Phallic Marriage

Phallic Marriage is D. H. Lawrence’s ideal of a permanent union between man and woman, imagined as a communion that joins sexual difference to the rhythms of the natural world. Simone de Beauvoir recognizes its language of reciprocal giving and fidelity, but shows how that apparent equality conceals a gendered order: the man carries the future and embodies transcendence, while the woman is expected to accept a subordinate role and derive purpose from his mission.

Definition and Cosmological Ideal

Lawrence presents marriage as more than a private arrangement or a route to individual pleasure. It should be connected to the sun, earth, moon, stars, and the rhythms of days and years. The lovers’ union is figured as a correspondence between two distinct streams of blood: they touch deeply without losing their separate bounds. In this vision, the phallus is not merely one sexual term among others; it is described as the link that joins the streams and carries their relation toward the future. The cosmic image therefore gives marriage both a promise of communion and a directional structure, with the male principle assigned the work of connection and advance.

The ideal is permanent and monogamous. Once the relation between masculinity and femininity is established, Lawrence regards the couple as a complete circuit, making the desire for variety seem unnecessary. Partners should give themselves to one another in body and soul and remain faithful. Such fidelity is not simply a moral rule: it follows from the claim that their union fulfills a general, cosmic pattern rather than a passing personal preference.

Mutual Recognition and Its Limits

The ideal has a genuine language of reciprocity. In the examples Beauvoir discusses, lovers can encounter one another as real beings rather than as prey, instruments, or occasions for private gratification. The union of Ursula and Birkin is associated with a star-like equilibrium, while Paul and Clara’s love is described as opening beyond the two individuals to the living world around them. These images suggest an erotic relation in which neither person should be swallowed by the other and neither should treat sex as a tool for asserting personal sovereignty.

Yet Beauvoir asks whether reciprocal gift and fidelity amount to mutual recognition in Lawrence’s account. Her answer is that they do not, because the symbolic structure of the union privileges the male. The phallus becomes the bridge between the partners and the bearer of their future, so man is not only one side of the couple but also the principle said to surpass and connect it. Lawrence’s cosmic language thus makes male precedence appear to be a feature of the universe rather than a social hierarchy.

Gendered Roles and Female Subordination

The asymmetry becomes explicit in the roles Lawrence assigns to the sexes. Man is cast as active, initiating, and oriented toward goals; he carries life forward and embodies transcendence. Woman, by contrast, is associated with inwardness and immanence, with feeling rather than action. Beauvoir notes that this is not a minor difference within an otherwise equal partnership: Lawrence’s formulation makes the woman’s existence subordinate to the man’s, and asks her to believe in him and in the higher purpose he represents.

The promise of tenderness and gratitude does not undo that dependence. In Lawrence’s ideal, a man may be grateful to a woman who believes in him and submits to his purpose, but her value remains bound to her support for his project. Beauvoir stresses that the so-called real woman in this scheme is one who willingly accepts definition as the Other. Submission may be described as devotion, but the man’s purpose supplies the standard by which the woman’s life is justified.

Kate and Don Cipriano: The Ideal in Practice

The Plumed Serpent gives this ideal its fullest narrative form. Don Cipriano is presented as a man with a mission so complete that his virility takes on a divine character. Kate initially resists dependence, holding to her own personality and limited aims; gradually, however, she gives herself to Cipriano’s world and adopts his purposes and values. Her decision is not depicted as an unexamined surrender: before agreeing to remain with him, she insists that he acknowledge his need for her. He does so, affirming that woman is necessary to man.

That recognition nevertheless stops short of equality between independent projects. Kate consents to be his companion, and the couple’s shared life is organized around the mission he embodies. Beauvoir notes that even the erotic ideal asks the woman to relinquish a form of sexual autonomy: Cipriano withdraws when Kate approaches a particular kind of pleasure, and her desire is represented as subsiding into a quieter potency. The scene belongs to a larger pattern in which her acceptance of the male order is treated as fulfillment rather than as an equal negotiation over the terms of their life.

Beauvoir’s Critique and Larger Argument

Beauvoir’s critique turns on the distinction between apparent reciprocity and the distribution of agency. A relation can declare both partners necessary, and can praise giving, fidelity, and communion, while still reserving initiative, purpose, and the future for the man. The woman’s participation is welcomed, but the scheme asks her to enter a world whose ends have already been set by male authority. The spiritual and cosmic vocabulary does not remove that imbalance; it elevates it.

This reading connects Phallic Marriage to Beauvoir’s broader account of women’s situation. Every person is an autonomous freedom who seeks to surpass the given through projects, but women are made to assume the position of the inessential Other, with their transcendence restricted by another consciousness treated as sovereign. The contrast is also visible in Beauvoir’s discussion of reproductive and domestic labor: childbirth and breastfeeding are natural functions rather than, by themselves, chosen projects, while housework repeats from day to day without producing a new future. Against that background, a marriage that offers a woman purpose through a man’s mission may look like elevation while preserving her dependence.

The concept therefore holds two meanings in tension. Its language of distinct partners, mutual need, and shared communion resists the reduction of a woman to a mere object. But its hierarchy of phallic connection, male initiative, and female submission prevents that promise from becoming reciprocal freedom. For Beauvoir, the crucial test is not whether the couple feels united, but whether each partner can remain a subject with purposes of their own rather than having one life justified through the other.