Lawrence famously wrote that the most important thing to write about was the relationship between the sexes. He also wrote both that we must strive to keep the sexes pure, and that the difference between them is essential:

However, this difference is only maintained – it only ‘remains so’ in Lawrence – an act of solitary exertion on the part of the man, and a corresponding submission by the woman:

As Lawrence wrote in a letter to Katherine Mansfield in November 1918, in order for man to be able to ‘go ahead absolutely in front of their women, without turning round to ask for permission or for approval from their women’, the woman must first ‘yield some sort of precedence to a man’, they must ‘follow as it were unquestioningly’. Female submission is high on Lawrence's behavioural agenda. Speaking of both horses and women in Women in Love, Birkin argues that ‘the last, perhaps highest, loveimpulse’ is to ‘resign your will to the higher being’ (WL 202).

Lawrence was obsessed with the position of women, their role, their sexuality. His novels are often the stories of women, privileging their perspective as the main narrative focus. Alvina Houghton, Ursula Brangwen, Constance Chatterley, Kate Leslie, unquestionably dominate the novels in which they feature.