Exploration Of Characters’ Relationship In Sons And Lovers

Sons and Lovers is one of the most famous novels of Lawrence. There has been a great deal of analysis on the protagonist Paul’s Oedipus complex and feminism in the novel. This thesis intends to explore the complicated relationship between Paul and the four main characters with CP. CP is proposed by Grice, and it has four maxims:quantity maxim, quality maxim, relation maxim and manner maxim. In the daily life, people often violate CP to express their minds, so do the characters in literature works. Based on that fact, this thesis intends to apply CP to the analysis of the characters’relationship in Sons and Lovers.The discussion of relations will be focused on Paul and his father, his mother, Miriam and Clara, because they play a very important role in Paul’s life. Through the analysis of typical conversations, the author finds that the relationship between Paul and the four characters is very complex. Paul’s relationship with his father is very tense. He seldom communicates with his father, but their biological relationship can never be denied. Different from his relation with his father, Paul’s relation with mother is much closer. His attitude towards his mother is combined with love and hatred. As a young boy, he is totally dependent on mother and loves her heart-and-soul. Yet as he grows old and acquires more social experiences, he is realizing the negative effect of that dependence, especially after his love with two girls. Finally, his mom suffers from cancer, and Paul can not stand the pain of looking after her any more, so he adds excessive morphine in her milk. In this way, Paul not only ends his mom’s pain, but also free himself. Paul and Miriam have much in common, but they both think too highly of spirit and can not get along as usual lovers. Besides, they are always opposed by Paul’s mother, so they have to break up at last. Paul seeks comfort from Clara after his parting with Miriam. However, there is no true love between them, and Paul is only attracted by the physical charm of Clara. Therefore, they are doomed to part.This paper first briefly introduces the previous studies on the famous writer Lawrence and his classic work Sons and Lovers; then reviews the previous study and criticism of them, and concisely summarizes the study on cooperative principle home and abroad. Later, conversational implicature and the four maxims of cooperative principle are discussed, and they serve as the theoretical framework of the paper. Then the four people’s relationships are explained in detail in terms of their conversational implicature. At last, the paper gives a brief summary of the research.By studying the novel from the perspective of CP, this thesis attempts to extend the critical vision of literary works, and to understand the novel Sons and Lovers better.