Miriam Leivers

Character Analysis

The Emo Idea-Lover

Miriam, Miriam, Miriam (we're shaking our heads here). What can we say about Miriam? Well, for starters, she's a very innocent and spiritual person. She also thinks deep down that she's better than other people. Which is not so innocent, actually.

When she first meets Paul, she cringes at the idea that he thinks she's a "common girl" (6.256). See, Miriam believes that people should be thinking deep thoughts all of the time, and if she were born later on in the 20th century, we'd bet she'd have worn black eyeliner and listened to Fall Out Boy.

You can see this emo part of her emerging full-on in the scene where Paul pushes her on a swing:

Her heart melted in hot pain when the moment came for him to thrust her forward again. (7.118)

We hate to break it to you, but you're being a little dramatic, little lady. And this dramatic deepness attracts Paul at times, but repels him other times. Paul likes to think of himself as an intellectual too, but he's also really into sex and walking around outside and stuff.

Paul tells Miriam at the end of the book:

"You love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered." (15.122)

In other words, Paul likes his world of private thoughts and personal ambitions, and he feels like he'd have to give all of this up to be with Miriam. He thinks she'd never allow him to think or say or do anything that didn't involve her.

But truly, all of this information is pretty skewed to Paul's perspective. There're only a couple of times when the narrator gives us a glimpse into Miriam's thoughts. But actually, those thoughts confirm a lot of the things Paul thinks about her.

Yes, she wants Paul to completely dedicate his life to her. But at the same time, she's unwilling to take an active role in their love:

She could easily sacrifice herself. But dare she assert herself? […] But no; she dared not. (15.126)

The problem with Miriam is that, despite her cleverness, she remains a woman of her times. Because she won't have too many opportunities in life, she gets way too concerned about superficial things, like appearing prim and proper and making sure that men love her. Even though she'd rather be debating life and death and dueling with Kafka.

"Hottie" or Haughty?

Miriam doesn't get along with her family because they all think she's too proud for a farm girl. Yikes. This is because Miriam, like her mother, "exalted everything […] to the plane of religious trust" while "the sons resented this; they felt themselves cut away underneath [by her pride], and they answered with brutality and also with a sneering superciliousness" (7.56).

In other words, Miriam's ideas are way too high-minded for someone who spends her days milking cows, and this high-mindedness annoys the men of her house, who feel condescended to.

Furthermore, Miriam's timid. She never gets involved with anything physical. She knows that Paul's mother Gertrude doesn't like her, but wants to overcome the woman against all odds. Straight up, she sees herself as being in direct competition with Mrs. Morel for Paul's love, which is pretty much accurate.

Mrs. Morel thinks the same way, though neither woman ever says it out loud. This whole love triangle between Miriam, Paul, and his mom (and Clara, really, so we guess it's a love quadrangle?) makes Miriam really paranoid. She thinks that the whole world is against her and Paul's love, and she likes to paint herself a martyr in this sense.

She wants to sacrifice herself to Paul's love, and other idealistic notions of romance, and blah blah blah. Whenever Paul starts to distance himself from her, she feels upon him:

The hardness, the foreignness of another influence […] She despised [his family] for their commonness, his people. They did not know what things were really worth. (9.93, 9.96)

Basically, our gal Miriam thinks of herself as a pillar of morality in a world filled with peons who aren't nearly as smart as her. In this sense, she seems to think that Paul is the only person worthy of her love. At the same time, she thinks she's the only woman worthy of Paul, not Mrs. Morel.

So, yeah, Miriam's got a bit of an ego in all the wrong places.

Sacrifice Me

In the last third of the book, Miriam finally agrees to have sex with Paul, and they do it a few times. She does this for the worst of reasons: she likes to feel like she's sacrificing herself to Paul. The narrator tells us: "There was something divine in it; then she would submit, religiously, to the sacrifice" (11.99).

We start to understand that Miriam feels morally superior to everyone else when she lets Paul have sex with her, because she believes she is completely burying her own pleasure for the sake of his. It's her way of proving that she doesn't have an ego, while everybody else is worrying about getting theirs.

Of course, the irony is, Miriam is a total snob. "Sacrificing yourself' for the sake of feeling better than others is totally egotistical. So while Miriam is bothered by the fact that people think she's haughty, they're actually right about her.

Since Paul seems like a superior man to her, Miriam completely wants to own him. This could only increase her feelings of greatness. Unfortunately for Miriam, Paul runs from her love at first, into the arms of the more sexually experienced Clara. But Miriam's confidence never wanes.

This girl never gives up on the idea that Paul will come crawling back to her:

He would come back to her, she was sure; with some of his young freshness gone, perhaps, but cured of his desire for the lesser things. (10.394)

But, in the end, neither Miriam nor Paul will give up their ego for the sake of being together. So, it's like they're almost too perfect for each other. Both Miriam and Paul them have an idea of themselves that they aren't willing to sacrifice for the sake of being with the other. The end.