DH Lawrence and Freud

‘The Relationship Between Mother and Son in Lawrence’s Work is Clearly Influenced By Freud’s Ideas on The Oedipus Complex.’ Basing your response on a comparison of Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers’ and his short stories, discuss to what extent you agree with this statement.

Freud began to use the term ‘Oedipus complex’ in 1910, following the death of his father in 1896 and his seeing of the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles some time after this. His psychoanalytic theory, based on Sophocles’ tragedy, explores the desire of infant boys to replace their father, and therefore sexually possess their mother. Lawrence experimented with this theory in a number of his works, most notably Sons and Lovers, published in 1913, which covers the semi-oedipal relationship of Gertrude Morel and her son Paul. In The Rocking-Horse Winner, first published in 1926, Lawrence focuses more on the son’s crazed ambition to become ‘lucky’, but also faintly mirrors the quasi-oedipal theme of Sons and Lovers. The Lovely Lady, published in 1933, again shows Lawrence’s exploration of Freud’s Oedipus complex theory, through Robert’s fascination with his ‘lovely’ mother, Pauline.
Examples of the Oedipus complex in Sons and Lovers are to be found at numerous points in the novel. Early on in the novel, Lawrence writes that Paul ‘loved to sleep with his mother’. Even in his early years, Paul’s relationship with his mother has an oedipal aspect, and the word ‘loved’-being the superlative verb to describe enjoyment- doesn’t help to quash this atmosphere. Similarities can be drawn between the novel and the short stories, for example in The Lovely Lady Lawrence writes that Robert ‘did not love his mother’ but was ‘completely fascinated’ by her, a feeling usually reserved for lovers. The lack of physical intimacy is distinct in The Rocking-Horse Winner, however evidence is given for the oedipal nature of Hester and Paul’s relationship in the horse-riding scene, where Paul’s eyes are described as having a ‘strange glare’ in them, and Lawrence writes that he rode the horse ‘with a frenzy’. This sexualised description alludes perhaps to the sexual tension, and of course stress, created by the semi-oedipal relationship. The fact that Paul rides the rocking-horse to ‘become lucky’, and so financially help his mother, only reinforces this idea.
The penultimate chapter of Sons and Lovers sees Paul caring for his dying mother as her husband should, calling her ‘my dear’ and thinking of nothing but her ‘all day long’. This adoption of marital duties is important in Freudian readings of the novel, and it implies that Paul has superseded Walter, who is rarely seen during the last chapters of the book. After Mrs Morel has died, Lawrence writes that Paul ‘kissed her passionately’ but was repelled by the ‘coldness against his mouth’, and ‘bit his lips with horror’. He felt that he could ‘never let her go’. Paul’s ‘horror’ is important in that it marks a significant decline in Gertrude’s spiritual hold over him, and his own descent into perdition. The revulsion Paul feels when kissing his dead mother is echoed in The Lovely Lady. Robert is ‘repelled’ at his mother’s newly aged looks – the result of ‘years of suppressed exasperation’, or more precisely the dangerously oedipal relationship she shared with her son.
Much like Lawrence himself – after his own mother’s death, Paul Morel expresses a desire to go ‘abroad’, and he drinks in public-houses and talks to ‘almost any woman’. Furthermore, the ‘strained look in his eyes’ as if he were ‘hunting something’ signifies the fact that Paul is, probably unconsciously, searching for another who is capable of such mastery over the soul as his mother. This element of the auto-biographical nature of the novel is further validated by Jessie Chambers (for a time a prominent woman in Lawrence’s life) who wrote that Lawrence had told her before his mother’s funeral that he loved his mother ‘like a lover’, and that this was the reason why he could ‘never love’ Jessie.
This corresponds to Lawrence’s reasons for writing, or at least completing Sons and Lovers. It has been suggested that the novel was completed as an instrument of transition in Lawrence’s life, a tool with which he could make a fresh start. John Worthen, Professor of D.H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham, in his 1997 biography of Lawrence, stated that Lawrence was writing the novel to ‘free himself from the past’; in effect, from his mother’s spiritual hold over him.
In 1912, when Lawrence visited his Nottingham Professor, Ernest Weekley, he met and fell in love with Weekley’s wife, Frieda. Eventually, after travelling across Europe with her, they married in England in 1914. Frieda’s significance is that she picked up where Lydia Morel left off; once more Lawrence’s soul had a master. In marrying Frieda, Lawrence had effectively freed himself from the past, and the grief he felt at the loss of his mother. This is echoed in the conclusion of Sons and Lovers. Paul Morel decides not to follow his deceased mother into the ‘darkness’, and would not ‘give in’, but walks ‘quickly’ away.
The Rocking-Horse Winner presents a distinctly eerie atmosphere, which, when coupled with the oedipal nature of Hester and Paul’s relationship creates an almost fairy-tale, ghost story-like feel not found in Sons and Lovers. There are similarities regarding oedipal relationships between the texts however; W. D. Snodgrass offered a Freudian interpretation of The Rocking-Horse Winner in The Hudson Review in 1958. His interpretation was built upon the resemblance of ‘luck’ to ‘lucre’, and the more vague resemblance of both to ‘love.’ Snodgrass argued that Paul's desire ‘to be lucky’ represents an oedipal desire to replace his father in his mother's life – his father ‘has no luck’.
In the short story, Lawrence chooses only to name Hester and Paul; two of the other three members of the family remain anonymous and barely appear in the story. This degrades the father, and places Paul, the son, at a higher level than him in the family. This represents the possibly oedipal desire of Paul to replace and to supersede his father in his mother’s life. In Sons and Lovers, Walter Morel’s degradation is less apparent, but it exists in that he is referred to as ‘Morel’ in the text. This short name makes Walter seem almost monstrous, and the fact that the name ‘Morel’ comes from the Old French ‘more’ – meaning dark and swarthy (as a moor) only amplifies this.
This swarthiness is reflected in the coal that the livelihood of the Morel family depends on, and knowing Lawrence’s opposition to the effects of industrialisation, Morel can be viewed as the personification of industry – a negative force which hems the more nature-orientated Gertrude in, and so propagates the unnaturally close relationship of Paul and his mother. This theory of the unnatural mother-son relationship as a product of Walter’s constant absence is one alternative to classic Freudian readings of the novel. Morel’s shortened name mirrors his descent almost into anonymity and non-existence towards the end of the novel.
Lawrence employs the same ghost story feel as The Rocking-Horse Winner in The Lovely Lady. Robert is described as being ‘drawn to’ his mother ‘as a humble flower to the sun’. This mirrors Paul Morel’s love of his own mother. The only thing missing from the Oedipus complex in The Lovely Lady is a present father who could validate the theme. His father’s absence, in a way, provides evidence for the Oedipus complex in that Robert has already superseded his father, who is revealed to be a Mexican Pauline had a previous affair with. When Pauline is revealed to be an old woman, Robert loses interest in her, and sees her ‘true colours’-  he finally sees the oedipal relationship he has shared with her. This claim is illustrated in that Robert is astonished to discover that Pauline is ‘a little old lady’, and the vocabulary describing Pauline becomes increasingly negative towards the conclusion of the narrative. She is described as a ‘crazy dog’, and that she was ‘literally shrivelling away’. The idea that Pauline Attenborough’s only love was ‘power’ is not echoed in Sons and Lovers, as Gertrude’s love for her son is probably unselfish, if unnatural. The fact that Pauline is ‘literally shrivelling away’- presumably because Robert has lost his feelings for her towards the end of the story - is in direct contrast to the conclusion of Sons and Lovers, where Gertrude is described as ‘the only thing that held’ Paul Morel up. In The Lovely Lady Lawrence focuses on a woman driven only by her personal desires, whereas Sons and Lovers’ Gertrude wants not just to be loved, but to create the best possible lifestyle she can for her children.
Robert’s relationship with Ciss, his cousin, is severely affected by Robert’s fascination with Pauline, and mirrors Paul Morel’s relationship with Miriam and Clara, and how he is unable to forge lasting relationships with either of them. Paul Morel tells his mother that he will ‘never marry’, and this is similar to Robert’s view; that Pauline intended Ciss and Robert to marry ‘when she was dead’. This further illustrates the inability of either son to forge healthy relationships.
The relationships explored by Lawrence in the three texts are all, to varying degrees, oedipal. The fairy tale atmosphere of The Rocking-Horse Winner and The Lovely Lady shows a higher level of perversity than that of Sons and Lovers, and that Lawrence portrays Pauline Attenborough as a ‘hideous’, almost archetypal ‘witch’ in the conclusion of The Lovely Lady clarifies the true horror of an almost fully oedipal relationship.
Sons and Lovers is evidently Lawrence’s most auto-biographical novel, but whether he was influenced by Freud’s ideas on the Oedipus complex or not is debatable. Graham Hough writes in The Dark Sun that Lawrence claimed he ‘had not read Freud’ during the Sons and Lovers period, but ‘had heard of him’. This is contrary to the belief of Frieda Lawrence, who ‘had long arguments about Freud’ with Lawrence in 1912. It seems unlikely that Lawrence was influenced by Freud’s ideas on any great level while writing Sons and Lovers, the situation was there in actuality, and according to Hough, was ‘pretty well recognised for what it was at the time’.
The novel is undoubtedly a Freudian one, but it is probable that it wasn’t influenced by any kind of textbook Freudianism, but the situation of Lawrence and his family, which needed no influence to be considered oedipal. Indeed, Lawrence alludes to Freudian influence in the last pages of the novel, where from the viewpoint of Miriam, he writes that Paul Morel would ‘destroy himself like a perverse child’.