On "Sons and Lovers"

[Darorinag]

Originally posted by loseyourname I read it a couple years back. There is never any incest. What happens is that Paul is hung up from his childhood need to defend his mother from his father and develops and idealization of her that he is subliminally in love with and can't let go of. This prevents him from being successful in his other relationships and he ends up destroying what could have been a beautiful life with a wonderful girl by being overly critical of her. He comes to resent the way she replaces his mother and he grows to be very mean toward her. It is a very long book, but well worth reading.

Hmm, well, actually, I didn't mean sexually oriented incest. I just meant relationship-wise... The mother-son relationship between Mrs Morel and Paul wasn't a normal one, don't you think? I guess there's a lot of Freud in there, but the thing is that it's an anachronism... so we can't really interpret it on the bases that he used Freudian theory.

Btw, did you notice the scene with the swing? Such sexual imagery!!!