Mabel Dodge and D. H. Lawrence’s relationship

The relationship between Mabel Dodge and D. H. Lawrence serves as a pointed example in The Second Sex of intimacy shaped by unequal gender expectations. Simone de Beauvoir invokes Dodge’s attempt to influence Lawrence through what she calls her feminine wiles and then to dominate him spiritually, showing how a woman may pursue authority through the very conventions that confine her. Their connection matters less as a record of private events than as a case through which the book examines the tangled passage from dependence to equality.

The Relationship as an Example

Dodge’s relationship with Lawrence appears in a discussion of the conflict between women’s inherited social position and their claim to act as independent subjects. The account identifies two linked aims: she attempts to enslave Lawrence by means of feminine appeal, then seeks spiritual dominion over him. The sequence makes the relationship a concrete instance of a woman using the means available within a conventional gender order to seek power beyond it.

The cited discussion does not narrate particular encounters or chart the relationship’s chronology. Instead, it uses the pairing to illuminate a contradiction: a woman may challenge male authority while still relying on the expectations and advantages attached to conventional femininity. Dodge’s example is therefore presented as part of a larger argument about the unequal terms on which women and men meet.

Desire, Influence, and Unequal Power

De Beauvoir places Dodge’s attempt alongside a broader pattern in which women seek masculine support through sex and then point to their success as proof of equality. In that pattern, a woman claims both the respect accorded to traditional femininity and the esteem due to a capable, independent person. The two claims are not simply described as personal tactics: they emerge within a social situation that continues to make women’s access to power conditional.

The resulting antagonism is mutual but not symmetrical. Men may resent women’s efforts to gain influence through the conventional role assigned to them, yet they also resist granting the independence that would make equality concrete. In this framework, Lawrence’s place in the example is as the man whom Dodge seeks to influence and ultimately dominate; the evidence does not give a separate account of his response or establish the relationship’s outcome.

The Book’s Interpretation

The book treats the struggle between the sexes as difficult to separate into a straightforward contest between an oppressor and a resisting individual. A woman is positioned both as an object in relation to man and as a subject who seeks sovereignty. Her apparent use of weakness and strength together is described not as a fully calculated scheme but as a way of seeking agency along a path already imposed upon her.

Dodge’s case thus crystallizes the book’s broader critique of intimacy under unequal conditions: the old avenues of feminine influence remain available, while equality requires a different relation between freedoms. The relationship is presented as an illustration of the double bind, not as proof that either partner alone accounts for it. The book’s emphasis falls on the social structure that makes dominance and resistance entangled, and on the difficulty of recognizing one another as equals while that structure endures.

Documentary Context

The bibliography identifies two relevant works by D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, alongside Lorenzo in Taos by Mabel Dodge Luhan. These entries establish the works cited in the book’s documentary apparatus; they do not supply further narrated details about the relationship in the passages considered here.