RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

operate on her, since her heart would not stand the surgery. Her
cancer seems to be a result of her frustration in being happy and
the sterility of her emotional life.
As she could not share her
frustrations with the others,though she tried hard, the manifestation
of her cancer is the only way to project all the bitterness
of her failure of being a woman, a wife and even a mother of her
children.
It may be seen as the physical manifestation of her
psychological state.
As a reinforcement of this point, there is
the fact that she has been suffering deep pains for a long time
and her family hardly noticed it till the moment she begins to
have fainting pills and goes to see the doctor.
What may seem rather strange is the fact that sometime
before Paul's mother gets ill and needs extreme care, Paul feels
that he wants her to disappear from his life.
He may have meant
her death or to free himself from her in another way.
This moment
is one in which he seems to be against her, he hates his mother
(but his hate is mixed with love for love and hate exchange
places):
... There was a certain silence between them, and he
felt he had in that silence, to defend himself against
her. He felt condemnated by her. Then sometimes he
hated her, and pulled at her bondage. His life wanted
to free itself of her. It was like a circle where
life turned back on itself, and got no farther. She
bore him, loved him, and his love turned back into
her, so that he could not be free to go forward with his
own life, really love another woman. At this period,
unknowingly,he resisted his mother's influence. He
did not tell her things; there was a distance between
them (pp.419-20 - My underlining).
It is this impulse that makes him unconsciously wish her
death because only death could save him in order to start a new
life without the sick dependence on her.
When Mrs Morel's illness reaches its apex and she can no
more bear the strong pains, she starts using morphine to lessen