Betrothal and ‘Paul Morel II’, January–October 1911

Throughout 1911 Lawrence was living in Croydon, still working as a teacher, and separated from his fiancée Louie Burrows, towards whom he felt increasing frustration because of her conventional sexual morality. During this period he made a second more sustained attempt at the novel, ‘Paul Morel II’, which has been published as Paul Morel. Although Louie was intelligent and literary she did not have the insight or deep commitment to Lawrence’s development as a writer that Jessie had shown during the composition of The White Peacock, and was to show again. There are signs of strain and reluctance in Lawrence’s writing at this time. Paul’s relationship with his mother is more sentimentalised than in the final text, and his father is melodramatically demonised—the story includes his murder of one of his sons, which actually happened in the family of Lawrence’s uncle After having abandoned the novel again, in October he sent it to Jessie, which turned out to be critical to its development.