D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and the Culture of Sacrifice

The "culture of sacrifice" of the title of this essay spans a wide range of literal and symbolic meanings, at least two of which have profound resonances for a reading of Sons and Lovers. While the practice of individual self-sacrifice is pervasive throughout the novel, it assumes significantly different forms in Parts 1 and 2. Although the literal sacrificial disciplines (mainly economic and verbal) Mrs. Morel imposes (Part 1) allows her sons to escape the coalmining destiny their father endures, it slowly reduces and alienates him, recasting him as a virtual outcast within his own family. By contrast, a symbolic investment in sacrifice (Part 2), especially in relation to sexuality, dominates the Paul/Miriam relationship, undermining its erotic potential, exposing the abyss of misrecognition that ends the affair. Paul's relationship with Clara in turn opens up a radical new possibility--that of sacrificing sacrifice itself, putting an end to the traumatic investment in suffering as a mode of transcending the body in favor of those erotic desire-flows the text calls a "belief in life" (398). Sacrifice is thus not simply a moral concept, but an interiorized disposition--the lynchpin that secures both the choices and the contracts the protagonists make, whether with themselves or the larger community, or the God they believe in. Of course, the notion that sacrifice structures subjectivity and, as such, is basic to personal, social, and religious self-definition is not new. Psychoanalytical theory, for example, posits sacrifice as foundational to man's status as a creature of language--the mark of his/her distinction from animals who do not possess the same signifying powers. Whether it is termed the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction (Freud), or of the "presymbolic life substance of enjoyment" (Lacan/ Zizec), or of the "semiotic chora" (Kristeva), it marks man down as a being who is subject to sacrifice at an age before free choice is available. (1) Through his/her entry into language, the subject renounces short-term enjoyment for longer-term gain. In the wider perspective, this economic understanding of sacrifice exchanges terrestrial suffering for the kind of celestial reward that at once justifies and vindicates it. Because sacrifice is assumed to give more than it takes, it always pays off in the end. The difference between Parts 1 and 2 is now easily defined: while Part 1 cultivates an earthly system of economic payoffs that isolate the father as the guilt-figure who obstructs the family's social advancement, Part 2 looks to the transcendental as the site of rewards for the sexual self-sacrifice Miriam practices to bring her closer to God. In the end, Paul rejects both dimensions: his quest for a greater "enjoyment" (with Clara) discloses a primordial "impersonal" state, the "wild source" (398) of life where the laws of self-sacrifice no longer apply. Through a rigorous parsimony that ensures their higher social status within the mining community, the Morel family engages in a literal economy of sacrifice, enforced by the mother to secure her sons' release from a narrowly class-bound society. (2) The price paid is a high one--the expulsion of the father from the family circle, his "casting off," as the text puts it (61)--a frigid exclusion in which both the mother and children collaborate. This surface structure of sacrifice, however, conceals a deep structure, hidden from the narrator and protagonists alike. Rene Girard's theory of the sacrificial "scapegoat" is of special relevance here; the animal victim that a disordered community (read family) expels from its midst serves to assuage its own guilt and restore a lost order. Designed to protect the whole community from its own potential violence, this sacrifice (almost always of an animal) "reinforce[s] the social fabric," repressing its "rivalries, jealousies, and quarrels" (Girard 8). (3) Because Morel bears the brunt of the guilt the family projects onto him, he is sacrificed as the surrogate animal to secure their greater cohesion. …