In the twentieth century novel, the presence of class-consciousness in the novel set the precedent for how the characters interacted with each other based on societal norms and collective social conventions between those of lower, middle and upper class. Both D.H. Lawrence’s and Rebecca West’s novels highlight class structure; how growing up as a lower class changes as you might surpass the wealth you were born into and how the characters early childhood follows them throughout adulthood. While Lawrence deals with the psychological effects of class, West focuses on the tangible notions of class such as appearance and facades of the wealthy.
In the introduction of Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West “calibrates her classes with a delicate awareness of the structure of the system. Class in England at the beginning of this century was a complex system of many fine distinctions…. One might talk as though there were only three classes – upper, middle, and lower – but in the fact within each class there were qualifications and subdivisions that a keep social observer would recognize at once” (Hynes, xiii).
With the literary tradition of realism, in Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence depicts the struggle of living in a working-class era through his use of the characters every day life – their actions, emotions and thoughts and how they are portrayed to others. The socioeconomic and class structure Lawrence references to are not only exploitations of the working-class but the way marrying up or down a class can contribute to the degradation and slow descend of the marriage over time as different values are ingrained into class structure.
Sons and Lovers is a novel that explores class, culture and the idea of “being” and “belonging” within the social classes they [the characters] have been designated to. Lawrence writes of a mining family living a middle-class life in Northern England, the story being told from the perspective of the family, who are all members of the working class.
In Sons and Lovers, Gertrude Morel, the matriarch of the novel, is the most prominently aware and socially conscious of class and where she belongs. Between her and husband, they have different views on life and the way they live is a strict way to contrast the two and create a tension between the class they belong in and how Gertrude wishes to live. Gertrude “came from a good old burgher family…” (Lawrence 15), she is well educated and “had a curious, receptive mind which found pleasure in listening to other folk” (Lawrence 17). She married a man that belonged to a class below her, a lower-class miner who is beneath her socially, economically and education wise. In this way, through marriage, she is executing class mobility in a sense she did not anticipate: downgrading into a lower working-class.
In relation, her dissatisfaction with her marriage also stems from class; she idealizers her own father, an educated engineer, who is, “proud in his bearing, handsome…harsh in government, and in familiarity ironic; who ignored all sensuous pleasure…” as the exemplary man and is very different from the miner she married. Mr. Morel’s sexuality, physical appearance and personality first attracted her to him and she idealizes him because of how different he is than anyone she has ever met, though they have nothing in common and thus, cannot care for each other long-term in a loving marriage.
At the age of ten, Morel began working at the coalmines, as a necessity to help provide for his family so he did not have the chance for higher education and embraces the values of the lower class. Mr. Morel is satisfied with the simple life of a miner he lives, but Gertrude’s upbringing has her yearning for more. This sense of classism can be felt as each of these characters has different wants and needs for themselves and their sense of belonging and living the life they envisioned for themselves. Morel does not care for more than a drink at a pub, he is barely literate, does not care for an intellectual life and bases life’s value more on his physical senses and appearance more than anything else. Morel is stuck in an abysmal cycle and therefore, so is Gertrude after their union. Unlike Gertrude, Morel is fine with the way he is living his life, he is a talkative man who enjoys telling stories and jokes and when using lofty language, it is often to mock his wife who speaks at an elevated level than he does, as she is literate and intellectual.
The language Lawrence uses here is a clear indication showing that despite the two meeting and deciding to marry, knowing the extent of their differing backgrounds, that developing from different class regions creates a division between them that cannot be compromised. This is because they cannot possibly understand each other, the main reason being the style of which they were raised and how this has molded the their views on society. It creates alienation between the family members and allows Gertrude to control the household as her children unconsciously empathized with her.
When younger, Paul Morel, son of the Morels, would think a litany of prayers towards his father, “Make him stop drinking….Lord, let my father die….Let him be killed in a pit,” (Lawrence, 85) and the children were only content during the day when they were with their mother; she made their days matter whereas fear would creep in their minds when their father would arrive in the evening; Morel was, “aware of this fall of silence on his entry, the shutting off of life, the unwelcome,” but had no control over, as he did not have any control over his association with the working class.
In the same way that class distinction gave recognition to who spoke and associated with whom, the dichotomy in the Morel’s parental class influenced the way they [the family] behaved around each other. Due to Gertrude’s performance at home, Morel’s wife and children frowned down upon him. “Conversation was impossible between the father and any other member of the family. He was an outsider” (Lawrence, 88.), though this is fault of Gertrude as she holds him to unrealistic expectations considering he is restricted due to his poverty and lower-class upbringing, “So, in seeking to make him nobler than he could be, she destroyed him” (Lawrence, 25).
So, although the class outside of the Morel’s inner family workings is important to the way the community views them, the individuals within the family, namely Morel and his sons, suffer far more from the class they belong psychologically to rather than the class they are in society.
In West’s Return of the Soldier, class is dealt with and shown to the reader through descriptions and comparative views of the upper and lower class lifestyle. The differences between Kitty and Margaret, one rich and beautiful the other made ugly through poverty, give insight to the way the upper-class view those below them. West follows this theme throughout Return of the Solider, the idea of the wealthy being beautiful and the poor being ugly due to their class conditions, even if they belong in the upper-lower class.
The novel is seen through Jenny’s perspective, the soldier’s cousin who describes her observations of both classes, the one she belongs to and the lower class throughout the novella. For Kitty, Chris’s wife, appearance is one the most important things to her. She is shallow and narcissistic, allowing her personal aesthetic and that of their remolded home to define who she is. She is only worried about her social status, more so than the war and Chris’ recovery, which becomes even more obvious when she meets Margaret. The social class is challenged as they meet, as Margaret, who is in the lower close, holds information vital to Kitty involving her husband.
Kitty symbolizes high class, grace and virtue while Margaret’s appearance is represented as grotesque, “she was repulsively furred with neglect and poverty,”(West 10) Jenny describes the first time Margaret meets them in Baldry Court, as if her being was repulsive, she compared her to “a good glove that has dropped down behind a bed in a hotel and has lain undisturbed for a day or two is repulsive when the chambermaid retrieves it from the dusk and fluff” (West, 10), though Jenny does make it a point to indicate that it is only her appearance which is off-putting, as she has a noble stature about her.
Her existence is an intrusion within the home, Kitty does not deem her acceptable enough to dress up to meet her as once she hears Margaret’s address she says, “Last years fashion…but it’ll do for a person with that sort of address,” (West, 9) as she fixes her hair after showering. Along with this, her apparent inferiority is revealed as she is contrasted against Kitty, when Jenny views Margaret as a sluggish insect, and Kitty as, “a splendid bird of prey,” (West 12). They view her as a criminal because of her socioeconomic background; the emphasis between Kitty and Margaret cannot be emphasized anymore during their initial meeting.
But what is most arguably Margaret’s offensive disposition in Baldry Court and what is causing such irritation to the two woman is her social status, she is of a lower class and therefore is seen as an outsider to the world of Jenny, Kitty and Chris. As Jenny admits, “…I hated her as the rich hate the poor, as insect things that will struggle out of the crannies which are their decent home, and introduce ugliness to the light of day,” (West, 14).
Between the two classes, the way their homes are described is also an important aspect when considering the way West chose to display wealth between the two central women. Baldry court is described as, “The houses lies on the crest of Harrowweald, and from its windows the eye drops to the miles of emerald pastureland lying wet and brilliant under a westward line of sleek hills blue with distance and distant woods, while nearer it ranges the suave decorum of the alwn and the Lebanon cedar whose branches are like darkness made palpable, and the minatory gauntness of the topmost pines in the woods that break downward, its bare boughs a close texture of browns and purples, from the pond on the hill’s edge” (West 4).
The Baldry Court house is extremely well-developed, well- maintained and cared for and large in its acreage. It oozes of wealth and the upper class. It was built with “the knowing wink of a manicurist” and had been photographed for illustrated papers, Baldry Court was untouchable, the same way Kitty is in her beauty that resembles that of a magazine, “…I saw that golden hair was about her shoulders and that she wore over her frock a little silken jacket trimmed with rosebuds. She looked so like a girl on a magazine cover…” (West 4). The house mirrors the woman and upper-class structuralism and the way Kitty is viewed by others. Kitty is seen the same way she portrays herself and the home: as an object that she is just an extension of. The house also serves as an escape for those who live there and it is a symbol of classism as the upper-class having a way to escape the outside world and what it entails if it is not part of their luxurious agenda (i.e. povery and wartime).
Margaret’s house is looked down upon even as it’s address is given, it is knowingly in a rough part of town and the Baldry’s judge her immediately upon hearing the address before meeting her. The town of Wealdstone is described as, “the red suburban stain which fouls the fields three miles nearer London and Harrowweald. One cannot protect one’s environment as one could in the old days” (Hynes X) and, “factories spoil the skyline with red angular chimneys, and in front of the shops stand little women with backs ridged by cheap stays, who tapped their lips with their forefingers and made other feeble gestures as though they wanted to buy something and knew that if they did they would have to starve some other appetite,” (Hynes xi).
Wealdstone is deemed inferior, dreary and ugly, and the people who live there equally as ugly simply because that is where they reside. The lower-class living here is seen as worn thing due to their daily struggles and are akin to animals. West describes that Margaret “lived in this place; she also belonged to it” (West, 44), as years of poverty had taken their toll on Margaret and she belonged nowhere else. It’s described as a town where, “people who could not do as they like,” (West 44) emphasizing how little power the lower-class had when it came to the way they lived their life; this was not a choice they made, but not they were born into. They are restricted by their social standing. Jenny notes how in her home, Margaret fits in with her surroundings based on her first impression of her, “she was sitting on a sofa, upholstered in velveteen of a sickish green,” (West 45), expressing that Margaret has no options with her furniture and used what she could to furnish her home. Even Margaret is aware of her homely situation, as they are leaving her home, she says, “It’s a horrid little house, isn’t it?” (West 49).
Though they come from different class, Margaret has strengths that Kitty needs to bring Chris back, something wealth and social standing alone cannot do. Margaret is warm and welcoming, not standoffish and understands the interpersonal relationship she has with Chris and the one he has with Kitty.
Unsurprisingly, Kitty’s values and shallowness cannot compete with Margaret’s lower-class life as she tries to jar her husband’s memory once her returns. Kitty’s affliction with appearance is revealed even more so when her husband is dispatched and returns to Baldry’s Court, a place he views as strange after all it’s remodeling. Chris continually trips over new steps, finds himself lost, walks into different rooms, “This house is different,” he says (West, 25). West notes that he house had been remolded after Chris’ marriage to Kitty, inferring that she made many of the decisions of the new changes and casts her in a materialistic and vain. Chris is shaken by the house he once called home, “all through the meal I was near to weeping because whenever he thought himself unobserved he looked at the things that were familiar to him” (West 27).
This is seen even more so when Kitty and Chris have dinner, instead of engaging him in conversation, Kitty’s first reaction is to impress him with her appearance in order to make him remember his love for her and the life they curated together. Kitty is under the impression that because of their class, Chris was happy. It is mentioned many times that “he was so happy here,” (West 7), “he could not have been happier, (West 7) and “this house, this life with us, was the core of his heart” (West 7). She dresses in extravagant jewels, her wedding dress and her hair immaculate. This image does nothing to stir Chris’ consciousness, as he is more determined to find happiness in a person rather than social class, something Kitty cannot offer him.
This is a catalyst for Kitty as she begins to lose control of the flawless façade she tries to exude. The physical appearance that she tries so hard to keep begins to falter as she realizes she cannot bring him back only with her physical appearance and demeanor, which is all she has known in her privileged life.
The difference between the lower-class and upper-class societies in the novel along with it’s physical properties, is the selflessness that Margaret portrays when she ultimately brings Chris back from the reverie he has been stuck in, bringing him back into the upper-class life that he is so dissatisfied with. West proves with her novel that despite the upper classes’ wealth and grandeur, it is not always the happy picture it proves to be and physical appearance cannot accurately depict the truth behind what is occurring in ones mindset.