The Struggle between Spirituality and Sexuality in Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

Sons and Lovers is one of the most powerful psychological novels of the Twentieth century-intensely autobiographical. When it first appeared in 1913, it was immediately recognised that Lawrence knowingly or unknowingly, was influenced by the term ‘Oedipus Complex’ coined by the Austrian Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Lawrence depicts his own psychic traumas through the character of the protagonist, Paul Morel who suffers due to his mother’s domination over his soul and his inability to find a way out of his struggle between the all-consuming spiritual nature of possessive love and sexual attraction that makes Sons and Lovers one of Lawrence’s memorable work of written art. It speaks of a strange triangular love tension between Paul-Miriam-Clara relationship that turns out to be hopeless and futile.