Taos

Taos enters the book not as a developed setting but as part of the material Mabel Dodge wanted D. H. Lawrence to turn into art. Her account makes the place a measure of an unequal creative relationship: she sought to have Lawrence give form to her experience, rather than undertake that work herself.

Taos as Creative Material

Dodge names Taos alongside her experience and personal material as something she wanted Lawrence to take up and formulate into a magnificent creation. The place thus appears through a specific artistic expectation: its significance in this passage lies in the work she hoped another person would make from it.

Mabel Dodge and Lawrence

Dodge describes wanting to direct Lawrence’s creative capacities toward her purposes. She wanted him to understand things on her behalf and to transform her experience into art. The account presents this arrangement as a way of achieving a sense of activity through another person’s work, rather than through projects she carried out herself.

Narrative Significance

The reference to Taos gives that dynamic a concrete object. It shows how a place could become part of Dodge’s imagined creative legacy, while the hoped-for achievement remained Lawrence’s creation. In the book’s discussion of women seeking importance by attaching themselves to influential men, Taos stands within the distinction between having a personal aim and appropriating another person’s creative power.