Paul's Manipulation of the Three Major Women in D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

Abstract

This paper investigates the development of Paul’s personality and the influences that shaped it in D.H. Lawrence’s major novel Sons and Lovers. The study has approached the novel from psychological perspective, particularly, emphasizing the protagonist’s various attempts to manipulate the three women characters he came in contact with, in order to create a personality for his own self, and it also reveals Lawrence’s treatment of women through the delineation of their characters and their relationship to Paul Morel. The qualitative research paradigm is adopted focusing on textual data analysis of the novel. The findings of the study revealed that what Lawrence actually wrote about was the relationship between man and a series of female stereotypes, for women characters were treated unfairly by the author, who seems to blame them for their attempts to absorb the character of Paul. And that a healthy and successful relationship between men and women is a dream that is difficult to achieve. This can be seen through Paul’s failure to establish a successful and healthy relationship with all of the three women characters in the novel. At the end of the novel, Paul decides to free himself and go on alone. Freedom is what he has been looking for, and that kind of free life cannot be achieved unless he runs away from the women he came to know.