# Sons and Lovers — Character guide

> Key figures in Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence.

- [Paul Morel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/paul_morel.md): Paul is the second son of the Morel household, a pale, watchful boy who inherits his mother's ambition and his father's coal-dust roots. He loves his mother with an intensity that shadows every other attachment, and the 
- [Gertrude Morel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/gertrude_morel.md): Mrs. Morel is the moral center of the Morel house on the Bottoms, a small, delicate woman whose will hardens as her husband's drinking and carelessness wear her down. After the birth of her third child she turns from Wal
- [Miriam Leivers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/miriam_leivers.md): Miriam lives at Willey Farm, a girl in a frayed blue frock and broken boots who seems to Paul like a maiden in bondage, her spirit dreaming in a far-off land. She gives him her whole soul — religious, watchful, self-abne
- [Clara Dawes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/clara_dawes.md): Clara is older than Paul, married to the blacksmith Baxter Dawes but living apart, and she carries her politics and her wounds with a haughty self-possession. She gives Paul a passion that is physical and adult rather th
- [Walter Morel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/walter_morel.md): Walter Morel is a collier with fine full presence and a laugh that carries through the house, a man who rises at five to toast bacon on a fork and eat in solitary joy before descending the pit. His drinking and his bully
- [William Morel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/william_morel.md): William is the son on whom Gertrude Morel first pinned her hopes, a freckled, active lad with a touch of the Dane about him who races off to the wakes and wins eggcups at the marble stall. He climbs fast — prizes, a Lond
- [Baxter Dawes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/baxter_dawes.md): Baxter Dawes works as smith for the factory that employs Paul, making irons for cripple instruments, and he moves through the same working world with a dangerous, self-loathing edge. He shares his wife Clara's white skin
- [Annie Morel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/annie_morel.md): Annie teaches at the Board-school for about four shillings a week, soon to rise to fifteen, and her earnings promise the family a measure of financial peace. She is the one who shyly escorts William's grand betrothed ups
- [Arthur Morel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/arthur_morel.md): Arthur grows up in the thick of the battle between Morel and his children, loathing his father's dirty, disgusting ways and the stubborn independence behind them. When he wins a scholarship to the Grammar School in Notti
- [Edgar Leivers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/edgar_leivers.md): Edgar belongs to the Leivers family at Willey Farm, where the brothers sit in shirtsleeves guffawing at Paul's mocking takeoffs and the whole household loves a joke more than anything. He is part of the rural, religious 
- [Mrs. Leivers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/mrs_leivers.md): Miriam's mother, a kind farm woman.
- [Mr. Leivers](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/mr_leivers.md): Miriam's father, a farmer.
- [Alfy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters/alfy.md): A young boy from the mining community.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/sons_and_lovers_se/characters