RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

forced to admit his choice to belong to his mother as a lover
who will never replace her with anybody else: "'No mother —
I really don't love her.
I talk to her, but I want to come home
to you'" (p.261).
The scene that follows is one of bitter
revelation of Mrs Morel's total identification with Miriam.
admits that she "'could let another woman — but not her.
She
She'd
leave me no room, not a bit of room — '" (ibid). Moreover, she
implicitly declares her love for Paul as one she would give to a
husband:
I've never — you know, Paul — I've never had a
husband — not really — '" (p.262). I believe that this
revelation makes Mrs Morel even worse than she has hitherto
appeared and it seems that Lawrence here is not really setting
out to deliberately show the mother's evil side.
It just slips
out of him.
That night, when Paul and his mother give themselves to a
set of declarations, the father comes home drunk and takes a
piece of pork-pie which is destined for Paul.
Mrs Morel mistreats
Walter who starts arguing with the mother.
Paul interferes and
decides to fight with his father.
Had Mrs Morel not had a faint
(her health is declining), son and father would certainly hit
each other.
Paul's words to his mother as she recovers sound not
like a son talking to a mother but like a lover who is extremely
jealous of his sweetheart going to bed with a rival:
'Sleep with Annie, Mother, not with him.'
'No, I'll sleep in my own bed.'
'Don't sleep with him, Mother.'
'I'll sleep in my own bed.' (p.264)
When Paul goes to his own bed, he is tormented: "He pressed his
face upon the pillow in a fury of misery.
And somewhere in his
soul, he was at peace because he still loved his mother best.
It
was the bitter peace of resignation" (ibid).
His feelings once