Paul Morel Timeline and Summary

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• Paul, the third child and second son of Gertrude and Walter Morel, is born.
• As Paul grows older, he becomes slimmer and more delicate than his older brother William, and starts to follow his mother around like a shadow.
• The dude also turns out to be kind of a nutball. One day, Paul accidentally breaks his sister Annie's doll and suggests that they make a ritual sacrifice by burning the doll. He takes pleasure in watching it melt and burn. It's very serial killer-esque.
• Paul takes a liking to sleeping in the same bed as his mother.
• This is also creepy.
• Mr. Morel becomes unreliable in collecting his wages, so Mrs. Morel starts to send Paul to pick up the family's money every week.
• When his father gets hurt while mining, Paul declares himself the new man of the Morel house. We think he was already gunning for that job, anyway.
• Paul eventually grows old enough for his mother to tell him to go get a job. The idea of looking through the newspaper and writing letters of application humiliates him, but he does it.
• Paul writes his applications by copying letters from his older brother William.
• Paul's third letter gets answered and he's hired work at Jordan's, a place that manufactures surgical appliances. He just wanted to up his creepy factor one more notch, really.
• He starts working twelve-hour days with a long commute, and starts to lose his health as a result.
• In an effort to revive the over-worked Paul, Mrs. Morel brings him on a visit to Willey Farm.
• There, Paul meets the young and beautiful Miriam Leivers. He helps her overcome her fear of feeding the chickens, which is nice of him.
• Suddenly, Paul's older brother William gets sick and dies. Paul is the one who has to break the news to his father.
• Mrs. Morel pays less attention to Paul after William's death. But then, one night, while walking home, Paul gets pneumonia.
• He was even carrying a Christmas box for his family at the time, which makes the whole thing very A Christmas Carol.
• This gets his mom's attention. Paul's mother nurses him back to health, and the two grow closer and closer, as she begins to root her life in his.
• After he gets better, Paul starts hanging out at Willey Farm a lot. He offers to teach Miriam math, which is also nice of him.
• Eventually, Mrs. Morel confronts Paul about hanging out with Miriam so much. She says Miriam is no good for Paul.
• One night when Paul's mother is upstairs, Miriam visits. She wants to hang out, but Paul tells her to go before his mom notices. Too late, though. Mrs. Morel comes down the stairs and greets Miriam coldly.
• Paul starts to have feelings for Miriam, but can't bring himself to act on them.
• When Paul's younger brother Arthur joins the army, Paul stays home to console his mother. So he stops visiting Willey Farm so much, and old mom is happy for a while.
• One day, Paul runs into Miriam walking with another woman named Clara Dawes. Paul takes an immediate interest in the woman, though she acts completely aloof to him.
• Paul decides that he doesn't like Clara's estranged husband, Baxter.
• Then he confronts his mother about why she doesn't like Miriam. His mother admits that it's because she feels Miriam is going to take him away from her (Mrs. Morel).
• While hanging out at his house with Miriam, Paul openly flirts with a girl named Beatrice, and this tortures Miriam.
• Next, Paul tells Miriam they shouldn't hang out anymore. They're at the age now when people will assume that Paul has claimed Miriam for marriage, which isn't fair because he says he has no intention of marrying her.
• They're very hot then cold, yes then no.
• But no matter what he says, Paul keeps visiting the Leivers family. And he comes into contact with Clara Dawes more and more.
• Clara is standoffish, but Paul seems to enjoy trying to break through her icy exterior.
• When his sister Annie gets married and leaves the house, Paul promises his mother that he'll stay with her forever. He says he'll never, ever get married.
• Paul wins first prize in a painting contest and starts to get really ambitious about his painting. His boss's wife starts inviting him to posh parties where many of the guests are established artists.
• Paul visits Clara in the house she's living in, and finds her doing lacework. Clara is ashamed to do women's work in front of him.
• Paul gets her a spot at Jordan's so Clara can come back to work there.
• He starts bringing the girl chocolates, and after trying for a long time, gets her to start going out with him.
• As this is happening, Paul goes back to Miriam and gets her to have sex with him.
• They do it several times, but Paul becomes dissatisfied with how much Miriam doesn't seem to enjoy being with him. He breaks things off with her… again.
• A while after that, Paul goes out for a walk with Clara. They have sex.
• Paul's kind of a ladies' man.
• One night, Paul's hanging out in a pub when Baxter Dawes (Clara's estranged husband) strolls in.
• After some ribbing from Baxter, Paul gets fed up and throws his beer in the man's face. Baxter wants to fight, but Paul gets him kicked out of the bar instead.
• Baxter vows revenge.
• Paul runs into Baxter again at work. He provokes Baxter into an argument, and gets Baxter fired.
• Eventually, Baxter gets a hold of Paul while he's walking alone at night. He beats him unconscious.
• Paul wakes up being held by his mother. Aw. We guess.
• Paul goes away for a while with a friend named Newton. On his trip, he finds out that his mother has a tumor and might be dying.
• Paul finds out that Baxter Dawes has been very sick as well, and goes to visit him in the hospital. They are still enemies, but there is something in their hatred that binds them. This makes them sound like comic book arch-nemeses.
• When her tumor treatments fail, Mrs. Morel dies. Paul goes deep into drink, out of mourning.
• Paul breaks things off with Clara. He actually arranges it so that she gets back together with Baxter, which is a little weird.
• Paul descends into a life of pub crawls, meaningless flirtations, and not remembering what he did last night.
• One evening, he sees Miriam leaving a church, and asks her to hang out with him.
• They talk again about getting married, sort of, but since they're both impossibly stubborn, they don't actually reconcile.
• Miriam leaves, and Paul walks out into the cold night.
• We understand he's determined to keep living, but we're not sure how good a life it'll be.