“삶을 향한 표류”: 『아들과 연인』의 폴의 딜레마를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper proposes to explore what Paul Morel’s dilemma, the split between the mother and his women, signifies in terms of the changing mode of human relationship in the modern world. Lawrence has created, notably in Sons and Lovers, an unforgettable literary account of an Oedipal son who is deeply in love with, and dependent on, the mother, and the consequential plights he suffers. The intense relationship with the mother leads the son to assume the false dichotomy between spirit (self) and sexuality, so he cannot give himself fully to another woman. However, it is important to see that this case should not be interpreted just as a young man’s personal psychic predicament, but from a wider historical perspective. According to Lawrence’s comment on Hamlet, the emergence of the type of over-dependent man, which took place in the beginning of the Renaissance, represents the transition from the aristocratic principle to the democratic. Though they end in failures, the relationships with Miriam and Clara enable Paul to overcome his idealistic traits which have checked his whole being, and have an increasing awareness of the world surrounding him. In the last scene of the novel, he refuses to be swept into “the drift towards death” with his dead mother, and takes a resolute step in the direction to the future. Also for the author, by giving fictional expression to the “sickness”, the intense and unbalanced relationships in his early life, he could get more self-knowledge and, with much freedom, go on to explore the human relationship in “the trembling instability of balance” in the later novels.