Sexuality and American Culture 2011

To be honest, it was a lot harder for me to re-read Lolita this time around. The reason I bring this up is that I don’t feel I can properly analyze it without first examining the lens that I am reading through. The emotional connection to book was lessened, and instead I kind of gave it a colder reading. Certainly the elements of Foucault are prominent throughout the book, as well as Nabakov’s game-play with the reader, and his undermining humor about Scientia Sexualis.

A few things I would like to mention in particular about the second half; first, the rehashing of HH’s memories of Lolita’s obvious depression and helplessness. From pages 283-287 he recounts very heart-breaking snippets of time, glimpses of the reality of their incestuous relationship. His projections onto Lolita throughout that time had been able to hold, but after her abandonment of him, the cracks in his fantasy shine through. What I find interesting is something Richard was discussing last class- talking about HH’s love transcending that of human love but the love of a concept, likened to Plato’s enlightened kings. However the flaw in the relation to Lolita is that HH loses that concept and finds during his visit that he is still madly in love with Lolita, regardless of her increase in age and size, and highly unappealing circumstances to the his tastes. Granted, HH is a pedophile, but his lack of fixation on other children, and his lack of revisiting the fantasy of copulation by the shore (which he touches upon) in a determined manner speaks to the desire for this one particular person which is certainly not transcendent, and simply a mutilated and pathetic love. His recalling these moments in time in which he saw the damage he was doing to Lolita informs his shame. It does not stop him though from inviting her once again to live with him, and exacting his revenge on Quilty. I find interesting the sense of self-righteousness he holds against Quilty, regardless of the fact that he gleans no satisfaction from the murder, because of his shame. It seems to me that HH cannot align the two parts of his feelings into one. This is also reflected in the entire construction of his character; HH is able to carry out relationships, bungled as they may be (Rita, for example) with adult women, regardless of his preferences. It brings to mind some of the readings in Peiss’ book, which at first I had some trouble making connections to.

The readings, the ones by Kinsey and also the one on government employees, were what struck me in relation to the earlier point. In the first, Kinsey discusses the inadequacy of characterization of identity based on sexual partners, and that anyone who had a homosexual experience could fall under that category, but if they had also had a hetersexual experience they could be classified as such also. This speaks to the innate complexity of people and the lack of nuance in sexual identity. In the same vein, the piece on government employees discusses the undesirable nature of “homosexuals and other sexual perverts” because of a plethora of nonsense. The important part in my mind of that writing, aside from the meaning of it for people’s lives at the time, is that part of the justification for not wanting homosexual people in the government was their potential fear of being outed, and thus creating a weakness. People who could be identified or classified as homosexual were required to hide their “identity,” while at the same time had a propensity to lure and draw in other members of “normal” society. While this is contradictory, it also speaks to the nature of inadequate classification and ideas on identity. To reduce someone in their entirety to their sexual preferences allows no other values, morals, let alone weaknesses, into the picture. Placing the heterosexual above the idea of even having weaknesses also speaks to a lack of comprehensive thought. All and all I was taken by the concept of complexity. Kinsey began to deal with it, which was extremely radical at the time (evidenced by the reactions in the second reading), HH is an example of it, and the governmental writing is really also an example of the poor self-reflection and ability to speak to the complexity of people. There must have been tons of people leading double lives, or simply married into the system in which they were supposed to that did not identify with that institution. Sure, they were heterosexuals in a sense, but they also were homosexuals, or bisexual… However, they were people, and people cannot be reduced to a classification system of identity based on one variable.

I realize that there’s a lot of opinion in this writing, it was difficult this week for me to curb it’s involvement in my analysis of the text. The other thing I wanted to note is that Kinsey and the piece on employment, as well as Lolita, but more clearly reflected in the primary sources, those pieces came during the Mccarthy era, who has in office starting in 1947, but was extremely prominent nationwide in 1950, and that entire era is flush with his style of accusation and demagogy.

Throughout Part One of Lolita, H.H.’s descriptions of nymphets in general and Lolita in particular strongly reminded me of Pearl, from The Scarlet Letter. Of course, Pearl was 7 for most of The Scarlet Letter, and H.H.’s nymphets are 9-14, but she seems to fit the rest of the characteristics. Hawthorne and various characters throughout The Scarlet Letter refer to Pearl as an elf (pgs 106, 123, 131 190, 201, 212, 235, 238, 294, 295), demon offspring (pgs 113, 114, 276, 294), sprite (pgs 105, 110), witch-child (pg 277), and imp (pgs 107, 112, 121, 152). Similarly, a nymphet is a “little deadly demon” or “demon child” (pgs 17, 20), delinquent (pg 32), diaphanous (pg 29), “a mixture of dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity” (pg 44), and “beastly and beautiful” (pg 135), with other “certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm” (pg 17).

We talked about how the magnificent clothing Hester sewed for Pearl turned her into the sexualized child, and, in light of Lolita, Pearl’s interactions with the minister seem a little less innocent. Exhibit A:

Pearl, that wild and flighty little elf, stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself, “Is that my Pearl?” Yet she knew that there was love in the child’s heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The minister—for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly worthy to be loved—the minister looked round, laid his hand on the child’s head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow. Little Pearl’s unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall so airily, that old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the floor.

“The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess,” said he to Mr. Dimmesdale. “She needs no old woman’s broomstick to fly withal!” (Chapter 8, The Elf-child and the Minister)

Exhibit B:

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister—painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child’s kindlier regards—bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. (Chapter 19, The Child at the Brookside)

Exhibit C:

“My little Pearl,” said he feebly—and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the child—“dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt?”

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was fulfilled. (Chapter 24, The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter)

Is it reading too much into this to say that Pearl’s kiss, the consummation of her relationship with the minister, is comparable to H.H.’s first night with Lolita? No doubt. But for the sake of the thought experiment, let’s look at Humbert’s feelings from the following morning: “Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark – and plunged into a nightmare…somewhere at the bottom of that turmoil I felt the writhing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for the miserable nymphet” (140). Obviously, the sex was good. But “overshot its mark” is a curious phrase, and far from being satiated, all H.H. can think about is getting another chance. It’s almost like the chase and anticipation of being with a nypmhet are what H.H. craves, not (or at least, not as much) the actual sex. Even before Lolita, he tires of the prostitute nymphet after a mere two days (3 meetings). She didn’t grow up overnight; she was simply too available.

So, in addition to the characteristics listed above, I would add “unattainable” to the qualities of a nymphet. Pearl kisses Dimmesdale and he dies, and with him, the “spell” that turned her into a nymphet does, too. H.H. has sex with Monique, and she ceases to be a nymphet. In the few pages after H.H. and Lolita have sex but before the end of part 1, he obviously still desires her. But how long before she’s no longer a nymphet? H.H. knows “she would not be forever Lolita…In two years or so she would cease being a nymphet and would turn into a ‘young girl’ and then, into a ‘college girl’ – that horror of horrors” (66). But I have a feeling** it will take far less time than two years for him to lose interest, and not because of any physical maturing on her part. Because for Humbert, and maybe even for all of us, there’s nothing more interesting than wanting what you can’t have.

**Yes, I know it’s only been three years since I read the book, but honestly I have zero recollection of what happens in part 2 other than the murder and some kind of road trip. Sometimes I’m pretty sure my mom must have dropped me on my head when I was a baby.

Out of all the things we’ve read thus far, I think Lolita has been the best at illustrating Foucault’s ideas surrounding the discourse of sexuality. I imagine The History of Sexuality would have been much easier for me to understand at the time of reading if, every few paragraphs, there had been an excerpt from Nabakov’s novel exemplifying each concept and string of thoughts regarding them: confession, denial, perversion, secrecy, expression, medicalization, childhood sexuality, and more. Within ten pages of reading I had underlined more than a handful of lines that seemed ideal for this task in particular. What struck me most, however, throughout my reading of the first half of Lolita was the depth and complexity of Humbert Humbert’s character in contrast to the simplistic descriptions of the novel I’ve encountered since I began reading at a young age.

It became immediately apparent that Lolita is much more than a novel about a man who’s a pedophile, period. The many, many layers to Humbert’s actions and psyche are revealed slowly, in anecdotes or use of language or asides to the reader. So much so, in fact, that by the time the reader reaches the end of Part One and has finished reading about Humbert and Lolita’s first sexual encounters, their reaction is more involved than “Ew, what a freak,” or something basic and typical. For me, my understanding had grown over the pages and I somehow visualized in my mind Humbert’s character having aspects of it pulled from the worlds of school, of books, of experience, of fantasy, of childhood, of absurdity, and maybe a little insanity. All of his actions seem influenced by all previous experiences in his life, in a peculiar way that I’m not sure I’m describing very well…

Anyway, in relation to Foucault, I would say that one of my favorite paragraphs from Lolita is on page II, when Humbert describes “the only definite sexual events” that he can remember – the first being “a solemn, decorous and purely theoretical talk about pubertal surprises” and “some interesting reactions on the part of my organism to certain photographs…in Pinchon’s sumptuous La Beaute Humaine…” To me, it becomes increasingly important in the novel to remember these two things and the way they affected Humbert’s life onwards: the ways in which Humbert first experienced or interpreted his sexuality as well as the fact that he never had a complete, satisfactory occasion of sex with Annabel. After all, Humbert does say that “twenty-four years later, [he] broke her spell by incarnating her in another.” (15)

I would be interested to see how much more fantastical the novel becomes over Part Two…in Part One, Humbert often acknowledges that the Lolita he loves currently will not be the same Lolita forever, but one must wonder if the other girls that Humbert sees and identifies as nymphets actually are, or if he’s projecting onto them characteristics and identities that they do not have. Whether or not Humbert is a reliable narrator of his own tale stops me frequently from empathizing too strongly when he tangled layers of his reasoning and thoughts makes his actions excusable.

At first glance, Nabokov’s “Lolita” and the documents we had to read in conjunction had no apparent correlation. “Lolita” is through the perspective of what we would usually call a pedophile; whereas the text in “Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality” was commenting on the formation of heterosexual and homosexual standards and norms. However on closer inspection, we can utilize the historical analytical process used to understand homosexual and heterosexual standards and apply it to how a simplified identity such as “pedophile” can have a much more underlying complexity than the binary forms of “normal” and “abnormal” behavior associated with it.

In Katz’s essay on Heterosexuality, Katz argues that Heterosexuality, though commonly thought as the unchanging universal gold standard of sexuality, is actually a social construct of the late 19th and early 20th century. Katz states that: “the concept of heterosexuality is only one particular historical way of perceiving, categorizing, and imagining the social relations of the sexes” (349 Peiss). This particular historical way of perceiving, over time has become the predominant way of analyzing, but Katz tries to remind us that even though it is the dominant method of categorizing and interpreting sexuality, we should still recognize that it is only one particular method. Katz claims that: “the category heterosexuality continues to be applied uncritically as a universal and analytical tool. Recognizing the time-bound and culturally specific character of the heterosexual category can help us begin to work toward a thoroughly historical view of sex” (349). With a historical approach to how to analyze the formations of categories in sexuality, we are able to follow the ways in which definitions and categories originated and how they were applied to a more broad culture.

Katz continues to argue that there was shift from the Victorian work ethic to the pleasure ethic embodied by consumer culture. Following this cultural movement, Dr. Krafft-Ebing’s Pschopathia Sexualis was translated and published in the United States, where Katz states that: “[Dr. Krafft-Ebing’s definition of heterosexuality as other-sex attraction provided the basis for a revolutionary, modern break with centuries-old procreative standard…[his] heterosexual offered the modern world a new norm that came to dominate our idea of the sexual universe, helping to change it form a mode of human reproduction and engendering to a mode of pleasure” (352). The offering of a new norm rather than an imposition is important here, since Katz towards the end clarifies that it is: “important to affirm that heterosexuality (and homosexuality) came into existence before it was named and thought about. The formulation of the heterosexual idea did not create a heterosexual experience or behavior…but the titling and envisioning of heterosexuality did play an important role in consolidating the construction of the heterosexual’s social existence.” (355). The gradual change towards consumer culture, with the availability of categories that were continually being reassessed and refined by the medical field all helped popularize the normative connotation of heterosexual and homosexual behavior.

In Lolita, we are thrown into the perspective of Humbert Humbert who struggles to simultaneously differentiate and reconcile his internal and insatiable hunger for nymphets, all the while participating in society as a moral character. This back and forth blurs the boundaries between what the reader would associate with “normative” behavior and “abnormal” behavior. Through Humbert’s perspective, we are shown the full complexities of his identity, and his struggle to construct or compromise it while being barraged by social norms.
Even from the very beginning, Humbert attempts but fails to explain to the reader what a nymphet is. It seems that Humbert already understands that his extremely figurative and personal description makes it almost impossible for a reader to distinguish a nymphet, as he states: “A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessary choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy…in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs…the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power” (17). This ambiguous criteria—though a criteria—makes it difficult to quickly judge Humbert as a “pedophile” or a “pervert” or any definition commonly associated as abnormal by societies standard. The reader’s struggle to understand Humbert almost becomes an obsession to understand to understand, and this obsessive quality of categorizing and judging is demonstrated by Humbert’s consciousness of how others tries to categorize him: “one moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangulated me. Psychoanalysts wooed me with pseudoliberations and psuedolibidoes…other times I would tell myself that it was all a question of attitude, that there was really nothing wrong in being moved to distraction by girl-children” (18).

Humbert’s obviously complex situation is even more confusing when we realize that Humber may be projecting qualities of nymphet onto young girls when he tries to describe his love for Lolita: “I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever’ but I also knew she would not forever be Lolita…the “forever” refereed only to my own passion, to the eternal Lolita as reflected in my blood” (65). Here, it is important to remember Katz statement, that though labels and categories may help us understand the possibilities of prepackaged values and behavior that an individual has access to, it does not limit an individual to them. Humbert demonstrates one who is aware and acts within society’s norms, but also has definitions he must solve for himself not covered by the “normative definitions.”

As I read this week’s documents and essays, I couldn’t help but think: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The documents in Chapter 7 and the essay in Chapter 9 struck me as particularly timeless. Ads for soft-core porn, sexual virility, and snake-oil elixirs have been reincarnated in the 21st century as endless spam e-mails. The tension between First Amendment rights and obscenity censors is still unresolved, and the debate about women’s reproductive rights continues to rage. All in all, I decided it paints a pretty bleak picture of the evolution (or lack thereof) of American social discourse over the past 200 years.

Still, part of me wonders whether these issues are timeless, or even part of human nature. Did the Egyptians use hieroglyphics to advertise Viagra’s predecessor? Did the Jews, wandering around in the desert for forty years, set up portable Planned Parenthood tents? Clearly I’m being facetious, but it would have been interesting to read about the history and genesis of these phenomena in addition to the period-specific documents and essays describing their significance in post-Civil War America.

I think it’s interesting, however, that despite the apparent similarities between the 1800’s and today on a discursive level, the situation has changed profoundly on a practical level. We’ve lived through the 1960’s era of free love, sex education is taught in public schools, women have access to birth control and legal abortions, and spousal rape is recognized as a prosecutable crime. Obscene magazines travel through the mail every day, and two out of Angela Heywood’s “infamous ‘three words'” (259) are no longer taboo. Impolite, perhaps, but far from outrageous.

On the other hand, a large number of schools teach abstinence-only sex ed, 33 states consider spousal rape a lesser crime than non-spousal rape, censorship is thriving, Cee Lo Green has taken up the mantle of Heywood’s radical “critique of linguistic prudery” with his hit song “Fuck you!” and despite Roe v. Wade, abortion rights are constantly under siege. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

*****

This short article, which describes how random hook ups are correlated with poor academic performance but romantic sex isn’t, reminded me of Lystra’s essay in Chapter 6, “Sexuality in Victorian Courtship and Marriage.” Lystra discusses how sex came to be associated with romantic love in the 19th century. Clearly, “the nineteenth-century view of sex as the ultimate expression of love” has produced cultural consequences that still exist today (230).

I also think this article, “Why Monogamy Matters,” is particularly relevant to our reading this week. It discusses statistics for premarital sex between 1951 and 2011, and reveals a “significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.”

As a final note, according to Google, today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day!

I continue to find myself surprised and shocked by what I read in Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality – and not so much by the theses of the essayists, but by the content of the primary documents published. So full of judgment, so full of values imposed cross-institutionally…and yet, I shouldn’t be surprised, because if I learned anything from reading History of Sexuality (and I did), it’s that the discourse surrounding a particular thing – and in this case, sexuality – encompasses all venues of discussion, public and private, positive and negative, helpful and hurtful, and everything in-between.

De. Ely Van De Warker’s discussion of the sale of an abortion remedy (for lack of a better term) is a perfect example of this. The language he uses leads me to believe that he intends not only to justify the amendment to the law of 1868 that he’s proposing, but also to reprimand the advertising business for doing what an advertiser must, and to back-handedly admonish the women who so chose to take those mixtures. He writes of needing to “suppress the advertisement…of any drug or mixture which is claimed to act as an emmenagogue…for the good of society.” (243) The tone of this article from the New York Medical Journal and something in Van De Warker’s language speaks to his ability, as a valued doctor, to pass judgment on decisions made regarding reproduction, in both action (or inaction) and method. He writes as though his legitimized, affirmed, honored title as Doctor takes precedence over the job that a man in advertising must do – advertise, to whatever extent, the product he is given to work with, make it seem useful and of utmost importance to the public. Ely Van De Warker is just a man with a job, with an hour to begin and an hour to end – the same as the man in advertising. One is not innately more objective than the other or well-intentioned than the other. What I mean by this is not that doctors are necessarily as ‘slimy’ as those who work in advertising, but that the profession of medical doctor, despite all doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath, is not by nature a righteous, virtuous profession, and regular, mortal, mistake-making, ‘sinful’ men and women may work under the title of Doctor.

I had the same feelings regarding Anthony Comstock’s excerpt from ‘Traps for the Young’. Some internet searching told me that Comstock was simply an USPS Inspector and Politician – not a learned academic of morality or linguistic anthropology or anything related to thoughtful discussion of obscenity. To declare that parents might even be too much of a danger to their own children – that’s what tipped me off most heavily to Comstock’s (in my opinion, undeserved) fiery language.

All of the documents and essays assigned this week were interesting to me, both independently and as a collection. I took special interest in the essay on romantic friendships between women, as well, having just recently finished a book on the evolution of lesbian identity in America in the 20th century that focused on romantic friendships for the  first 80 pages or so. However, it was the sense of entitlement and boundary-crossing language and advice of the documents in Chapter 7 that struck me most and provided me with interesting materializations of things that Foucault discussed.

A couple of classes we go, we had an in depth discussion on the deployment of alliance in contrast to the deployment of sexuality. Where the deployment of alliance had stark binary oppositions, the deployment of sexuality was relational. Where the Deployment of alliance was enforced through law, the deployment of sexuality was through the multiplicity of discourse and various authorities. There were other contrasts as well, but the general difference of the ways in which these deployments is as Foucault states: “the deployment of alliance is attuned to a homeostatis of the social body, which it has the function of maintaining…the deployment of sexuality has its reason for being, not in reproducing itself, but in proliferating, innovating, annexing, creating, and penetrating bodies in an increasingly detailed way, and in controlling populations in an increasingly comprehensive way” (107).

Rosenberg’s article The Female World of Love and Ritual illustrates how females in Victorian culture was able to form their own kinship ties not through the deployment of alliance, which Foucault described as “to link between partners and definite statuses” (106) but rather ambiguous relationships which “is concerned with the sensations of the body, the quality of pleasures, and the nature of impressions, however tenuous or imperceptible these may be” (106). The spectrum of the role of kinship in Victorian women spanned from emotional and psychological comfort to sensual and passionate love—it was through this relational spectrum did Victorian women create ties that were personal and increasingly specific to their own needs and desires. The expansion of the kinship system, which begins before birth through the inheritance of one’s mother’s friends and support, grows throughout a Victorian females life to her ever changing needs.

However, Rosenburg addresses the issue that this kinship formations and subcultures formed by Victorian woman did not solely exist privately and exclusively away from one’s general lifestyle. Instead, Rosenberg believes that these very kinship formations informed greatly the identity of a Victorian woman. Rosenberg states towards the beginning of her essay that: “The female friendship must not be seen in isolation, it must be analyzed as one aspect of women’s overall relations with one another….at all stages of the female life cycle constitute the most suggestive framework for the historian to begin an analysis of intimacy and affection” (202). The expansion of the kinship system to incorporate aspects of one’s overall identity echoes the system of sexuality which attempts to “create and innovate” bodies rather than determining it. The rituals that Victorian women participated prior to Childbirth or marriage both greatly affected the cultural relevance of what these events meant, as well as how these events affected the individual undergoing them. Rosenberg depicts the way these “private spheres” of kinship and affection actually informed everyday life, and that Victorian women “considered such love both socially acceptable and fully compatible with heterosexual marriage. Emotionally and cognitively, their heterosocial and homosocial worlds were complementary” (205).

Ironically, this deployment culminates to create a lack of understanding between two social groups—men and women. Rosenberg explains that the homogenous nature of the kinship groups between women—though fortified through a strong cultural language and value system between those partaking in it, was ill-prepared to communicate with those from other, just as specially oriented kinship groups. Rosenberg states that: “if men and women grew up as they did in relatively homogenous and segregated sexual groups, the marriage represented a major problem in adjustment…we could interpret much of the emotional stiffness and distance that we associate with Victorian marriage is a structural consequence of contemporary sex-role differentiation and gender-role socialization” (213).

I found this weeks reading to be greatly varied, and it was especially difficult for me to come down to one place where I knew where to begin… Forgive me in advance for a somewhat tangential post. Firstly I would like to comment on Chapter 7; I found the writings in it to be surprisingly contemporary in the writing style, and a lot of the ideas put forth by the respective authors were also quite progressive, ie. freedom from governance in terms of sexuality and sexual/ general independence for women.

On the other hand though, in Anthony Comstock’s condemnation of obscene literature and Dr. Ely Van De Warker’s discussion of abortifacient advertisements, the self-righteous moralism is overwhelming. The different facets of life in the Victorian era are elucidated to some degree throughout this chapter and the previous one, and it was clear to see the progression of Foucault’s arguments and analysis while reading through them, especially in terms of the Scientia Sexualis, which enjoyed (and enjoys) great prevalence. This was especially prominent in the piece on Alice Mitchell homicide of her friend and love (Chapter 6). There were also pronounced nods towards the idea between the hysterical woman and good mother (essay by Karen Lystra, Chapter 6).

I think perhaps the most complex arguments took place in the 6th chapter, surrounding the ideas of homosocial relationships as a result of emotional segregation. I found the first piece in the chapter to be somewhat confounding; I wondered if Julia Freeman was being sarcastic or not in some places. Her obvious intellectual faculty seemed to belittle the friendships and lives of women in general, regardless of her purported thesis. That aside though, the following documents, especially the poem by Walt Whitman and the letter to one Smith college student to another were evidences of love and real bonds between people of the same sex that were accepted to some degree, and certainly at least by the individuals who experienced them.

A lot of the writing in this section is not as overtly sexualized as the language used to analyze it, yet the sensuality and emotional bonds are clear. Friendships between men, as mentioned in one place or another in the reading, are historically acceptable, and female friendship is neglected in discussion. In Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s essay The Female World of Love and Ritual, she discusses the entire ethos of womanhood in the Victorian era. The overall acceptance of women commiserating, forming emotional and intellectual bonds, and engaging with one another in the physical sense, and likely in turn the same acceptance for men who were comrades, indicates a society in which the oppressive system had appropriate outlets. It seems paradoxical to some degree that such a repressive sexual system would encourage this homosocial lifestyle, but in practice the evidence makes a logical conclusion.

Smith-Rosenberg makes the distinction between the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the mid-twentieth century in terms of the flexibility afforded to women in their social arena; I think this is important in looking at the “swinging pendulum” (which I actually think the other pieces of writing, especially within the seventh chapter, indicate), and looking at the evolution of the society’s views on what relationships are encouraged in the family and the larger society. In the mid-twentieth century, a lot of elements in life were similar to those in the previous two centuries, yet the community of women seems to have diminished, and to look at the society we have today, the sense of a gendered community is somewhat foreign altogether. The emotional segregation between men and women, whether it was diminished or simply evolved, is also that seems to have fallen by the wayside in conversation.

Here’s a quick overview of Presidential dalliances, sent to me by a member of last year’s Sexuality and American Culture class:
http://therumpus.net/2011/02/on-this-presidents-day-a-brief-history-of-presidential-sex-dirt/

To me, the document in chapter 4 entitled “Boston Female Moral Reformers Condemn ‘Licentious Men’” reads as an introduction to an early 19^th century version of “He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut” by Jessica Valenti. Valenti’s book outlines double standards that we live by as men and women, specifically ones that appear in social and sexual arenas. The Friend of Virtue document reads: “Do you say the guilty [women, in a case of adultery] deserve to suffer and must expect it? Granted. But why not let a part of this suffering fall on the destroyer [man]?” This is touched upon in Valenti’s book – the fact that a woman who commits adultery is shamed and disgraced but that the man involved doesn’t face the same stigmatization. In essence, he’s a stud, and she’s a slut. Cott mentions in her essay’s contexualization of New England’s views towards women’s sexuality in Early America that “a wife’s adultery was always cause for her husband to divorce her, but wives had little success in freeing themselves from unfaithful husbands” (Peiss 133).

Also, in the address to mothers, wives, sisters and daugters, the speaker urges all the women to withhold their sex from those licentious men in order to weed them out of virtuous society – which echoes the interpretation of women’s perceived sexuality during this time as shifting from a literal thing to be controlled to something much more connected with morality and decision-making, value and temperament. Sexual control was elevated to the highest rung of the morality ladder and female chastity became “the archetype for human morality.” (Peiss 133)

In “Passionlessness”, the author argues for the theory that women were constructed as passionless in that time period in order to “exaggerat[e]…sexual propriety so far as to immobilize women and, on the other hand, allow[…] claims of women’s moral influence to obfuscate the need for other sources of power.” (Peiss 141).  However, the majority of the narrative in chapter 18 of The Scarlet Letter is written in a more sensual, even sexualized way, especially in the description of Hester as she reunites with Dimmesdale and reconciles with him. I know that focusing on one particular chapter of one particular book is no way to disprove/discredit someone else’s interpretation, but I just found the contrasts striking. From the first description of Hester’s mouth and smile as playful and radiant, and onwards, the tone of this chapter becomes more sensually written. The descriptions of Hester’s physical beauty flowing forth – metaphors that evoke images from nature, such as rivers flowing, light gushing, sunshine pouring – are just as evocative as Hawthorne’s writing in the first half of the novel, but also bursting forth with sexual tension – to me, at least.

Another interpretation of this might be one that doesn’t analyze this dissonance in ideas as conflicting, but complementary. There is an analysis in Cott’s essay that navigates the sexually virtuous identity as one that “connoted only demure behavior”, not necessarily true passionlessness. “Indeed, the underlying theme that women had to appeal to men turned modesty into a sexual ploy, emphasizing women’s sex objectification.” (Peiss 134) If one saw an increase in emotional, metaphorical writing that evoked an between-the-lines interpretation as sexual in Hawthorne’s chapter 18, it could be explained and viewed through that lens. The weight of the “A” lifted from her shoulders, Hester’s true beauty begins to bring light back into the forest, literally, reviving the flora and affecting the fauna.