Mrs. Morel, mother of the sons, is the major character, who comes from a good burglar family, civilized and educated well. She also has refined manners comparing with the vulgar women in Bottoms. Her husband is from a lower class. He is a struggling coal miner and a heavy drinker. They have nothing in common. In fact, their marriage life is very frustrated which is full of conflicts.
Mrs. Morel thinks that she would reform the miner and bring him up to her level of manners. But very soon she knows he can never be reformed. On the contrary, Mr. Morel becomes more and more cruel and fierce to the family due to Mrs. Morel’s complaints and contempt. Every morning, the father crawls into the dark and dump pit, and work hard. In the evening, he doesn’t come back until he is dead drunk. When he is at home, he treats his wife and children brutally..
The mother is unsatisfied and angry with the coal miner, because he not only fails to live up to her bourgeois idea, but also hurts her in body and mind. Their marriage is broken up completely, as Lawrence once described: “their marriage life has been one carnal, bloody flight.”［11］ As Mrs. Morel loses her husband’s love, she slowly inexorably transfers her emotions to her children. In her eyes, her sons are her lovers who take position of her husband. She wants to win her son’s love that she can’t get from her husband in order to make up her emotional gap.
. Her personal abnormal emotion is the direct factor for Paul’s
They tell each other their feelings from their innermost world, and share the happiness and grievance with each other. This kind of emotion which excesses the normal one between mother and son reaches a climax when Mr. Morel (Paul’s father) is in hospital as a work accident. For example, he even says to his mother with joy: “I’m the man in the house now.”［2］“They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they almost regretted---though none of them would have owned to such callousness---that...