Sons and Lovers

Paul Morel's journey is one that takes him away from his mother's control. Yet by the end of the novel, as he walks to the phosphorescent lights of the city, we sense he is about to begin a new journey. His relationships with Clara and Miriam represent aspects of his struggle between flesh and spirit. And yet these two pale in the shadow of mother. In the end even after she is dead, Paul is threatened by her. The ties go beyond death - may even be pulling him toward it. For he says in the end that he will not go her way - and yet after Miriam leaves, Mrs. Morel is the one he misses:

"'Mother!' he whispered - 'mother!'
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.
But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly" (416).

Paul continues to want passivity - like Hamlet, he does not want to act. Or doesn't know how to. But in order to even go on the hero's journey he must turn away from Mrs. Morel and make himself move to the lights of the city.

As an outsider, this is a nice image. He loses the women he cannot chose between (or choses not to be with them); he loses his mother despite her powerful will to live - he walks to the city alone. Even after he and Annie have poisoned her, her pull still draws him. The image of the city is not one of a place peopled with humanity, but rather filled with machinery and cold lights. He is walking into the twentieth century. He is part of it, but alone in it.

Religion is key in the story in Paul's relationship with Miriam. She prays first that God will take away her love for Paul (she fears it), then she asks to love him as God the father loved His son Christ. She very pointedly compares him to Christ. Paul realizes this in the end when Lawrence writes: "...or did she want a Christ in him?" Mrs. Morel's belief is strong as well - it suffocates Mr. Morel, and they hate each other. She uses religion like a weapon to guilt her family. To be a martyr. She possesses none of the greater virtues of Christianity. Her religion is typified by rigidity. Miriam's is an almost mystical ecstacy. There is something unreal about it.