A Narratological Reading Of The Silent Walter Morel In D.H.Lawrence's Sons And Lovers

D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, the focus of this thesis, is his third novel and first masterpiece. It is celebrated as a pioneering achievement in English fiction and is now one of the most widely read of English novels. Most critics in general analyze and evaluate Sons and Lovers by adopting a psychoanalytical or social approach. The discussion up to date either just hunts for Oedipus Complex or is strictly confined to content analysis. This thesis, however, attempts to compensate for the separation of form from content by focusing on the seemingly minor character Walter Morel and his silent situation.According to the narrative theory, a narrative can be divided into two levels: the level of story and the level of discourse. Story is the What of the narrative, and discourse is the How. Inspired by such a division, I will distinguish two possible levels of Walter Morel's silence - his silence on the story level and on the discourse level respectively.On the story level we can recognize that Walter Morel is obviously a character who lives in the prison-house of silence. The whole Morel family are treating Walter Morel with neglect, though he is the husband of Gertrude Morel and father of four children. He is continuously subjected to the silent treatment from the family members with his wife Gertrude Morel as the head. Eventually he is excluded from any share in the familial issues and thrown into a state of ignorance and inarticulation in the domestic setting. In other words, he finally loses the exercise of power both as husband and as father.The silence on this level is easiest to understand in terms of the discrepancy between Gertrude Morel and Walter Morel. I shall use binary oppositions as a tool to mark the differences between them in educational background, perception, intellectual degree, and guiding principle. But I find it more fruitful to set these differences against the social background. I shall show that ideological prejudices serve as a catalyst for the silent treatment. It is Victorian ideologies that encourage people to ascribe prestige to one pole and stigma to the other in the series of either-or choices. It is Victorian ideologies that transform the differences in education and its related dimensions into powerful mechanisms for asserting and recognizing social differences. Therefore, we can accuse the ideologies of having a prejudice against these differences. Interpellated by the Puritan and middle class ideologies, Gertrude Morel, in alliance with the Morel children, battlessilently with Walter Morel. The evils of capitalist society that breed these ideologies are also mentioned. Industrialism and the sexual division of labour alienate Walter Morel from his wife and separate him from the children at crucial times of their growth. They together create silence in Walter Morel, and between Walter Morel and his family members.On the discourse level we can perceive a deliberate narrative silence on Walter Morel's interior activities. Generally speaking, the novel Sons and Lovers is a third-person omniscient narrative with a frequent shift of focalization. Free indirect speech is a major narrative technique used a great deal in it to represent the thoughts of characters. However, the description of Walter Morel is always in external focalization. The omniscient narrator seems to strive to confine his introduction of Walter Morel to the limited focalizations of Gertrude Morel and their male children. It is through their observations, thoughts, and evaluations that we get to know Walter Morel.This thesis concludes that the silences of Walter Morel on the levels of story and discourse interact with each other instead of being independent. The narrative silence, by highlighting the dominance of Gertrude Morel's focalization, serves to reinforce the strong image of Gertrude Morel and the weak image of Walter Morel. It, at the same time, intensifies Walter Morel's silence on the story level. In general, the narrative silence on Walter Morel's inner life on the discourse level is consistent with the silent Walter Morel on the story level. They together reveal the oppressive position of the working-class Walter Morel.