One of the features of the English novel is the transition period (1880- 1920) is the progressive decline of the hero. It is not the purpose of this research to investigate why this should have taken place, but several critics have put forward their own interpretations of this phenomenon. It may be the decreasing stature of the authoritarian father figure in the fiction of the transition period linked to the decline of the hero. The fact that England was ruled by a queen, who was openly referred to as the "Mother" of the country, is probably important.
What I have tried to do in the pages that follow is to show that the image of the great male figure underwent considerable change in D.H. Lawrence's autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers.
Lawrence's outlook on life is not much different from that of his contemporaries. He, too, is interested in the study of man and the record of the human experience. He believed in the individuality of man and his right to establish world according to his own world according to his line of thought.
In Sons and Lovers (1913) D.H. Lawrence attacked not only the Victorian society, but also the Victorian family. Perhaps his personal experience as a son of a collier motivated him to write about the miners and their painful life. Because of his parents unhappy marriage, D.H. Lawrence denied all social bonds. He believed in the freedom of the individual: "Each (man or woman) must be true to himself, herself, his own manhood, her own womanhood, and let the relationship work out of itself."
Mrs. Morel in Sons and Lovers was a proud, highly-cultured woman, married beneath her to Walter Morel a vigorous miner. This marriage did not bring her the happiness she had dreamt of. On the contrary, she became one of miserable wives we often encounter in fiction.