The plot of the novel revolves around a twentieth-century English family pertaining to the working class, made up of a drunkard miner-father, Walter Morel, his wife, Gertrude Morel, and their children, Paul, William, Annie, and Arthur. It was the first novel to inspect in such detail the intimacy of a family and the processes that lead to its ruination.
At the beginning, the couple Walter and Gertrude Morel seem to live a happy life but their successful marriage soon begins to get torn apart by the fact that Gertrude finds out that her husband is not what she believed him to be – he is not a good partner with whom to talk, their interests are different and he is not so wealthy as he pretended to be. When she gives birth to their first child, William, life starts changing for the Morel family, as Walter turns out to be a cruel father, thus pushing his wife away and making her find comfort only in the relationship with her son, whom she grows to love more than anything. Their second child, Annie, is born and soon after that, she is pregnant with their third child, who was to be named Paul. In the meantime, Walter Morel starts drinking and becomes more and more violent with his family, making his wife hate him even more. Their fourth child, Arthur, comes into the world and, unlike the other children, he is lucky to be the one to receive his father’s love.
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When the children grow up, William leaves the family home for London, because he got a clerk job there, which is bound to bring him lots of success, but his departure leaves his mother heartbroken. The young man also gets engaged to Louisa Lily Denys Western, whom his family and he started to despise, as she is very cruel to her fiancé, and this causes him to cancel their engagement. However, the boy did not manage to lead the long, prosperous life that he seemed to have ahead, for he got pneumonia and died when he was still young, and the news devastated his mother.
Soon after William’s death, Mrs. Morel focused on her second son, Paul, who was to become a victim of the uncommon, suffocating love of his mother, as she prevented him from pursuing a relationship with Miriam, the daughter of a farm owner, Mr. Leivers. The mother completely disagrees with their relationship; she considers the girl to be a threat because she steals her son and their time spent together. Nonetheless, there is a strong attraction between the two, but they can’t manage to realize this, as they are still two young kids, and Miriam is, in addition to that, a very religious girl. However, she consciously falls in love with Paul, but her piety makes her feel embarrassed for her physical attraction toward the boy, thus deciding not to tell him how she feels. Her next mistake occurs when she introduces the boy that she loves to another woman, Clara Dawes, who is married to Baxter, and to whom Paul immediately starts feeling a strong attraction. Therefore, the boy gets caught in a trap between two women, but to Miriam, he experiences a rather spiritual connection, whereas to Clara, the attraction that drags him to her is only a physical one, and this prevents him from engaging in a relationship to either of the two women, as the bondage is “incomplete” as regards both Miriam and Clara. Moreover, he dislikes Clara’s personality and condemns her active involvement in the suffragettes’ movement. However, he continues his awkward relationship with Miriam and they even get engaged, but they soon break off, as he starts being more and more involved with Clara, but at the same time he does not give up seeing Miriam, too.
When Paul discovers that his mother has cancer, he backs away from the two women and begins to spend most of his time with his mother, as he is terrified by the thought that he may lose his mother and he has invested all of his time and care in the relationships with Miriam and Clara. Not being able to endure the sight of his gravely ill mother, the boy decides to poison her in order to end her suffering, an event that makes Paul wish to end his life as well. He has no interest either in Clara or in Miriam anymore, feeling devoid of any desire to live, and when Miriam tries to comfort him by asking him to be her husband, he pushes her away once again, and this determines the girl to stop seeing him.
In a desperate attempt to be reunited with his mother, Paul calls Mrs. Morel’s name, and his wish to end his life intensifies, but he soon decides not to kill himself because he is aware that he would not be capable of doing that. The reader catches a glimpse of hope for a new beginning in the end of the novel, as the young boy is depicted while walking towards the town, determined not to give in.
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