OEDIPUS COMPLEX IN

SONS AND LOVERS

Sigmund Freud's most celebrated theory of sexuality.

The Oedipus complex takes its name from the title character of the Greek play Oedipus Rex.

• Oedipus King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes.

• Shepherd: carries the baby to Corinth.

• Delphic Oracle prediction.

• He meets Laius on a road and they quarrel.

• He solves the Sphynx’s riddle......winning the hand of Queen Jocasta

• Freud rebelled against the Victorian idea that children are asexual.

• Freud concluded his theory with the warning that if a boy did not eventually suppress this attraction and begin to identify with his father, he would never be able to transfer his early love for his mother to a suitable partner.

• Freud argued that these repressed desires are present in most young boys. (The female version is called the Electra complex).

Different analysis of the Oedipus complex theme in the book:

1) Some critics explain that D.H. Lawrence was aware of Freud's theory, and Sons and Lovers famously uses this complex as its base for exploring Paul's relationship with his mother.

PAUL

Devoted to his mother with a love that borders on romantic desire (“he was faithful to her. She loved him first; he loved her first”)

Murderously hates his father and often fantasizes about his death (“Paul hated his father. As a boy he had a fervent private religion. “Make him stop drinking” he prayed every night. “Lord, let my father die” he prayed very often. “Let him be killed at pit…”)

Paul transfers his guilty, incestuous feelings elsewhere, and the greatest receivers are Miriam and Clara.

Mrs. Morel also transfers her dissatisfaction with her marriage onto her smothering love for her sons (“And I’ve never – you know, Paul – I’ve never had a husband – not really–”).At the end of the novel, Paul takes a major step in releasing himself from his Oedipus complex. He intentionally overdoses his dying mother with morphia, an act that reduces her suffering but also subverts his Oedipal fate, since he does not kill his father, but his mother.

II) For other critics, there are so many parallels between Sons and Lovers and Lawrence’s own life that the novel can be called autobiographical.

All the major themes, conflicts, and characters of Sons and Lovers have their real-life counterparts in Lawrence’s own difficult childhood and adolescence.The book only reflected Lawrence’s own twisted

relationship with his mother."Nobody can have the soul of me. My mother has had it, and nobody can have it again.“

“My childhood has been rather terrible, and has made me, in some respects, abnormal.“

“It is morning again, and she is still here...”,“I look at my mother and think ‘O Heaven- is this what life brings us to?’ You see mother has had a devilish married life, for nearly forty years- and this is the conclusion- no relief.”

MOTHER – SON RELATIONSHIP

THROUGHOUT THE NOVEL

2.- “- And tell your girls, my son, that when they’re running after you, they’re not to come and ask your mother for you. Tell them that – brazen baggages you meet at dancing-classes.

-I’m sure she was a nice girl. - And I’m sure she wasn’t.”

1.- “At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband. She turned to the child; she turned from the father.”

3.- “She loved him so much! More than that, she hoped in him so much. Almost she lived by him”. “Mrs. Morel felt as if she were numbed by some drug, as if her feelings were paralysed. She loved him passionately.”

4.- “Mrs. Morel clung now to Paul…and still he stuck to his mother. Everything he did was for her… The two shared lives”.

6.-The two knitted together in perfect intimacy.

Mrs. Morel’s life now rooted itself in Paul”.

“He loved to sit at home, alone with his mother,

at night, working and working”. “He loved to go with her across the

fields to the villages and the sea. She was afraid of the plank bridges , and he abused her for being a baby. On the whole he stuck to her as if he were her man”.

“She could not bear it when he was with Miriam. William was dead. She would fight to keep Paul”.

5.- “A fine mess of a marriage it would be”, replied his mother, I should consider it again, my boy…. But I tell you I can’t sleep when I think about it”. “I’m afraid he’s ruining himself against that creature, who isn’t worthy of his love – no, no more than a rag doll”.

7.- “Always when he went with Miriam, and it grew rather late, he knew his mother was fretting and getting angry about him… She could feel Paul being drawn away by this girl”

9.-“He had come back to his mother. Hers was the strongest tie in his life… There was a vague, unreal feeling about her. And nobody else mattered… It was as if the pilot and pole of his life, from which he could not escape, was his mother”.

8.- “He was hurt between the past glamour with Miriam and the knowledge that his mother fretted…but he could not harden his heart to ignore his mother”. “He had forgotten Miriam; he only saw how his mother’s hair was lifted back from her warm, broad brow. And somehow she was hurt”. “I really don’t love her. I talk to her but I want to come home to you”.

10.- “He had a momentary sensation as if she were slipping away from him. Then he wanted to get hold of her, to fasten her, almost to chain her”. “Why can’t a man have a young mother? What is she old for?... And why wasn’t I the oldest son?... You should have had me for your eldest son”11.- “- You haven’t met the right woman. - And I never shall meet the right woman while you live, he said”12.- “- And if you made a nice lot of money, what would you do?, she asked. - Go somewhere in a pretty house near London with my mother.”13.- "She would wake up. She would lift her eyelids. She was with him still. He bent and kissed her passionately. But there was a coldness against his mouth. He bit his lips with horror. Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go. No! He stroked the hair from her temples. That, too, was cold.”

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