Telegina N. I., Chabaniyk K. M.

Vasyl Stephanyk Precarpathian National University

Ivano-Frankivsk

Figures of Speech as an Implicit Means of Expressing the Psychological State of Characters in ‘Sons and Lovers’ by David Herbert Lawrence

Figurative language is as essential an ingredient of prose as it is of poetry. The artistry, with which a writer of prose uses figures of speech to convey exact and vivid meaning to the story, contributes to the readers’ perceiving the writer’s message. Using a single word or phrase figuratively he suggests a rich picture. Figures of speech are particularly useful for conveying emotion since they involve imaginative comparisons and identifications.

Exuberant use of varied metaphors by Lawrence in ‘Sons and Lovers’ provides deep psychological insight into human nature. According to multidimensionality and functionality we singled out complex and simple metaphors in the novel. Complex metaphors are represented by metaphorical phrases often combining some images which expressing an emotion or a character’s mood at the same time reveal the character’s idea of himself or his attitude towards the situation, or the way he treats other characters. They often imply some traits of character or the character’s life philosophy. The way Paul tells his mother about his relations with Clara is an example of using a complex metaphor to convey the protagonist’s feelings, intentions and moral values: “‘No; her life is nothing to her, so what’s the worth of nothing? She goes with me – it becomes something. Then she must pay – we both must pay! Folk are so frightened of paying; they’d rather starve and die’” [2, 378]. Paul considers that one must pay for being happy and he hints that Clara should sacrifice her name and social status for the sake of satisfaction which they both get from their relations. He calls people cowards hiding hypocrisy and egoism. In fact Paul does not care for Clara’s feelings. She becomes a victim of his ambitions. The young man behaves as if he did Clara some kind a favour staying with her. Paul plays with her feelings as he fears that the woman under the burden of stereotypes and moral standards of that time may denude him of the desired.

Paul’s feelings to Miriam after breaking off their relations and the influence of their relations on the man’s psychic are revealed through his metaphorical speeches: “‘She seems to draw me and draw me, and she wouldn’t leave a single hair of me free to fall out and blow away – she’d keep it’” [2, 337]. He states that the girl is constantly trying to attach him to herself, to appropriate him. He accuses her of wanting ‘the soul out of [his] body’ [2, 337]. He is afraid of Miriam’s spirituality and the trepidation with which she treats everything that surrounds her. Miriam’s ability of penetrating into the essence of things is dangerous for Paul who is terrified realizing that once she gets into his inner world she will rule his mind and take possession of him. He reproaches her angrily with her hyperbolic sensitivity: “‘You wheedle the soul out of things’, he said. ‘I would never wheedle – at any rate, I’d go straight’” [2, 274]. “‘Can you never like things without clutching them as if you wanted to pull the heart out of them?’” [2, 273]. The metaphors he uses imply the young man feels suffocated by Miriam’s deep love. It annoys him because he feels nothing of the kind: “‘But – you love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered’” [2, 489]. Speaking of Miriam the author uses a very precise metaphor “Paul’s conscience” which makes clear that the girl’s spiritual purity is a treasure that Paul cannot afford. He is too earthly to enjoy it: ‘She was his conscience; and he felt, somehow, he had got a conscience that was too much for him’ [2, 309].

Gertrude’s fear of Miriam and the idea that the girl may take her son away from her are traced in the old woman’s thoughts and become evident due to refined metaphors. The mother thinks that Paul will never manage to become a self-contained man by Miriam’s side as the girl wants to absorb him and suck up the essence of his inner world, leaving not a bit of his individuality. At the same time she bitterly admits the girl’s strong character, reckons with it and enviously tries to oppose to her influence on Paul: ‘She wants to absorb him. She wants to draw him out and absorb him till there is nothing left of him, even for himself. He will never be a man on his own feet – she will suck him up’ [2, 246]. By his nature Paul is a passionate, quick-tempered personality but with Miriam his natural eagerness transforms into the rational sphere. Physical communication yields its place to intellectual. Paul does not feel her sensually; he analyses her coldly and appreciates her qualities: ‘With Miriam he was always on the high plane of abstraction, when his natural fire of love was transmitted into the fine stream of thought’ [2, 224].

Simple metaphors we discovered in the novel are usually based on one image and express one specific aspect of the character’s psychological life – either an emotion, or mood, or feeling. Simple metaphors in this novel are often based on such lexemes as ‘soul’, ‘heart’, ‘blood’. When Paul feels outraged the author informs the reader about it using the following phrases: ‘his heart went hot’, ‘he was ignoring her soul’, ‘his heart was crushed in a hot grip’, ‘hate crept back into his heart’, ‘hot blood bathed him’, ‘heart rebelled’. The same lexemes are present in the metaphors rendering embarrassment, admiration and joy: ‘heart quivered with brightness’, ‘soul quivered’, ‘heart melted like a drop of fire’, ‘soul sought her as if for nourishment’, ‘something in his breast shrank’, ‘soul came into a glow’, ‘her soul expanded into prayer beside him’, ‘heart began to burn’, ‘her sleeping soul lifted up its head’. The characters’ fear and disappointment are revealed by the metaphors with the same component parts: ‘something in her…soul had crystallized out hard as rock’, ‘heart sank to her shoes’, ‘heart melted in hot pain’, ‘his heart would burst’, ‘blood was melting into tears’. Simple metaphors based on other lexemes occur in the novel not so often. They are widely used to let the reader in Paul Morel’s inner world. The wrath, for example, is implied by ‘a furious storm ravaging inside him’ [2, 88]. The author conveys Paul’s irritation saying that he ‘is nursing his bad temper’ [2, 89]. When Paul gets angry Lawrence transfigures his body into weapon: ‘His body seemed one weapon, hard and firm against her’ [2, 274].When the hero is full of passion the author says that he has ‘no anchor of righteousness’ and is ‘under spell’ [2, 282].

Describing the environment, the atmosphere of the house, the nature Lawrence uses metaphors which in fact render the psychological state of characters. The author, for example, conveys the tense atmosphere in the Morels’ house through the following images: ‘children breathed the darkness’, ‘the air was poisoned’. The pain which Paul suffers the last night of his mother’s life is conveyed through the oppressive atmosphere in his sick mother’s room: ‘The night was going, breath by breath’ [2, 467]. This breathing was for Paul like a clock which had to stop; it occupied the whole room and echoed in his head with every next breath. When Paul was waiting for Clara it seemed to him that the ‘hours crawled’ and the train by which Clara was travelling was ‘crawling, sneaking round the corner’ [2, 383]. By these metaphors his strong desire to see her again is expressed.

The similar purposes metonymy serves in the novel. Mostly it reveals the character’s state of mind in a certain situation through transference of a name of one object to another. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson see metaphor and metonymy as different kinds of processes. They insist: “Metaphor is principally a way of conceiving one thing in terms of another and its primary function is understanding. Metonymy on the other hand, has primarily a referential function, that is, it allows us to use one entity to stand for another. It also serves the function of providing understanding [1, 36]. Describing Baxter Dawes, Clara’s husband, the author attracts attention to his hands that ‘seemed to be wanting to hide’ [2, 430]. The reader guesses that the character felt shy and ill at ease when his wife saw him in such miserable state. He felt humiliated and wanted to hide.

When Paul visits the Willey Farm and sees Miriam, the proud girl who has always associated herself with a princess from historical novels, she feels hurt because her old home clothing leaves much to be desired. The author conveys her feelings through the discomfort the articles of clothes cause: ‘Instantly her broken boots and her frayed old frock hurt her’ [2, 194] but she overcame her anger and shame because she had to come in terms with the reality no matter how painful it was for her. Miriam’s appreciation of Paul’s paintings encouraged him and made him feel excited, inflamed and full of enthusiasm. He discussed passionately his works with Miriam. Lawrence expresses the character’s feelings with the help of the metonymy: ‘All his passion, all his wild blood went into intercourse with her, when he talked and conceived his work’ [2, 256]. When Paul flirts with another girl in Miriam’s presence the author shows how self-conscious, self-mistrustful and humiliated she feels by describing her boots: ‘Her boots had that queer, irresolute, rather pathetic look about them…’ [2, 257]. Lawrence states that Paul’s ‘eyes full of the dark, impersonal fire of desire did not belong to her’ (Miriam) [2, 346] implying that he in fact did not belong to her. When the protagonist visited his sick mother the author mentions that ‘dark pain-circles beneath her blue eyes made him ache again’ [2, 454]. The use of the metonymy here clarifies the fact that Gertrude’s illness was a constant source of Paul’s suffering.

Periphrasis is widely used in the novel to specify the characters’ emotions. Lawrence calls Gertrude ‘a lady’ to accent the difference in her and Morel’s backgrounds. By ‘a lady’ a well-bred woman of higher social position than Walter Morel’s is meant. Gertrude ironically calls William’s fiancée a ‘dressed-up creature’ (a flapper) concealing her disrespect and characterizes Miriam as a ‘deep sort’ (a serious girl) which implies her jealousy. The woman calls Paul ‘my pigeon’ (my little one) which reveals her desire to protect him.

To express the characters’ feelings and attitudes to one another Lawrence uses simile skillfully. When the author describes Paul’s tenderness, love and admiration for his mother and her fervent self-sacrificing love for him he compares Gertrude either to an infatuated girl, or to an obedient child, or calls them both lovers: ‘She was gay, like a sweetheart’ [2, 117], ‘She lay like a girl asleep and dreaming of her love…’ [2, 464], ‘Paul saw his mother like a girl curled up in her flannel nightdress’ [2, 464], ‘She was obedient to him like a child’ [2, 463], ‘He kissed her…as if she were a lover’ [2, 464]. The author compares his heroine to a queen and her son to a knight who fought for her when Paul makes her happy with his first great achievements as a painter: ‘She took it like a queen…’; ‘… he was like her knight who wore her favour in the battle’ [2, 119]. Lawrence says that Mrs. Morel ‘was like a little champion’, ‘she seemed to wear all the sunshine on her’ [2, 365] when she felt proud of her son. Paul’s achievements are her own achievements as their relations are so close that ‘she talked to her son almost as if she was thinking aloud to him…’ [2, 129]. After the mother’s death Paul’s condition is frequently compared to that of an intoxicated person. The young man as if affected by alcohol cannot completely understand what has happened. He is wandering around the town which the author compares to a maze; his body is weak and unsteady, his gaze is vague and confused: ‘His eyes were dark and dangerous-looking, as if he were drunk’, ‘…like a man who is drunk almost to death’ [2, 481]. One may learn about his loneliness and embarrassment from the following similes: ‘His body lay like an abandoned thing’ [2, 488], ‘…strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something’ [2, 481]. The author successfully employs similes to show Paul’s careless, frivolous attitude to Miriam and Clara. The protagonist regards the former as ‘a bubble of foam’ or ‘a grain of sand on the beach’ [2, 425] and the latter as an instrument used for some activity: ‘…she felt as if he were using her unconsciously as a man uses his tools at some work he’s bent on’ [2, 268]. The young man wickedly compares Miriam to ‘a beggar for love’ [2, 274] and Mrs. Morel associates Miriam and Paul’s relations with a fire fed on books: ‘… his and Miriam’s affair was like a fire fed on books – if there were no volumes it would die out’ [2, 379]. Her jealousy, despair and fear of losing spiritual connection with her son who showed interest in the girl are displayed through this stylistic device.

Lawrence’s using oxymoron in the novel is motivated by his desire to show the inner antimonies, contradictory feelings of the characters whose inner world is rich, psychological impulses are complicated and emotional life is highly charged. Illogical combination of opposite concepts helps the author to provide a brighter and more detailed description of the heroes’ psychological state. When Paul and Miriam are together the ‘warmth of fury’ [2, 264] may be sensed in his speech. It implies the young man’s desire to treat her delicately but at the same time his hate for the sense of guilt she arouses in him. Paul’s alienation, his escape from Miriam’s adoration and Clara’s annoying love is expressed with the help of oxymoron: ‘Often, when she had him with her, she looked for him and could not find him’ [2, 357], ‘He was just as much alone whether he was with Clara or with the men in the White Horse’ [2, 446]. Miriam’s controversial nature can be discovered due to the oxymoron: ‘(her) joy is like a flame coming off of sadness’ [2, 202]. Paul, whose soul is full of vivid passion, is not able to bear her melancholic nature.

Lawrence uses hyperbole in the novel to intensify the plausibility, to arouse in the reader emotions experienced by the characters, to urge the reader’s imagination to work. Lawrence’s hyperbole is characterized by its stylistic subtlety. The hyperboles employed may be divided into positive and negative ones. Positive hyperboles intensify the feeling of joy, excitement, expectation, admiration or pride. For example, when Paul wins a prize at the competition he expects his mother ‘to praise him up to the skies’ [2, 236]. When Mr. Morel was proudly coming back from church accompanied by gallant William and his fiancée he ‘felt he was the father of princes and princesses’ [2, 307]. When Paul tells his mother about Clara he says that ‘she’s better than ninety nine folk out of a hundred’ [2, 378]. It shows he wants his mother to approve of his new girlfriend. When Paul, full of desire, is looking at Clara’s seductive figure he says that she ‘looks quite enough to satisfy an archangel’ [2, 376]. Negative hyperboles intensify the characters’ feeling of fear, fury, pain, irritation, alarm, shame and humiliation. When Baxter Dawes met Paul in the hospital the author states that he was so nervous and humble that his ‘dark eyes were afraid to meet any other eyes in the world’ [2, 451]. Paul ‘suffered the tortures of the damned’ [2, 96] when he faced disgrace or felt disenchanted. And when his mother died ‘all the sunshine had gone out of him’ [2, 482] so strong and destructive was the pain of the bereavement.

The author uses allusions to disclose what is going on in the characters’ minds. Lawrence describes anxiety and disturbance filling Miriam’s soul saying that ‘there was a serpent in her Eden’ [2, 222]. Paul compares the girl to Odyssey’s Penelope who is waiting for her husband and weaving. With these words he displays his irritation with her faithfulness and dedication. Her innocence and spiritual purity annoys Paul as he realizes that he is not worthy of her love. He calls Miriam ‘one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead’ [2, 203].

Deeper psychological insight is largely provided by epithets:‘dark and laughing eyes’, ‘resentful, reluctant, angry walk’, ‘naked painful laugh’, ‘eyes full of torture’, ‘brilliant eyes’, ‘quick, passionate speech’, ‘rigid eyes’, ‘stubborn look’, ‘silent eyes’.

D.H. Lawrence uses figures of speech to appeal to the senses, to cause highly charged emotional scenes to flash before the reader`s eye, to help him share the characters` experience. He handles images with artistry that provides a sharp impact upon the imagination.

References:

1. Lakoff G. and Johnson M. Metaphors We Live By. – Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980. – 242 p.

2. Lawrence D. H. Sons and Lovers. – Great Britain: The Penguin English Library, 1981. – 506 p.