Clara Dawes

Character Analysis

Rebel With(out) a Cause

At first, Clara comes across as a hard feminist who, if she'd been born a few decades later, might've burned a lot of bras. She's got an estranged husband named Baxter, but it's not only men that rain on her parade. Clara seems to dislike most things about human society.

She even complains about how the town should be smaller and the countryside larger:

"It is comforting […] to think the town goes no farther. It is only a little sore upon the country yet." (10.308)

As if there aren't real troubles in the world.

Anyway, throughout the book, it's very tough to get a read on what Clara's thinking, since Lawrence doesn't narrate her thoughts for us to the same extent that he does Miriam's. But it's safe to say that she's trying to define herself by being a rebel.

Clara's clearly a girl who's ahead of her time. You might call her a rebel without a cause, because she's got a penchant for rebelling against whatever seems normal to most people. But really, she's just an iconoclast. Like Bowie.

Clara the Great

As a proper 20th-century British lady, Clara never reveals the slightest attraction for Paul at first. But Paul's attention slowly seems to wear her down. Many people dislike Clara for acting like all of normative society is beneath her, especially the women who work at Jordan's Manufacturing.

One worker, Fanny, makes a backhanded remark about Clara when says, "You don't think yourself a fine figure in marble and us nothing but dirt" (10.272). Um, well. Clara actually does think herself a fine figure in marble, so. Zing.

Indeed, people dislike both Clara and her buddy Miriam for their smug superiority. But Clara's superiority complex is different than Miriam's. It's less innocent and more hard-edged, more worldly. Clara is ashamed when Paul catches her doing women's work, and she gets really worked up when she gets into physical competitions with men.

All the while, Paul thinks that Miriam's standoffishness is "like a dog before a looking-glass, gone into a mad fury with its own shadow" (9.257). In other words, he accuses Clara of imagining enemies for herself in order to make herself feel important. That's actually pretty darn insightful, Paul.

What's Love Got to Do, Got to Do With It?

It's not easy to understand the bond between Clara and Paul, though Lawrence does give us a few hints about what's going on between them. He talks about how Clara wants Paul as a man, and not for the deeper stuff that makes Paul who he is.

She "want[s] him, but not to understand him […] she wanted the man on top, not the real him that was in trouble" (14.509). So, we guess that Clara likes Paul for more superficial reasons than Miriam does, even though Clara is not necessarily a superficial person. Maybe Paul has a really nice butt or something.

Paul, though, says he likes Clara because "she's nice […] not a bit deep, not a bit" (9.424). At least she's more experienced in the ways of sex and the world than Paul is, which is what Paul is really after at this point in the book. Plus, she's like the anti-Miriam; she offers the dude a great reprieve from Miriam's super-intense spirituality and innocence.

But Paul isn't the only man in Miriam's life. Throughout the second half of Sons and Lovers, the novel implies that there's still a bond between Clara and her estranged husband, Baxter. After all, if things were totally finished, Clara would divorce him. But she doesn't.

In the end, Paul realizes that Clara might not love Baxter's bod and manliness as much as she does Paul's, but she does love how much Baxter needs her to take care of him. Which is kind of like love, we guess. Eek.

You can see the satisfaction Clara takes in Baxter's dependence on her when she remarks, "I think he belongs to me" (13.346). The difference between Baxter and Paul is that Baxter allows Clara to take the lead in their relationship. Despite all her cynical talk and feminist ideals, Clara really just wants to feel needed.