Lawrence’s ideal denies woman even clitoral sexual autonomy in eroticism
Evidence
Lawrence does not want the woman to be tense in the search for pleasure, separated from the male by the spasm that jolts her; he deliberately refuses to bring her to orgasm; Don Cipriano withdraws from Kate when he feels her close to this nervous pleasure; she renounces even this sexual autonomy. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 503
Categorization
- SEED: A provocative angle: the anti-orgasm prescription in Lawrence as the erotic form of womanly renunciation — could frame an essay on how transcendence gets coded in the body and denied to women.
- CANDY: Largely a light, eyebrow-raising detail: Lawrence’s hero literally avoids bringing his lover to orgasm to keep her from ‘separating’ from the male.
- XREF: connects to: Some literature prescribes female orgasm as forbidden individualized pleasure; Lawrence’s phallic marriage makes desire for variety inconceivable; Lawrence frames the possessive woman as dragging man back into immanence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 500 (+1 more)