Sons and Lovers Men and Masculinity Quotes

It's not easy for Paul to let Miriam carry something for him. After all, he figures he's supposed to be stronger than Miriam because he's a man. But he's recovering from an illness, so he gets smart and humbles himself here.

When Gertrude first meets Walter Morel, she loves him because she thinks he's really manly—he's a miner who spends all his time underground smashing rocks. Come on. It's understandable that she would find this awesome. But, like many women who fall in love with "manly" young men, Gertrude eventually learns that there's a dark side to this kind of masculinity. Walter Morel turns out to be an abusive alcoholic. And he has no interest in ever talking about his feelings, or apologizing for anything he does.

Good ol' Walter decides that he doesn't want his son William looking like a little girl, so one day he cuts all the boy's hair off. Mrs. Morel absolutely loves every little hair on William's head, so when she finds out what happened, she totally loses it. This scene especially helps to show how Mr. Morel tries to work against nature for the sake of making his son seem more like a boy. Chill out, dude.

As Mrs. Morel's love for her husband fades, her love for her son grows. Her marriage has left her with a long list of frustrated dreams, and she's more than happy to put these dreams into William. And guess what? One reason why William is expected to succeed for her, quite frankly, is because he's a boy. So, you can read Mrs. Morel's possessiveness of her sons as an expression of her frustrations over not being a man herself. Deep, we know.

Paul and William Morel are two very different models of masculinity. Paul's delicate and quiet, following his mother around all the time. William, on the other hand, is a much more "typical" male; he only gets stronger and more active as he ages.

Mrs. Morel accuses her son William of only wanting a girl because a bunch of other men want her, too. This is pretty much Intro to Masculinity 101: compete with other men; turn a woman into a prize instead of a person; sit back and realize you don't actually like the woman once she's chosen you. Sure enough, this is exactly what happens to William.

It's very rare for Lawrence's narrator to make an omniscient statement about male behavior in this novel, but that's exactly what happens here. On a total whim, Paul decides that he wants to punish Miriam for not doing or saying exactly what he wanted. So he hops on his broken bike and goes flying off down a hill just to make her worry. Clearly, he's willing to risk significant harm just for the sake of showing Miriam that she can't control him in any way. What a dummy.

Paul can't stand the way that Miriam always holds him to a certain moral code. Like all men in this book, Paul seeks the freedom to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. As a man, he thinks he was born to be wild.

Here, Paul reacts strongly against Miriam's need to rob her little brother of his independence. But it's clear that he's actually playing out his own anxieties about Miriam's clinginess. She's really needy when it comes to this love business.

Because of his masculine pride and stubborn sense of individuality, Paul thinks of his relationship with Miriam in black and white terms. To be with her would mean to lose himself; to not be with her would be to destroy her. Neither result is all that appealing to our dude Paul. But, in the end, Paul would much rather hold on to his own life than ruin himself just to make Miriam happy. You see, in his view, it's only girls who are supposed to ruin themselves to make other people happy. Ouch, our feminist hearts.