنتعرف علیھ ھو أن د.ش.لورنس یمتاز عن غیره بمصادقیة أكبر ألنھ استعان على الكتابة بالنساء أدبیة وفنیة

محیطھ وكثیر ماكان یقرأ مذكراتھن وخواطرھن ثم یعید كتابتھا بطریقة أدبیة وفنیة فیكون أكثر واقعیة مما كان یفعل من قبل وھكذا ندرك أن لورنس یجد نفسھ عنصر حقیقي في

عالم النساء وعلمنا أن نفھم لمذا وھدا العمل یدنو من السؤال بثالث طرق

في الفصل األول نبدأ بنظرة عامة حول أھمیة النساء في حبیاة الكاتب وكذا مشاركتھن األدبیة في كتابة روایة األبناء والعشاق

الفصل الثاني نتطرق إلى تحلیل بسیكولوجي ألھم ثالث نساء في الروایة وھن السیدة مارال مریم و كالراونتطرق إلى المعنى الباطني لعالقتھن الحمیمیة مع بول مورال

في الفصل الثالث نتطرق إلى قدر من الدراسة األسطوریة للنساء على العموم وكیفیة استعمالھن كرموز أسطوریة في روایة األبناء والعشاق

في النھایة نسترجع أھم نقاط التحلیل ونطرح السؤال عن أھمیة بول مورال بالنسبة لعالقتھ بالروایة وأین یكون الكاتب بالنسبة لكتابتھ األخیرة و الطریقة المستعملة في تحلیل األبناء و

العاشق في نوعا ما بسیكولوجیة على أننا حاولنا أن نلتزم بطریقة الوصف وقطعا النساء في روایة لورنس ھو موضوع كتب عنھ العدید من األعمال األدبیة ألن لورني كان من أكبر الكتاب المثیرین للجدال في القرن العشرین ولھذا حاولنا في ھذا العمل المشاركة ولو بلقلیل في فھم واحد من أكبر

وألمع الكتاب في كل األزمنة




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Résumé

Quel est le rôle et l’importance mythique de la femme dans le roman Amants et Fils de D. H. Lawrence ? Telle est la question à laquelle nous avons tenté de répondre dans ce travail.

Nous savons qu’un grand nombre de romanciers se font les porte parole des femmes mais D. H. Lawrence est celui dont les romans sont d’une grande crédibilité car inspirés et aidés par des femmes ayant compté dans sa vie. Nous développerons la question en trois chapitres : - Le premier porte sur le rôle qu’ont joué certaines des amies de l’auteur en

collaborant à l’écriture du roman Amants et Fils. - Le second est une analyse psychologique des trois personnages féminins

les plus importants du roman à savoir Mme Morel, Miriam et Clara ; et la relation psychoaffective qu’entretient chacune d’elles avec le héro Paul Morel.

- Enfin, le troisième chapitre est consacré à une analyse du mythe de la femme dans le roman.

Notre conclusion revient sur les points essentiels de notre analyse

psychologique et mythologique de la femme et sur la nature de la relation affective de Paul Morel avec les trois femmes de sa vie.

L’étude du roman Amants et Fils est principalement une étude

psychoanalytique avec parfois une analyse descriptive. Le sujet de la femme dans les romans de D. H. Lawrence a inspiré

beaucoup de travaux et la littérature regorge d’écrits dans ce domaine car cet auteur reste l’écrivain le plus grand et le plus controversé du vingtième siècle. Cependant nous espérons avoir modestement apporté notre contribution à la compréhension du role de la femme dans le roman de l’auteur le plus fascinant de tous les temps.




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ABSTRACT

Keywords: Women as realistic and mythical symbols, in D.H.Lawrence Sons and Lovers

The primary aim of this paper is to question the situation of a man's

relationship with the women of his life. We ask ourselves exactly what is the role of women in D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers? What do women symbolize for him and what is their mythical importance within that symbolic framework in terms of our current literary analysis?

What we already know is that a significant number of novels are simply books

by male novelists with a great degree of pretension to be first-hand accounts of women's lives. However, the difference as will be discovered within this work is that D. H. Lawrence actually speaks with a great deal of credibility because much of his work was aided by the real women in his life. He often read and adapted some of their writings from journals and notes in order to achieve more realism than previously thought possible. We realize that it is within the world of women that D.H. Lawrence seems to be in his true element and our task here was simply to understand why.

This work will approach the question in three ways. In the first chapter, we will begin with a brief survey on some women's

importance in the author's life including their literary collaboration in the writing of Sons and Lovers. The second chapter will deal with an intensive psychological analysis of the three most important women in the novel- Mrs. Morel, Miriam and Clara- and particularly the inner meanings of their close relationship with Paul Morel. Finally, in the third chapter we will perform a brief, but, calculated mythological study women in general especially concerning their use as mythological symbols in Sons and Lovers.

The Conclusion reviews the major points of the analysis and raises the

question of where we can situate Paul Morel's true relationship within the novel and where the author became in his later works. The method used in analyzing Sons and Lovers is temptingly psychoanalytical though we tried to also remain somehow descriptive. No doubt, women in D.H. Lawrence's novels is a subject which has witnessed an impressive growth of literature- D. H. Lawrence being one of the greatest and one of the most controversial writers of the 20 th Century- thereby, making this work not something incredibly new to the field but hopefully at least a modest contribution in the understanding of one of the most fascinating writers of all times.




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