Marcy Bicking Styles in Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers begins before the birth of its hero, Paul Morel, as his parents and brother and sister are moving into the dreary miners' lodgings known as the Bottoms. Walter Morel is a rugged miner whose small, deeply religious wife, Gertrude, is unhappily pregnant with their third child, Paul. Of all the Morels, you get the clearest picture of Gertrude in this chapter. A proud woman who has married beneath her own social class, …

…Gertrude takes Morel's gifts compared to her joyful appreciation of William's eggcups. Some readers see Mrs. Morel as intolerant of her husband. It's their view that she even encourages his bad points by expecting him to live up to her ideals rather than accepting him for himself. Other readers feel that Lawrence slants their sympathy toward Mrs. Morel because he truly believed his own mother suffered unjustly at the hands of her crude, unreliable husband.