Paul's mother is not the sole reason for him refusing to commit to Miriam, she is just one of many reasons. He concludes that there is a part of him that will always belong to Miriam, but she would never understand the rest of him. Also, he says that she wants his soul but has nothing to give in return as compared to Clara. All those feminism debates he had with Clara only prove that Clara has something of HERSELF to offer: a dialogue, that Miriam does not. She agrees with him all the time and never opens up about anything. In addition to that, Paul has commitment issues. He enters into a relationship and as soon as it starts to go somewhere, he puts up a wall within himself. He does this with both Miriam and Clara. In the end when his mother is dead, he does not marry Miriam because he sees that marrying her would end all possibility of him moving on in his life. Also, DH Lawrence later said that if there was one thing he could change about the novel, it would be the description of his father. Later in life, he gained a lot of respect for him, and the people of Nottinghamshire said that his father's depiction was disrespectful even though he liked to drink too much, he was still worried about running the family while Lawrence had no such burdens for that time and always acted like an edgy emo artist. Additionally, DH Lawrence said that he was not aware of the Freudian oedipus complex before he wrote the novel.
