Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

Walter Morel, Baxter Dawes, Modernity

If there are any true antagonists in this book, they have to be Walter Morel and Baxter Dawes. These guys are antagonists mostly because they both physically threaten Paul Morel at one time or another. Walter's threat comes from the fact that he's a frustrated drinker and lousy father. Baxter is threatening because the woman Paul is seeing (Clara) is actually Baxter's wife.

In the end, though, neither one of these men is an antagonist in the black-and-white sense. Lawrence's narrator is pretty sympathetic toward both, and, by the end of the book, it looks like Baxter Dawes is going to redeem himself. He even reunites with his estranged wife, Clara.

That's why we think modernity, and especially the coldness of modern industrial life (as Lawrence saw things), might be the real protagonist here. It's the harsh conditions of early-20th-century British living—long hours in a difficult, demoralizing job, a long commute, poverty, separation from nature—that put stress on the characters of Sons and Lovers, and on the Morel family dynamics.

And it's these stressors that seem to bring out the worst in the Morels, don't you think?