RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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failure.
She is losing her son to a woman who has many more
advantages than she does:
Miriam is young, she is old; Miriam
is not genetically attached to Paul as she is.
more chances than she does to conquer her son.
The girl has
That is why she
feverishly hates Miriam;
'She exults-she exults as she carries him off
from m e . ' Mrs Morel cried in her heart when Paul
had gone. 'She's not like an ordinary woman, who
can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb
him. She wants to draw him out and absorb him till
there is nothing left of him, even for himself. He
will never be a man on his own feet-she will suck
him up.' So the mother sat, and battled and
brooded bitterly (p.237).
In contrast to this scene of bitterness and hatred, Paul feels
his mother and his lover as two worshipful creatures whom he
would never raise his fist to hurt: "It was wonderfully sweet
and soothing to sit there for an hour and a half, next to Miriam,
and near to his mother, uniting his two loves under the spell of
the place of worship" (p. 236).
However, his love is not constant
for he has moments in which he hates Miriam and loves his mother.
That is his main conflict.
When his mother is present in his
mind he hates Miriam and he cannot understand why: "And why did
he hate Miriam and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of
his mother? If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated
her - and he easily hated her... How he hated her! And then, what
a rush of tenderness and humility!" (p.238).
Another contrastive point in this useless competition lies
in the fact that when the mother is no longer, able to hide her
anger and jealousy towards the girl, she opens her thoughts to
Paul in such a desperate way that it makes the boy step backwards
and admit also with desperation that there are differences
between his girlfriend and his mother.
However, he is also