RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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the little chick from any dangerous enemy.
She directs everything
and Paul, behind her, just looks afraid and nervous. It is indeed
funny (almost tragical I should say): "Mrs Morel went first, her
son followed her.
Charles I mounted his scaffold with a lighter
heart than had Paul Morel as he followed his mother up the dirty
steps to the dirty door" (p.118).
Despite the nervous mood of
Paul in the interview, he gets the job.
Paul's nervousness, I
think, is plainly explainable; he is a boy who is only used to
treating with his own family.
to his home and surroundings.
His environment is restricted only
It is natural that he becomes
frightened with the presentation of a world which seems
unpleasant and hostile.
This is his first contact with another,
unfamiliar world.
His mother's directions can be seen as one
more hint that she will never allow him to face life alone while
she lives.
She will be near him, helping (suffocating) him
whenever she feels she must.
Behaving like this, instead of
helping Paul, the mother is spoiling his life.
If he cannot
walk with his own feet, he will never be prepared to get along
with life alone.
He will always depend on her.
Mrs Morel's selfishness and sense of dominance over her
children (especially William and Paul) is asserted when Paul gets
his job and she proudly thinks of her two sons:
Now she had two sons in the world. She could
think of two places,two great centres of
industry, and feel that she had put a:man into
each of them, that these men would work out
what she wanted; that they were derived from
her, they were of her, and their works also
would be hers(pp.127-8 - My underlining).
I think that this is a monstrous statement to be supposedly the
thought of a mother who really wants her sons to do well in
life.
They should do well not for their own growth, but
selfishly for her, the almighty mother.
The narrative above