Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical novel published by D. H. Lawrence, one of the most well-known authors of the Modern Era. A male child's attraction to his mother is referred to as the "Oedipal complex" by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual phases of development. The Oedipus complex, according to Freud, was crucial to the phallic stage of psychosexual development.

The term Oedipus has been derived from the name of the King Oedipus of Thebes, who, though in ignorance, married his own mother and had children by her. Freud used this term to explain the manifestation of infantile sexuality in the relation of the child to its parents. The Oedipus complex “is a state which a person shows excessive affection for the parent opposite in sex to him or herself, and a corresponding distaste for his or her other parent.” If it is a son who is excessively fond of his mother as is Paul Morel fond of Mrs. Morel and extends his fondness beyond puberty, adversely affecting the harmony of his relationship with other girls, we may also describe him as a victim of the mother fixation.

It is well acknowledged that D.H. Lawrence suffered from a severe Oedipus complex. He was very much influenced by his mother Lydia Lawrence, and he also thought of her as a lover. She was the one who gave him warmth to live. The inspiration she provided him also determined his outlook on life and literature. When Mrs. Lawrence was practically on her deathbed in 1910, Lawrence urged his publisher to publish The White Peacock quickly so that his mother may read it while she was still conscious. In many of his early poetry, he also frequently expresses how much they loved one another like young lovers.

Disillusioned with her husband Walter Morel, Mrs. Morel gradually casts him off and takes her two sons William and Paul as husband’s substitutes one after the other, thus wrecking their emotional life. Gertrude Morel, a fantastically moral and religious woman, at twenty-one, marries a warm, sensuous and indulgent miner, Walter Morel. The couple's first few months of marriage are filled with joy, but over time, the close connection created by their poetized passion breaks, and Mrs. Morel becomes dissatisfied by her husband's regular drinking, his indulgent and slothful behaviour, and his temperamental dishonesty. As her oldest son William gets older, Mrs. Morel starts to distance herself from her husband and turns to her son for emotional gratification. William also reacts to her on instinct. Once, when he is seven, he brings for her, from the fair, two egg-cups with moss roses on them and presents them to her almost like a lover. When he brings home the first prize he has won at school, she receives it almost like a queen. But she is so over-possessive that as William comes in contact with other girls and goes dancing with them, she finds it difficult to tolerate them. In fact she expresses her hostility towards them in rather crude and jarring terms. Later, when William falls in love with a passionate girl called Gyp and brings her home on a short visit, she is vehemently critical of her. Under her influence, Williams finds it difficult to strike a balance between his love for his mother and his infatuation for Gyp, he suffers from terrible spiritual anguish and finally dies.

After the early infantile psycho-sexual development, according to Freud, the Oedipus complex goes dormant for a few years until becoming active again at puberty. In the case of Paul, the early migration to London of William makes him closer to his mother, though it is finally recognised only when Paul is down with severe attack of pneumonia after William’s death. Mrs. Morel tightens her hold on his soul while they sleep together as she tries desperately to save him from succumbing to death. Paul "realises" his mother during this illness, and he is also precisely at puberty at the time. The Oedipus complex is bound to entail the envy of the father. Unconsciously, the youngster perceives his father as a rival for the affection of his mother. As a result, there is animosity and antagonism between the father and the son. Paul despises his father a lot. He once feels that it would be simpler to forgo the reward than to beg his father for approval when Mrs. Morel asks him to show his father the trophy he has won. Even his father's gaze is intolerable to Paul, who scornfully rejects all of his efforts to be kind to him. Mrs. Morel's obsession with Paul causes her husband to feel a great deal of jealousy as well as some hazy suspicions of incest. In Chapter VIII, there is a very significant episode that brings into focus the entire conflict. Mrs. Morel expresses her jealousy of Miriam and suddenly says, “And I’ve never-you know, Paul I’ve never had a husband, not really” Paul strokes his mother’s hair and his mouth is on her throat. And she kisses him a long, fervent kiss, which is followed by a gentle stroking of her face by Paul. Just then enters Mr. Morel and standing in the doorway, venomously remarks, “At your mischief again?”

Paul tries to play the part of Mrs. Morels' husband because she admits in the story that she never had one in the true sense. Paul has assumed the position of the head of the household over the most of the second half of the book. His relation with his mother is that of a husband substitute. He acts as though he were her man and stayed with her out of instinct.  On their visit to Nottingham he chatted away with his mother and she was gay like a sweetheart. Later “they walked down the station street, feeling the excitement of lovers having an adventure together; they arrived home in the mellow evening, happy and glowing, and tired.” During a visit to Mrs. Leiver’s Farm “they went out into the wood that was flooded with bluebells.........the bluebells........the mother and the son were in ecstasy together.” The flowers which Paul sticks in her coat offer another concrete symbol of this love. But perhaps one of the clearest examples is found in Paul’s regretful raving at having an ‘old’ mother for a sweetheart: “Why can’t a man have a young mother? What is the old for? “Well,” his mother laughed, “she can scarcely help it.” “And why wasn’t I the oldest son? Look they say the young ones have the advantage—but look, they had the young mother. You should have had me for your oldest son.”

Paul fails to establish harmonious relationships with both Clara and Miriam. These mistakes weren't entirely Paul's fault; there is some blame to be shared with his mother. Paul is an artist, and most artists are romantic and kind-hearted. Paul is seduced by Clara's passionate and untamed character, but only for a short while. In life, excess of anything should be avoided, and Paul follows this rule. Clara is the embodiment of passion and wild love, whereas Paul is tender and can't hold Clara for very long. As a result, he begins to avoid her. On the other side, Miriam is equal to Paul, but he never sees her as a replacement for his mother. He desires a beloved, and in her, he desires the nurturing qualities of a mother. But there is another aspect of it also. In Chapter XIII, Paul tells his mother that he loved Clara deeply. He had loved Miriam also. But at the same time could not possibly marry them. “You haven’t met the right woman.” “And I never shall meet the right woman while you live,” he said.

Both spiritually and physically Paul is glued to his mother. Paul must always be seeking for mother-image in his woman. Paul gets dissatisfied both with Miriam and Clara, he clings on to his mother. Their inter-dependence on each other never declines. He breaks off both with Miriam and Clara. In fact, life for him is only where his mother is and when she dies, he becomes indifferent to life and death alike.

The bond between the sons and the mother is the direct outcome of Oedipus complex. Both William and Paul hate their father and Paul even pray to the God that his father should die. When William is born, Walter the husband becomes an outsider as he is not given love, care, affection and attention. The sons treat their father as their enemy. In the Greek mythology, Oedipus commits the sin of killing his own father and marrying his own biological mother unconsciously and under a curse but the suffering of Walter at the hands of his sons and his wife Gertrude is done deliberately and intentionally. In the modern age, whatever we do knowingly or unknowingly it is the psychological dilemma set by modern psychologists on the basis of their observations and studies. The suffering of Paul and Mrs. Morel is no less than the suffering of Oedipus and Jocasta. William and Paul are not able to form intimate bond with their beloved. They are not able to form union with their souls and they keep on dangling between their mother and their beloved. It is this Oedipus complex that forbids Paul to think about any other woman to be his life partner. He is like Hamlet divided between head and heart. The head says don’t ditch the mother and the heart says Miriam is a nice woman to live with. But he keeps on struggling on the point that he is unable to find the mother substitute in Miriam. The true and real solace can be found only in the mother and this is why it seems as if the naval string is still attached. Paul cannot find his personality away from his mother. He dies every second in his life when it is revealed that Mrs. Morel is suffering from cancer. The love was so much so that he gives the overdose of morpheme to his mother to set her free from the pain. The bond was so strong that even after the death of his mother, he chooses to live alone and he leaves Miriam forever. Though the mother was not alive but she is always there in his mind saying that no woman is right for him.

Sons and Lovers has been described as the first Freudian novel in English As Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical novel, we find that D.H. Lawrence has given a true and real account of his life and how he felt and experienced in the company of his mother.