Don Cipriano

Don Cipriano is the central male figure in D. H. Lawrence’s ideal of a woman’s surrender to a larger order: a man who carries a mission so completely that the book describes his virility as elevated to divinity. Kate initially resists the dependence he represents, but eventually accepts him as her companion and adopts his aims, values, and world.

Kate’s Resistance and Consent

Kate’s eventual decision follows an initial resistance to dependence: she is attached to her own personality and limited existence, and does not readily accept Cipriano’s authority. Before agreeing to remain with him, she requires him to acknowledge that he needs her. His recognition matters because the arrangement is presented not as a one-sided surrender but as a relation in which woman is also necessary to man. Only after this acknowledgment does Kate consent to be his companion and take on his goals, values, and world.

Erotic Renunciation and the Couple’s Ideal

Cipriano’s model of union also governs its sexual terms. In Lawrence’s account, he deliberately withdraws when Kate approaches orgasm, because the separate, nervous pursuit of pleasure conflicts with the surrender he demands. Her desire subsides into a state the text figures as quiet yet potent; erotic fulfillment is made to mean relinquishing sexual autonomy rather than asserting it. The arrangement’s harmony is therefore inseparable from a hierarchy: Kate joins Cipriano’s life and mission, but does so by yielding powers that remain his to exercise.

Mission, Authority, and the “Real Woman”

Cipriano’s place in Lawrence’s ideal extends beyond his relationship with Kate: he embodies what the book calls a man who carries forward the banner of life. His mission absorbs him so fully that his virility is presented as transcending ordinary manhood and taking on a divine status. In this scheme, his authority is not treated as a deception but as the expression of a cosmic order to which the woman is asked to submit. The resulting ideal grants the man privilege even while describing woman as good: she is valued, but subordinated, and is expected to define herself as the Other.

The account presents this submission as harder for a woman than for a man. A man’s submission to the cosmos appears autonomous and can resemble a sovereign choice; the woman, by contrast, is expected to reach that order through the mediation of a male consciousness and will. Lawrence’s male figures already possess an interior certainty about the cosmic order, while the woman must bow to their divinity. Cipriano thus represents both Kate’s chosen companion and the structure that limits the terms of their union: she is necessary to his life, yet the ideal assigns him the mission, values, and authority around which her life is organized.