Chapter Two

2.1 Miriam and Clara Character analysis

There's two kinds of corpuses for analysis were literary elements

corpuses, plot, theme, setting and atmosphere, point of view and the main
characters corpuses of Gertrude Morel, Walter Morel, William Morel & Miriam
Leiver. The main characters of sons and lovers are round ones. Miriam was said
to be very religious, yet she had sexual intercourse before her marriage. It is
shown that there are some aspects of moral quality. Educational value appeared
in nuance that revenge does not give us satisfaction. Throughout the novel,
relevant implication appeared that sexual desire does not belong to love. Sex is
also physiological needs and sometimes an expression of love. The self‑
actualization need is dominant in Paul. Point of view is the author's
relationship to his or her fictional world. (Griffith,1982:37). In "Sons and
Lovers", the position of the author in telling the story is that of omniscient
point of view, here the author as the narrator has a complete knowledge of the
character, their action and thoughts. The author goes freely to the minds and
thoughts of all characters. This choice permits Lawrence to reveal his feeling
and ideas through any of his characters. He has made all of his characters clear
and understandable.

Character of Miriam Leiver

Miriam Leiver live in Willey farm with her parents, brothers and
sisters. She was considered very religious, her soul was filled with the love for
her god. Miriam loved her Miriam wanted to be considered. She wanted to show
people that she was different. She lived in her world of imagination and
bought that she was a princess turned to a swine-girl. Miriam was in love
with Paul, but she only wanted him spiritually. She hated her thought of
physical love. Her religious manners prevented any real development of

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her relationship with Paul. When Paul told her that she was a nun, she began to
think that she should surrender to Paul and submit herself. She made love
with Paul in the sense of self-sacrifice and horror. Miriam explored her self-
actualization from religion, she imagined her world as a paradise. She loved
nature and had a deep appreciation toward it She had much in common with
Paul and often had a long discussion about the beauty of nature. Because of her
intensity in religion, Miriam could not give Paul her real love. She submitted to
Paul in a sense of sacrifice and horror- She was a nun as Paul described her. She
always wanted things done in religious ways. She could not help her love for
Paul, and would like to have spiritual love with him. That is a reason why Paul
thought that she cold never gives him what he wanted and turned to his mother.
When Paul broke up their relationship, Miriam realized bow she had hated him
because she love him. She was very angry that her sacrifice was in vain. She still
hopes that Paul would return to her again. Paul and Miriam are looking for
something that they cold not give one another. At the end of the story, Miriam
came again to marry Paul, but he refused her. Miriam left Paul still feeling that
in the end he would come back to her.( La Muhidin, 2015. 12(2): 187-200)

Clara Dawes

She is a sexually liberated, childless suffragette. On the surface she

appears to be a "modern" woman, especially when compared to Miriam's timid
traditionalism. Clara leaves her husband and takes Paul, a younger man, as her
lover. Although the reader is told of Clara's intelligence, it isn't really
emphasized. Clara spends the majority of her relationship with Paul feeling
merely possessive of him. When her estranged husband, Baxter, falls ill, Clara
returns to him and her traditional gender role, which suggests perhaps she isn't
as modern as first portrayed. Clara Dawes is the wife of Baxter Dawes, the
daughter of Mrs. Radford, and Paul Morel‟s lover. Clara is estranged from her
husband Baxter, whom she married young and found that she could not get on

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with. She is a friend of Miriam (who introduces her to Paul) and she lives with
her mother. Clara is a suffragette and is bitter and resentful about the way her
marriage has worked out. Paul believes that she is a “man hater” but, as he gets
to know her, feels that she is deeply sensuous and “needs a man” to feel loved
and that her single life makes her depressed. Clara treats Paul‟s claims
contemptuously and insists that Baxter was cruel to her and that this is the
reason she left him. Paul and Clara have an extremely passionate and physical
relationship, although they do not have much in common intellectually. Clara is
a strong, active woman, but is very reserved and finds it hard to fit in with the
factory girls when Paul gets her a job at Jordan‟s. She gets on well with Mrs.
Morel, however, who prefers down to earth Clara to the saintly Miriam. She
gains confidence through her affair with Paul, but will not divorce her husband,
whom she still feels sorry for. Clara is independent and single minded because
she is willing to live separately from her husband despite the social disapproval
this causes. By the end of the novel, Clara is sick of Paul‟s dithering between
her and Miriam and feels that he is unmanly because he has played with her and
failed to commit to their relationship. She gets her pride back after her failed
marriage and, in her new confident, independent state, is able to reconcile with
Baxter, who has been humbled and who now intends to treat her with respect.

As a proper 20th-century British lady, Clara never reveals the slightest

attraction for Paul at first. But Paul's attention slowly seems to wear her down.
Many people dislike Clara for acting like all of normative society is beneath her,
especially the women who work at Jordan's Manufacturing.

One worker, Fanny, makes a backhanded remark about Clara when says,
"You don't think yourself a fine figure in marble and us nothing but dirt"
(10.272). Um, well. Clara actually does think herself a fine figure in marble, so.
Zing.

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 Indeed, people dislike both Clara and her buddy Miriam for their smug
superiority. But Clara's superiority complex is different than Miriam's. It's less
innocent and more hard-edged, more worldly. Clara is ashamed when Paul
catches her doing women's work, and she gets really worked up when she gets
into physical competitions with men. All the while, Paul thinks that Miriam's
standoffishness is "like a dog before a looking-glass, gone into a mad fury with
its own shadow" (9.257). In other words, he accuses Clara of imagining enemies
for herself in order to make herself feel important. That's actually pretty darn
insightful, Paul. (ibid)

2.2 The effect of women (Miriam and Clara)

Art becomes important when it comes to Paul‟s relationships with

women. It becomes important because the artistic tendencies in him; the
temperament of aloofness, and the impulsive approach to life, whether
voluntarily or involuntarily, does percolate to the very core of his being. Just as
artists are known to subordinate everything else; society/family-related matters,
to their art, Paul subordinates the women in his life, to his needs and his ultimate
hobby: art. In the novel none of the women characters are able to extract a
romantic self-sacrifice or a sustained commitment from Paul. Lawrence may
have portrayed them as having aggressively strong individuality, and who do
manage to engage Paul‟s attention for a long time, if not forever, but he denies
them their coveted position of absolute importance. None of these women
becomes the one who so thoroughly influences Paul, that he is unable to break
free of their hold until the very end. He simply does not allow for that sort of a
romantic “eternality”. Towards the end of the novel, we see her leaving all the
women in his life and planning to go abroad where he shall probably pursue his
talent for art. Even in the case of the mother who had exerted a tremendous
amount of influence over him since his childhood; on whom Paul doted and had
somewhat Oedipal emotions- was unable to maintain that stronghold over his

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rather whimsical psyche. She becomes a dreadful burden to him, and her
affection he begins to despise. The end of the novel sees Paul release himself of
the last of his psychological and emotional attachments and liabilities. Sons and
Lovers was written in 1913, and is a prodigious depiction of human, sexual,
class and family relationships. It draws heavily from the life of Lawrence
himself; Lawrence once having famously said:

“One sheds his illness in his books”. Lawrence‟s problematic relationship

with his mother who had almost smothered him with her intense love is reflected
in the relationship Paul shares with Gertrude, the mother. And is the book was
therefore meant to be a purgative experience for him. Critic Harry R. Moore has
commented on the biographical elements in the novel saying, “the mother was a
puritan-bred woman who had merely wanted to do the right thing for her sons
but the “staunchness” with which she carried them out was “frequently
harmful”. Also reflecting in the novel is Lawrence‟s relationship with Jessie
Chambers, who was the inspiration behind the character of Miriam Leivers. And
Louisa Burrows, towards whom he was physically attracted, and on whom he
based the character of Clara Dawes. The object of my paper is therefore to
elucidate how Paul Morel alternates between three women in his life, ultimately
rejecting them all, in a final, climactic realization of the „self‟ that had all along
desired just for independence and individuality.( Pullin, Faith, „Lawrence‟s Treatment
of Women in Sons and Lovers’)

Miriam—Paul’s Spirit Support

Paul‟s first lover, Miriam, was a beautiful and shy girl. She is modelled
after Jessie Chambers, the one-time close friend of Lawrence. Many of the
incidents in which Paul and Miriam are involved together were written by Jessie
herself and Lawrence incorporated the passages supplied by her in the novel
virtually without any change. Miriam is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Leivers of
the Willey Farm. Although living in a country village which was controlled by
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her father and brothers who looked down upon her, she was irreconcilable to
mediocrity. She did not want to follow the same old disastrous road of average
village girls; she looked forward to making life meaningful Learning is the only
distinction to which she thinks to aspire. It would be unjust to her to attribute her
desire for knowledge to mere vanity. Her interest in intellectual pursuits is
partially genuine. But in reality there was no such room for her to exist; what
she had was just the freedom of imagine. Paul‟s appearing made Miriam have
her own idol, but this love soon added pain to her life because of her religious
zeal. Since she was very young, Miriam sincerely believed in religion which
played a major role in her life. She thought “God was omnipotent, and He knew
everything in the world”(Miller, 1980, p. 256). So even her love to Paul may
request the permission of the God: “O‟Lord, let me not love Paul Morel. Keep
me from loving him, if I ought not to love him”(Drabele, 1993, p. 128). We can
see that under religion‟s control, Miriam‟s emotion severely depressed. She was
only a doll, without anything of her own idea. Miriam consciously built their
intimate relationship on imagination, namely spirit on love, not flesh on love.
We can say man-centred family atmosphere and sincerely believing in religion
were just like undershirt firmly bound Miriam‟s spirit world, formed her first
tragedy. But it was this tragic girl who was Paul‟s bosom friend to his art natural
gift and ability. Miriam herself had artist‟s ability, so she could stimulate Paul‟s
creative inspiration. Like Mrs Morel, Miriam kept an eye on Paul‟s art creation,
but the mother paid more attention to the achievement and fame that brought by
art, while Miriam focused on her lover‟s deeper things of nature, the great
enthusiasm to art. Therefore Paul became Miriam‟s soul mate, seeking spiritual
solace and intuition creativity stimulation. This was different from Mrs Morel‟s
love. When he was in contact with Miriam, he got insight, a more profound
vision. From his mother, he got the warmth of life and the strength for creativity,
but Miriam changed this warmth into art enthusiasm, just like white light. But to
this spiritual confidant, Paul‟s return was mean. Paul was a pure male

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chauvinism, so he never took the status of women into account, even if he
thought about it, it was from his own point of view. Many critics noticed that it
was Miriam‟s love that made Paul‟s spirit tend to mature, but few mentioned
Miriam‟s growth and changes in this bildungsroman. Miriam felt deeply hurt
when her change, the representation of the femalecentred world, was rejected by
Paul. This was her early figure—“a spiritual girl” who was imprisoned by
Victorian morality and religious idea and got pure sensory and
intelligentexchange, but Paul sedulously neglected her change and growth, so he
rejected to cooperate with her, and finally he destroyed her love. In fact, soon
after falling in love with Paul, Miriam‟s spirit world began to change:
“Sometimes, as they were walking together, she slipped her arm timidly into his.
But he always resented it, and she knew it. It caused a violent conflict in
him”(Lawrence, 1994, p. 194). Paul did not seem to know that Miriam‟s exist as
a woman. He never entered her world, even never wanted to try. How could he
know her? Miriam actively tried again and again, but Paul said: “You are a
nun—you are a nun”(Lawrence, 1994, p. 297). The words went into her heart
again and again. He never took her position into consideration, Paul almost
capriciously took action according to his own emotional power. At last, Miriam
recognized the essence of their relationship. Nevertheless, the sincerity of her
love cannot be doubted. The responsibility for her failure in love does not lie
only with her; Paul is equally to be blamed for her tragedy. If Miriam is
inhibited on account of her religiosity, Paul is inhibited because of the mother-
pull.(ibid)

Clara—Paul’s Flesh Support

Clara Dawes is the daughter of an old friend of Mrs Leivers. Her husband,
Baxter Dawes, is a smith at Jordan‟s. She is separated from her husband and is
temporarily lodged with her mother. She is presented as a foil to Miriam. If
Miriam represents the spirit, she represents the flesh. If Miriam is sexually

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inhibited, she is sexually aggressive. Commenting on the thematic relevance of
Clara, Harry T. Moore writes, “Clara‟s blonde Junoesque brings an element into
the story that is needed, for this ripe woman is an effective foil to both the aging
mother and the dreaming farm girl. Because the relationship with Clara is
primarily and almost exclusively physical, there is plenty of dramatic contrast.”
Although in front of Mrs Morel and Miriam, Paul was ashamed to show his
yearning for flesh, but in his heart, this desire could not restrain. He needed a
woman, who would be more mature and bold than Miriam, who could bring him
out of hibernation. Clara was the very woman. Lawrence moulded Clara as
opposite figure of Miriam. To Paul, if Miriam was a spirit symbol, then Clara
was a flesh symbol. From Clara, Paul indeed got “passion of pleasant
sensation”, this was “the passion of baptism of fire”, this successful attempting
was “a healing to his wounded heart which was hurt because his desire was not
satisfied”(Millet, 1970, p. 345). Basically Clara is a simple, affectionate and
unambitious girl. She is neither sensitive nor intellectual like Miriam. But there
is an air of sincerity about her. She feels humiliated by the brutality of her
husband and affects a scornful attitude towards all men. When Paul meets her
for the first time, he is struck by her “slightly lifted upon lip that did not know
whether it was raised in scorn of all men or out of eagerness to be kissed.” Paul,
in fact, develops a liking for her because she has a grudge against man.
However, when he meets her again, he soon discovers that the upward lifting of
her face was misery and not scorn. Her hostility to men is a mere pretence. She
suffers from extreme loneliness and there is a feeling of restless hunger below
her outward composure. When Paul asks her if she is happy after her separation
from her husband, she remarks that she will be happy so long as he can be free
and independent. But this is only a hollow consolation. There is a definite tragic
air about her. However she is an independent and emancipated woman. She is
too self-respecting to take down laying all the cruel strokes of fate. She refuses
to meekly submit to her husband‟s inhuman behaviour and leaves him. She does

00
not make any spiritual demands on Paul. She is sensuous and passionate. She
realizes that Paul needs passion and she offers him that immensity of passion
which Miriam could not. Whenever he meets Clara, he finds her physical appeal
almost irresistible. After Clara gets employed at Jordan‟s, Paul and Clara get
closer to each other. This is the period when he is feeling weary of the soul-
sucking affair with Miriam. He needs an outlet for his passion and there could
be none as suited for this purpose as Clara. The two bring to each other some
real fulfilment. In his essay, “Counterfeit Lovers”, Mark Spilka writes, “For her,
Clara admires his animal quickness: brings her the promise of renewed vitality,
and they draw close together and make love, once Paul has broken away from
Miriam. Thus Paul receives the impersonal love he needs; the real, real flame of
feeling through another person‟s and Clara comes to full awakening as woman.”
However, the intensity of passion experienced by them during this period does
not continue for long. Soon it appears to be marked with anxiety and uncertainty
and starts declining. Their consummation has been a moment of unique bliss
precariously achieved and ephemeral in nature. Clara feels that there was
something in him she hated, a sort of detached criticism of herself, a coldness
which made her woman‟s soul hardened against him. Like Paul-Miriam
relationship, the Paul-Clara relationship also ends in a fiasco. It should be very
clear that the failure in this case cannot be attributed to the mother-pull. Clara
fits in better with Paul‟s relationship with his mother than Miriam could ever do.
She takes care of his sexual needs and leaves plenty of him over for Mrs Morel.
We are also told that Mrs Morel is not hostile to the idea of Clara; in fact, she
finds Paul‟s relationship with her quite wholesome. And still, this relationship
fails. Its failure is due to a certain inadequacy in itself. Firstly, Paul instinctively
realizes that Clara is too physical to keep his soul steady for long. (ibid)

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2.3 Conclusion

Above all, in fact, Sons and Lovers described three types of love: Paul
and his mother, Paul and Miriam, and Paul and Clara. The first type was
maternal love; the second type was spiritual love; and the third type was flesh
love. Lawrence racked his brains to form the three types of love, to emphasize
women‟s strength and their great might in men‟s growth. But under the surface
of this love, in the Paul-centred atmosphere, we can find three tragic women
standing bitterly. We can even see the 20th century women‟s self-awareness,
fighting and dim the epitome of failure. The tragedy has historical, social, and
personal factors. In fact, the three women in Sons and Lovers are irreconcilable
to be controlled by life. They showed initial awakening consciousness of
women, but they chose wrong directions and ways, eventually they were led to
the failure of the same fate. Paul swung among the three women, and made full
use of them, even caused damage to them, but this achieved his own spiritual
growth and the pursuit of human nature. At this point, Mrs Morel, Miriam and
Clara should be responsible for their own tragedy. In this sense, the article did
critical analysis of these three women understanding their tragic flaws.

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 Reference
J. Shattock, Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1800–1900, 3rd edn, vol. 4
(1999).

Raymond Williams, The English Novel from Dickens to Lawrence (1976).

D. D. Stone, The Romantic Impulse in Victorian Fiction (1980).

A useful, concise survey is still Miriam Allott, ed., Novelists on the Novel
(1959).

The Victorian Press: Samplings and Soundings, ed. Joanne Shattock and
Michael Wolff (1982).

Novels for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 1998.
Novels for Students, Vol. 1, ed. Diane Telgen (Detroit: Gale, 1997).
Baron, Helen, "Disseminated Consciousness in Sons and Lovers," in Essays in
Criticism, Vol. 48, No. 4, October 1998.
Finney, Brian, D. H. Lawrence: "Sons and Lovers," Penguin, 1990.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 36, British Novelists, 1890-1929:
Modernists, edited by Thomas F. Staley, Gale Research, 1985.
La Muhidin. 2015. Characterization in the novel entiteld sons and lovers by D.H
Lawrence. lingua, 12(2): 187-200.

Pullin, Faith, „Lawrence‟s Treatment of Women in Sons and Lovers’.

Miller, H. (1980). The world of Lawrence: A passionate appreciation Santa

Barbara. USA: California Press.p.256

Drabele, M. (1993). The Oxford companion to English literature. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.p.128

Lawrence, D. H. (2007). Sons and Lovers. Aron‟s Rod. USBD: Delhi.p.87.

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