UNIVERSITEIT GENT 2006-2007
ASPECTS OF POWER IN THE PROSE OF MARY GAITSKILL
FROM A PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE WITH FOCUS ON SADOMASOCHISM
PROMOTOR Verhandeling voorgelegd PROF. DR. GERT BUELENS aan de Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte voor het verkrijgen van de graad van licentiaat in de taal- en letterkunde: Germaanse talen
door
ALISE VAN HECKE - JAMESON ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could not have completed this thesis on my own and there are many people who, both directly and indirectly, have aided me in my efforts. In particular, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my promoter, Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens, not only for his initial interest in my topic, but also for his guidance, patience, suggestions, and critical commentary, all of which were both motivational and beneficial. I also wish to thank my good friends Elke, Johan, Kathy, Lucie, and Veerle, my brother, Ralph, and my future brother-in-law, Jeff, for their emotional support and encouragement during this trying year. My sister, Annette, deserves recognition for reading my very first, very rough draft and for keeping me sane through our telephone chats. I wish to honor the memory of my Aunt Lynne (November 1937-April 2007) who always believed in me and encouraged me to continue my education. My husband, Omer, receives extra special thanks, as he originally discovered Mary Gaitskill and planted the idea which has since grown into this thesis. Words cannot express my gratitude for his unending support and patience. I thank him for reading many of my previous drafts and offering thoughtful advice. I have also benefited from his computer skills, which saved me much precious time. I am extremely thankful for my father, David, who taught me to love reading and inspired me to both write and study literature. I have benefited immensely from his meaningful suggestions and encouragement. I am also very grateful that he was able to attend the University of North Dakota’s Writers Conference in March of 2007 at which Mary Gaitskill was a featured writer. My dad deserves recognition not only for providing me with detailed notes of the conference, but also for approaching Mary Gaitskill and informing her about my scholarly interest in her work. Finally, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Mary Gaitskill for her thought- provoking and inspirational fiction.
I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my mother: Constance Rae Jameson March 4, 1952 – August 13, 2006
1 CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 1
CONTENTS…...... 2
INTRODUCTION ...... 4
BIOGRAPHY AND WORK ...... 4 SADOMASOCHISM...... 7 SUMMARY ...... 9
CHAPTER ONE: FANTASY VERSUS REALITY ...... 12
I.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 12 I.2 FANTASY AND S/M IN “A ROMANTIC WEEKEND” ...... 12 I.3 FANTASY AND MEMORY IN “AN AFFAIR, EDITED”...... 22 I.4 PROJECTED FANTASY AND GENDER PERFORMATIVITY IN “SOMETHING NICE” ...... 25 I.5 CONCLUSION ...... 29
CHAPTER TWO: S/M AND TRAUMA IN TWO GIRLS, FAT AND THIN...... 31
II.1 INTRODUCTION AND PLOT SUMMARY...... 31 II.2 TWO GIRLS, TWO TRAUMAS...... 33 II.2.1 Justine Shade: Sadist and Masochist...... 33 II.2.2 Isolation ...... 41 II.2.3 Self-injury ...... 46 II.2.4 S/M: Healing or Hurting? ...... 49 II.3 MUTUAL RECOGNITION ...... 55 II.4 CONCLUSION ...... 60
CHAPTER THREE: ROLE-PLAY AND ROLE-REVERSAL ...... 61
III.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 61 III.2 PLAYING WITH POWER IN “THE BLANKET”...... 61 III.3 “THE WRONG THING”...... 70 III.4 CONCLUSION...... 77
CHAPTER FOUR: POWER IN SOCIETY VERSUS POWER IN S/M ...... 79
IV.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 79 IV.2 POWER RELATIONS AND IDEOLOGY ...... 80 IV.2.1 Sexual Harassment or S/M Play? “The Secretary” ...... 81 IV.2.2 Confessions of A Rapist: “The Girl On The Plane”...... 86
2 IV.3 “THE EROTICISM OF THE MASTER-SLAVE CONFIGURATION” ...... 89 IV.4 WHO’S THE BOSS? AND ROLE-REVERSIBILITY...... 93 IV.5 CONCLUSION...... 98
CONCLUSION ...... 99
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 102
PRIMARY BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 102 SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 102
3 INTRODUCTION
1 BIOGRAPHY AND WORK
Mary Gaitskill was born on November 11, 1954 in Lexington, Kentucky. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts in 1980. She succeeded in publishing her fiction around the age of 32. Gaitskill received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her fiction in 2002. Currently, she lives in New York, N.Y., and is an associate professor at Syracuse University, where she teaches creative writing. She has also taught at the University of Berkeley, California, the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of Houston, New York University, and Brown. Gaitskill first began to publish her short stories in magazines, such as Elle, Esquire, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. She has also written numerous book reviews and essays. Gaitskill’s first book, which appeared in 1988, was a collection of short stories, entitled Bad Behavior. Her debut novel, Two Girls, Fat and Thin, followed in 1991. Because They Wanted To, Gaitskill’s second short story collection, was published in 1997 and was also nominated for the PEN/Faulkner award in 1998. Her second novel, Veronica, was released in 2005, for which she received a nomination for the National Book Award in the same year. She is currently writing another collection of short stories and a novel. Gaitskill’s fiction includes such topics as homosexuality, sex workers, AIDS, sexual violation, and sadomasochism, which still remain marginalized in dominant American society. Gaitskill’s interest in sexuality could be attributed partially to her past, because she reports that she worked as a stripper at one point in her life. Gaitskill does not view stripping or prostitution in a negative way. She states that working as a stripper was “an interesting experience for me, and often a pleasurable one. I had been inordinately shy and it was a way to act out a lot of fantasies.”2 Gaitskill’s open-mindedness with regard to sexuality was also
1 For the biographical details, I have relied on Morgan Love, “Mary Gaitskill”, in Post-war Literatures in English, 46 (March 2000), pp. 1-18; Syracuse University, 2006?, author unknown,
4 discussed in an interview with Alexander Laurence in which she revealed that she has had sex for money.3 In Gaitskill’s fiction, one is confronted with a broad range of relationships, including the social, the sexual, and the familial. Her characters do not exist in isolation, even those who purposely seek dissociation from others. Rather, they appear to be defined by their interactions with others and how others behave towards them. Gaitskill’s depiction of relationships as extremely complex and conflictual seems to mirror reality. In addition, she often constructs what appears to be an inherent duality in her characters’ psychology, without attempting to resolve the tension between the two aspects thus presented. Gaitskill’s prose is, thus, multiply interpretable, which grants the reader a certain degree of freedom. Presently, little critical work has been published on Gaitskill’s fiction. Morgan Love, of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has written an insightful encyclopedic article, “Mary Gaitskill,” in which she explores several different aspects of her fiction, such as the dichotomies of authentic and inauthentic and connection and disconnection, as well as the influence of ideologies on some of her characters.4 Barbara Schapiro has also published an academic article from a trauma theoretical perspective, which investigates the sadomasochistic behavior of those of Gaitskill’s characters who are sexual trauma survivors.5 In addition, Lauren Berlant wrote an essay, “Two Girls, Fat and Thin,” which focuses on Gaitskill’s novel of the same name, and is included in the book Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory.6 This scarcity of critical work with regard to Gaitskill has partially driven me to write this thesis on the topic of power in relationships and sadomasochism, as well as to focus on several aspects of her prose, which can be situated within the broader scope of the chosen topic. Another reason why I have settled on this topic is that Gaitskill explores both the elements of power and control in relationships and society as well as aspects of sadomasochism in many of her works. Consequently, this focus allows for the exploration of several different pieces. As time and space, not to mention relevance, are significant factors in the writing of a thesis, I have been limited in the choice of stories and portions of novels which would be brought under investigation. However, the selections included will serve as a substantial introduction to Gaitskill’s rich style and diverse oeuvre
3 Alexander Laurence, “Interview with Mary Gaitskill”, 1994, The Write Stuff, p. 2.
5 and allow the reader to gain some insight into Gaitskill’s perception of power in different forms of relationships. I will, thus, focus on some stories which feature in the collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, and on the novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin, which I will henceforth be referring to as BB, BTWT, and TGFT. I will look more closely at different types of sexual relationships, which often involve forms of sadomasochistic practices and/or role-play. I intend to touch upon sexual identity, dualities such as fantasy versus reality, trauma, obsession, role-play (including role-reversibility), and finally, power structures in society. The following excerpt from Love’s article, expresses very well Gaitskill’s own perception regarding control and intimate relationships:
Gaitskill’s notion of control and loss of control is certainly central to her fiction, as is evident in her treatment of sexuality. […] Relations that involve violation are not necessarily lacking love […]. [T]here is no doubt that the tension between fear and excitement, between control and abandon, between center and fringe, is integral to her work’s riveting appeal and singular qualities.7
As this quote demonstrates, dualities are an important aspect in Gaitskill’s fiction. Interestingly enough, the boundaries between certain binary pairs are not so clear-cut; the two oppositional elements are nearly always connected by a certain amount of tension. In this thesis, I intend to look more closely at some of these dualities, which Love has touched upon in her article, and elaborate further on them. Through an investigation of Gaitskill’s prose, I will demonstrate how Gaitskill represents these dualities. A constant motif in Gaitskill’s work, which also serves as one of the aforementioned dualities, is sadomasochism. This dichotomy will serve as the fundamental focus of this thesis, because power and/or control appear(s) to be an inherent aspect of all of the relationships constructed by Gaitskill. For Gaitskill, sadomasochism does not simply appear as some clear, straightforward binary that consists of sadism on one side and masochism at the opposite pole. The reader is confronted with characters who often appear complex and confused; sexual identity is represented as multifaceted. Sadism and masochism are seldom in direct opposition to each other and more often than not they can actually be seen to intersect. The reader must try not to view sadomasochism in a Manichean way. One should not identify sadists, or those in a dominant or top role, as only wanting to possess, control, and harm their partner, and one should also not view masochists, or those taking on a submissive or bottom role, as only in search of pain and/or humiliation and the giving up of
7 Love, “Mary Gaitskill”, p. 2.
6 control. Gaitskill’s fiction serves as an evident example that the concept of sadomasochism addresses a much more intricate interplay of forces, and with this thesis, I hope to represent and explain how deeply rooted the aspect of power is in social relationships and how power can manifest itself in certain forms of social interaction (including sexual and non-sexual behavior).
SADOMASOCHISM
Since my main focus will be on sadomasochism, it will be helpful to provide a preliminary explanation of the word.8 The separate terms sadism and masochism were first coined by the sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in his work Psychopathia Sexualis from 1885. The term sadism was in reference to the Marquis de Sade, whose works combined cruel violence with shocking sex. The term masochism was derived from another writer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose novels dealt with fantasies of submission and humiliation. Both terms were defined as sexual perversions, and were taken over by subsequent sexologists, such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. Ellis broke with the previous theories of Krafft-Ebing and Freud by shifting the focus from cruelty to pain. He was also the first to see sadism and masochism “as complementary emotional states; they can not be regarded as opposed states.”9 Ellis further claimed that love was an important motivating factor for participation in sadomasochistic activity. He found that the sadist, rather than receiving his/her pleasure from harming the masochist, derives his/her pleasure from the administering of pleasure to the masochist. It is also significant to note that Ellis did not refer to sadomasochism as a perversion. I have highlighted more distinctly the moment that sadism and masochism were first thought of as linked. The Language of Sadomasochism defines sadomasochism as the “[c]onnection of the giving and receiving of psychological and/or physical discomfort or pain with sexual pleasure” and it “is typically seen as a more forceful and intense form of bondage and
8 Sources I have relied on for this paragraph are: Thomas S. Weinberg and G.W Levi Kamel, “S&M: An Introduction to the Study of Sadomasochism”, in S&M: Studies in Dominance and Submission, ed. by Thomas S. Weinberg, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995 [Rev. ed.], pp. 15-24; Elizabeth Wright, (ed.), Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1992, pp. 385-90; Thomas E. Murray and Thomas R. Murrel, The Language of Sadomasochism: A Glossary and Linguistic Analysis, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1989, pp. 1-24. 9 Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 1, part 2, New York: Random House, 1942, p. 159. Quoted in Weinberg and Kamel, “S&M: An Introduction to the Study of Sadomasochism”, p. 18.
7 discipline by members of the subculture.”10 An interesting quote printed in a sadomasochistic magazine from an S/M club, reproduced in Houlberg’s article on the said magazine, makes a further distinction between sadomasochism and dominance and submission (D/S):
D/S is a broader term inclusive of S/M just as both are included in a still broader category of “creative sexuality.” While inclusive of S/M, D/S is not higher or better than S/M. On the contrary, S/M is a special (some feel “elite”) subgroup within the broader context of D/S. 11
This distinction I have just quoted above does not help me analyze Gaitskill’s work in a more insightful manner, as her fiction does not express such a clear-cut differentiation. Likewise, most scholars do not explicitly differentiate between D/S and S/M, as Weinberg notes.12 Yet, he suggests that it is essential to observe the “patterns of dominance and submission” which compose S/M in order to grasp this form of sexuality.13 I will be using the terms “sadomasochism” and “S/M” interchangeably. However, “dominance and submission” will only be employed in reference to the power structures in both society and S/M. I will also be employing both “sadist” and “dominant,” and “masochist” and “submissive” without any difference in meaning. However, since the terms “sadist” and “masochist” were originally applied to perverted and/or criminal individuals obsessed with pain and cruelty - views which, presently, persist - “dominant” and “submissive” would perhaps be the more politically correct and respectable choice.14 The infliction of pain by the sadist upon the masochist has given rise to one of the greatest misconceptions surrounding sadomasochism. Although Ellis attempted to redefine S/M as not being a perversion, his main focus rested on pain, e.g.: “The masochist desires to experience pain, but he generally desires that it should be inflicted in love; the sadist desires to inflict pain, but in some cases, if not in most, he desires that it should be felt as love.”15 In the book Homos, Leo Bersani states, with regard to this aspect, that “[t]he pain so-called masochists enjoy is actually pleasure.”16 Due to the feelings masochists experience during sadomasochistic acts, they are able to transform what would ordinarily be a painful
10 Murray and Murrel, The Language of Sadomasochism, p. 117. 11 Rick Houlberg, “The Magazine of a Sadomasochism Club: The Tie That Binds”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, p. 277. 12 Weinberg, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues in the Study of Sadomasochism” in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, p. 293. 13 Weinberg, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues, p. 293. 14 Cf. e.g. Bill Thompson, “De fabriek der verzinsels: de sociologie van het sadomasochisme”, in Ethiek en maatschappij, 2 (1999) 3 (Oktober), pp. 6-28. 15 Havelock Ellis, “Studies in the Psychology of Sex”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, p. 38. 16 Leo Bersani, Homos, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 93.
8 experience into a pleasurable one; they block out the pain, as it were. Bersani also refers to Mains, who mentions that for masochists the blocking of pain heightens “feelings of euphoria.”17 Bersani continues to suggest that masochists do not equate pain with pleasure, yet they possess “a passion for pleasure so intense that extreme pain is momentarily tolerated (rather than loved for its own sake).”18 Pain is thus tolerated, because it directs the masochist up the path towards euphoria. Bersani notes further, that “[t]he subordination of pain to power in certain S/M discussions may correspond to an awareness of the futility, even the danger, of speaking of pain as an end in itself.”19 For most practitioners, “[i]t is the illusion of violence, rather than violence itself, that is frequently arousing […].”20 For many practitioners, writers, and theorists, such as Weinberg, Kamel, and Bersani, pain is, thus, not a necessary aspect of sadomasochism. The main aspect is actually control. In his article, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues in the Study of Sadomasochism,”21 Weinberg noted that there has not been total agreement on this, as
[s]ome writers see the issue of control as central (e.g., Weinberg and Kamel 1983), whereas others (e.g., Myers 1992; Scoville 1984) emphasize trust. Both M. Weinberg et al. (1984) and I (Weinberg 1978) have underscored the fantasy element involved in dominance and submission. It would appear to be most accurate to include all three elements in a discussion of S&M, though not necessarily in the same degree.22
SUMMARY
The three elements - control, trust, and fantasy - previously mentioned by Weinberg, will form part of the discussion in the following chapters. Perhaps the main one throughout will be control and power, which I also will focus on exclusively in the last chapter, on the topic of power in society. As Gaitskill’s works are very relational, trust will also be a factor, mainly in the chapter on sadomasochism and trauma. Fantasy, an inherent aspect of sadomasochism, is also often present in Gaitskill’s fiction and will be mentioned not only in
17 Geoff Mains, Urban Aboriginals: A Celebration of Leathersexuality, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1984, p. 59; Mains, “Molecular Anatomy of Leather”, in Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice, ed. by Mark Thompson, Boston: Alyson Publications, 1991, p. 41. Quoted in Bersani, Homos, p. 93. 18 Bersani, Homos, p. 94. 19 Bersani, Homos, p. 94. 20 Weinberg and Kamel, “S&M: An Introduction to the Study of Sadomasochism”, p. 19. 21 Weinberg, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues in the Study of Sadomasochism”, pp. 289-300. 22 Weinberg, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues”, p. 293.
9 the chapter on role-playing, but will be the central focus of the first chapter on the dichotomy of fantasy versus reality. Because I will be dealing with the interactions between people, another important aspect will be to show how Gaitskill demonstrates the multifaceted nature of the self as well as the complexity of sexual identity. This tends to lead to conflicts and complex situations between the characters. For these elements I have relied on the secondary literature from such writers as Leo Bersani, Judith Butler, and Morgan Love. Assuming that desire and fantasy are fundamental for the formation of both the self and sexual identity, I will be investigating the duality of fantasy and reality which is often present in Gaitskill’s fiction. This duality affects not only the characters’ sense of self, but also their relationships with others. In the first chapter, “Fantasy versus Reality,” my aim will be to show the important role that fantasy plays in (sadomasochistic) relationships, as well as the conflicts which Gaitskill sketches between characters and which seem to arise from the discrepancy between fantasy and reality. The main focus of the second chapter will be the representation of trauma and sadomasochism in TGFT. Much could be done with this richly complex and multi-layered novel. I have chosen this perspective to partially demonstrate Gaitskill’s view on victimization, as well as to give an example of her characters’ successful search for a meaningful connection with an other. I will be investigating whether sadomasochism could be interpreted as a traumatic symptom. I will refer to Barbara Schapiro’s article, “Trauma and Sadomasochistic Narrative: Mary Gaitskill’s ‘The Dentist’” and Jessica Benjamin’s book, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. In the third chapter, I will analyze two short stories which involve the practice of role- playing. In many S/M relationships, role-playing is viewed as an essential practice. I will investigate how role-playing can be liberating because of the safe arena in which power can be played with as well as the aspect of role-reversal. However, this practice may also be experienced as stifling or artificial, because of the theatricality and the elements of fantasy which are involved. In the fourth and final chapter, I will show how Gaitskill demonstrates the fact that power relations are so ingrained in society that the structure of dominance and submission in relationships may appear natural. Further, many of her characters are influenced by romance and/or patriarchal ideologies, either consciously or subconsciously. This chapter will be devoted entirely to power relations in society, and I will look at the possibly inherent eroticism of master-slave configurations. I will also contrast the dominance and submissive configuration, which is fundamental to S/M, with power relations in society, which S/M
10 seems to reflect. I will also shed some light on the discussion of who is actually in control in an S/M configuration, as well as on the concept of role-reversibility. Some questions I hope to address with this thesis are: Do the relationships in Gaitskill’s fiction confirm or subvert a structure of dominance and submission? Does Gaitskill find that there is room in (S/M) relationships to share the power equally? In Gaitskill’s fictive world, can S/M offer comfort, liberation, emotional healing, and intimacy with another? Through an investigation of the sadomasochistic relationships in Gaitskill’s work and by applying secondary literature (e.g. Leo Bersani, Thomas S. Weinberg, Jessica Benjamin), I hope to offer an answer to these questions.
11 CHAPTER ONE: FANTASY VERSUS REALITY
I.1 INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the main focus will be the dichotomy of fantasy and reality, which Gaitskill frequently addresses in her prose. One of Gaitskill’s short stories that touches upon some of the dichotomies already mentioned in the introduction (e.g. control versus loss of control and sadomasochism) is entitled “A Romantic Weekend,” (BB, 31-52) in which two adults plan to have a sadomasochistic affair. However, due to the great disparity between the characters’ fantasies and actual reality, the relationship appears, at first glance, to be destined to fail. “An Affair, Edited” (BB, 74-84) is about a man who, after spotting an ex-girlfriend, is flooded with memories and fantasies of her. In this story, the male protagonist appears to be resorting to – mainly sexual – fantasies to compensate for a lack he perceives in his reality. In the analysis of “Something Nice”(BB, 53-73), which focuses on the relationship between the male protagonist and the prostitute with whom he becomes infatuated, I will approach the dichotomy of fantasy and reality by employing and applying such terms as projection and gender perfomativity to the characters.
I.2 FANTASY AND S/M IN “A ROMANTIC WEEKEND”
In “A Romantic Weekend,” the dichotomy of fantasy and reality is central. The female protagonist, Beth, is a self-proclaimed masochist, and the unnamed, married male protagonist23 represents her sadistic counterpart. From the opening lines, it appears that the weekend is imminently doomed as Beth is “meeting a man she had recently and abruptly fallen in love with” (BB, 32), yet the reader quickly discovers that he is married “to a Korean woman whom he described as the embodiment of all that was feminine and elegant” (BB, 32). Her “state of ghastly anxiety” (BB, 32) and discomfort while waiting for the man, as well as the musings of the man which occur while he is spying on her, strengthen this observation. One also learns that she had difficulty sleeping the previous night “[i]n anticipation of their
23 In the remainder of this chapter, I will refer to this character as “the man,” following Morgan Love, who did the same in her article, “Mary Gaitskill”, p. 5.
12 meeting” and to compensate for this she took “some amphetamines” which only “heightened her feeling of disintegration” (BB, 32). Beth’s anxiety and annoyance with her surroundings (“This was all wrong, all horrible. Her meeting with him should be perfect and scrap-free.” (BB, 32)) increases steadily as the minutes pass by without any sight of the man. All of this may supply the reader with the perception that Beth is an unstable individual with a possible drug problem, as the amphetamines had a function, i.e. to help get her through the night. During her wait, Beth stops in a flower store and engages in fantasies of the man. However, these fantasies fail to ease her distress, as she actually feels miserable and is plagued by embarrassment afterwards. One soon discovers that during Beth’s whole anxious ordeal, the man has been observing her from a restaurant on the opposite side of the street. He not only perceives her state of anxiety, “at once disconcerting and weirdly attractive” (BB, 33), but he also notices her appearance, which is not pleasing to his eye. Interesting to note is that Beth’s anxiety brings out a dualistic reaction in him. His ruminations extend into the past, as he remembers how he met Beth. He notices in Beth strong similarities with a woman “he had tormented on and off for two years” and compares her to his “former victim” (BB, 33). After recalling their first night together, the man starts to feel guilty for cheating on his wife and doubts whether he will approach Beth. The man entertains the idea of watching Beth until she leaves, something that he would thoroughly enjoy. At that moment, Beth notices him through the window of the restaurant. At first she is hurt, because she realizes that he has been watching her and feeling superior. The progression of the story seems to confirm that the weekend will be a failure as the two continuously misunderstand each other. Love suggests that sadomasochism appears to hold a different meaning for each character. “Instead of simply acting out their respective S/M roles, they are forced to confront their own profound misreadings of each other, as well as their discordant definitions of S/M.”24 These misunderstandings manifest themselves as a result of the conflict between each character’s own personal understanding of who they are (including their desires, expectations, identity, sexuality, personality etc.) and how they wish the other would be. It is especially this tension between the characters’ expectations and desires regarding the other that is conducive to their feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction about the other and their weekend together. For example, from the very beginning of the story, the man behaves in a strange manner towards Beth. There appears to be a certain characteristic of her personality that he cannot or would rather not deal with.
24 Love, p. 5.
13 He thought: There is something wrong. Her passivity was pleasing, as was her silence and her willingness to place herself in his hands. But he sensed another element present in her that he could not define and did not like. Her tightly folded hands were nervous and repulsive. Her public posture was brittle, not pliant. There was a rigidity that if cracked would yield nothing. He was disconcerted to realize that he didn’t know if he could crack it anyway. He began to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps the weekend would be a disaster. (BB, 36, my emphasis – A.V.)
Both characters’ personalities appear to be contrary to the typical roles of sadist and masochist endorsed by the S/M scene. The man, for example, has no interest whatsoever in Beth’s wishes, needs, or desires. In the S/M literature, the importance of the sadist’s attunement to the masochist’s desires and limits is always expressed. The sadist is in control of administering pain and making sure that the masochist achieves pleasure, and it is the masochist’s pleasure of his/her acts that the sadist enjoys. In this respect, the masochist has some control over the sadist.25 One perceives, thus, how the man’s attitude differs from the S/M subculture’s definition of a safe sadist. As the previous and following quotes suggest, he simply desires some kind of controllable sexual object, devoid of any substance or intelligence, with which he can gratify his fantasies and need for power.
He realized what had been disturbing him about her. With other women whom he had been with in similar situations, he had experienced a relaxing sense of emptiness within them that had made it easy for him to get inside them and, once there, smear himself all over their innermost territory until it was no longer theirs but his. This exasperating girl […] contained a tangible somethingness that she not only refused to expunge, but that seemed to willfully expand itself so that he banged into it with every attempt to invade her. He didn’t mind the somethingness; he rather liked it, in fact, and had looked forward to seeing it demolished. But she refused to let him do it. Why had she told him she was a masochist? (BB, 41-42, my emphasis – A.V.)
The passages above demonstrate that the man’s attraction to sadomasochism is especially buoyed by the violent aspect thereof. This has become clear in the previous excerpts from the story, e.g. the man refers to engaging in sexual acts with women in terms of “hurting” them and he regards women themselves as his “victims.” In the above description, it is important to observe the man’s longing to erase the personality of the woman he is with, by infusing her with his own. This process leads not only to his possession of the other, but it also seems to feed his power and to validate his authority. What he finds troubling and wishes to destroy is Beth’s subjectivity. It appears that his perception of sadomasochism is informed by the early theories of S/M from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as those from Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and Ellis. Despite the fact that Ellis shifted the focus from cruelty
25 Cf. e.g. Bill Thompson, “De fabriek der verzinsels”, in Ethiek en maatschappij, pp. 17-24.
14 to love, and was the first to note the importance of fantasy,26 he viewed “the masochist as essentially a passive participant […] [and] even referred to the masochist as a ‘victim.’”27 Beth, on the other hand, states that she is a masochist, a claim that, as I have shown, the man seriously begins to doubt. Her fantasies, however, are extremely romantic and feminine, and she acts as if unwilling to engage in any violent or rough activity, which the man truly longs to do. These aspects are indeed what one would not expect from a masochist. Additionally, communication is perceived as a key element in the forming of a strong connection between the participants of a sadomasochistic scene. To create a safe environment in which to play, it is recommended that the partners discuss what their expectations are, what they are willing to do, what they refuse to do, etc. (termed “limits” in the S/M literature).28 This aspect is seriously lacking in this couple’s relationship. Beth attempts to converse with the man, but he often wishes that she would just remain silent. Further, Beth appears to have difficulties in expressing exactly what her wishes are, on a sexual level. She seems to expect the man to read her thoughts, or perhaps she desires a lover who can do so. The man, on the other hand, constantly brings up suggestions of violent activities, which annoys Beth, because, according to her, it is not the right moment. The man’s desire for a sexual object which he can violate at will and the absence of a clear sexual desire in Beth, aside from her wish to submit, may remind one of Freud and his theory of woman’s subjectivity (or the lack thereof). In Jessica Benjamin’s book, The Bonds of Love, she investigates woman’s desire and woman as a sexual subject. She refers to Freud, who viewed “woman’s renunciation of sexual agency and her acceptance of object status [as] the very hallmark of the feminine.”29 Benjamin indicates, further, that despite there being many who currently dispute this statement, “femininity continues to be identified with passivity, with being the object of someone else’s desire, with having no actual desire of one’s own.”30 I would argue that this seems to be exactly how the man perceives Beth, and most women, for that matter. Strangely enough, Beth’s fantasies also seem to reveal that she has little sexual desire of her own, outside of her wish to submit to and worship the man. That she does possess her own sexual desire is not expressed in her fantasies until the end of
26 Bill Thompson, “De fabriek der verzinsels”, in Ethiek en maatschappij, p. 12. 27 Weinberg and Kamel, “S&M: An Introduction to the Study of Sadomasochism”, in S&M, p. 19. 28 Cf. e.g. Weinberg, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues”, in S&M, p. 294 and Edith E. Thomsen, Techniques of SM that are helpful in gaining comfort with sexual intimacy for survivors of child sexual abuse who practice SM play, [Doctoral thesis] Center for Psychological Studies, Berkeley, California, 2001,
15 the story. I believe that her fantasies are, thus, partially formed by the heterosexual ideologies that are dominant in society. The female, e.g., must submit to the dominant male, to whom she is considered subordinate. With reference to desire, Bersani stated that
[t]he paradoxical nature of uncompromised desire is that it is simultaneously the experience of a lack and the experience of omnipotence: we yearn for what we don’t have in fantasies which provide us with ideal (both perfect and insubstantial) possessions of what we don’t have.31
This could be applicable to the characters in this story and the fact that their fantasies contrast so sharply with the reality that leaves them feeling disillusioned. They both appear to be too focused on a sexual ideal, which becomes evident in their fantasies and which they compare to their perception of the other. The couple’s expectations for the other’s behavior, personality, etc. are, thus, constantly thwarted by reality and this leads to a disappointment with the other and the entire situation, which they both had been anticipating and fantasizing about. When they reach their destination,
[t]he couple’s intention to act out a controlled fantasy spirals into colliding notions of sexuality and identity as they simultaneously conform to and exceed the S/M roles, which shifts according to their negotiations of gender ideology.32
As they proceed to attempt sexual intercourse, Beth initiates the act, much to the disappointment of the man. After Beth takes control, stealing the power from the man, which causes him to feel “assaulted and invaded” (BB, 41), their sadomasochistic adventure turns violent, which, perhaps paradoxically, Beth, the masochist, does not appreciate. For the man, and also according to patriarchal society, power and control should be in his possession, so, in order to regain his dominant position, he “fastened his teeth on her breast and bit her. […] He could tell that she was trying to like being bitten, but that she did not” (BB, 41), yet, he continues. The fact that she does not enjoy this act leads him to doubt that Beth is really a masochist (cf. quote p. 14). The enticement of masochism for Beth appears to exist in the achievement of a sense of loss of control through a powerful connection with another human being, rather than the feeling of pain. For example, during the previously mentioned sexual act, her actual intention in initiating was not to seize the control from the man. Rather, “[s]he
31 Leo Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 286. 32 Love, p. 5.
16 had pulled him to the rug certain that if only they could fuck [i.e. connect], he would enter her with overwhelming force and take complete control of her” (BB, 42). However, the man’s manner of making sadomasochistic love, which she experiences as distant and cold, leaves her feeling disappointed and unfulfilled. Even the “biting thing […] meant nothing to her and was quite unpleasant” (BB, 42). Perhaps if Beth had experienced total abandon under the man’s attempt to dominate her, his act of inflicting pain may have heightened her pleasure. It appears that Beth suffers from what Benjamin terms the “desire for recognition,” which causes her to long to submit to a powerful other in order to achieve that recognition. “This other has the power for which the self longs, and through [the other’s] recognition [the self] gains it, though vicariously.”33 Beth is certainly not fixated on seeking out pain, as her depicted fantasies demonstrate. They resemble something abstract and feminine, and the actual sadomasochistic acts remain vague. According to Love:
Beth’s masochism exists here within the terms of a heterosexual “normalcy” which, despite being “real,” is inappropriate for other “real” S/M scenarios, revealing how Beth’s process of sexual identity negotiations operates within yet exceeds the S/M narrative. Unable to achieve a coherent sense of how to accommodate the man’s differing assignment of gendered masochism […] their sexual interpretations collide.34
It seems that both characters are thus influenced by what Judith Butler calls “socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility” which lead to “the ‘coherence’ and ‘continuity’ of ‘the person.’”35 Beth does not want to surrender to a cruel and heartless man. She is looking for some masculine ideal to which she can relinquish all control. The man, on the other hand, is disappointed not only in Beth’s failure to match his fantasy of a masochistic sexual-object, but he is also disgusted by the androgyny and/or masculinity which he perceives in Beth at those certain moments when she defies his sexual ideal. For example:
Her willful, masculine, stupid somethingness had obstructed their mutual pleasure and satisfaction. (BB, 45) He took in the muscular, energetic look of her body. She looked more like a boy than a girl, in spite of her pronounced hips and round breasts. Her short, spiky red hair was more than enough to render her masculine. Even the dark bruise he had inflicted on her breast and the slight burn from his lighter failed to lend her a more feminine quality. (BB, 46)
33 Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, p. 56. 34 Love, pp. 5-6. 35 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 17.
17 These characteristics transgress the characters’ respective definitions of “‘[i]ntelligible’ genders,” i.e. “those which in some sense institute and maintain relations of coherence and continuity among sex, gender, sexual practice and desire.”36 They are both disappointed, because neither character acts in the way the other had fantasized or expected they would. Beth refused to play the passive victim or to allow herself to be reduced to an object. Also, she asserted control, an activity which is reserved for males in patriarchal society. Therefore, the man projects a masculine gender onto her, as she has crossed over his boundaries of what female masochism should entail. He has trouble seeing her as a feminine being, because she did not act according to his definition of a female masochist. According to Butler:
The cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible requires that certain kinds of “identities” cannot “exist” - that is, those in which gender does not follow from sex and those in which practices of desire do not “follow” from either sex or gender.37
Thus, despite her physical features which point to the female gender, Beth’s behavior, in being incongruent with the norms of feminine gender, disrupts the coherence of a female masochist sexual identity. Before proceeding further, it may be helpful to look more closely at an example of each of the characters’ fantasies in order to demonstrate not only the disparity thereof with reality, but also the great difference between their respective fantasies.
He held her, helpless and swooning, in his arms. They were supported by a soft ball of puffy blue stuff. Thornless roses surrounded their heads. His gaze penetrated her so thoroughly, it was as though he had thrust his hand into her chest and begun feeling her ribs one by one. This was all right with her. “I have never met anyone I felt this way about,” he said. “I love you.” He made her do things she’d never done before. (BB, 32-33, my emphasis – A.V.)
Interestingly enough, the only part of this excerpt that could be perceived in a remotely sexual manner would be the last sentence. Although the bulk of the quote could have been plucked out of a romance novel, upon closer inspection, one can recognize elements that hint at Beth’s masochistic nature. Apparently, Beth is not exactly clear about which sort of S/M play she would fancy, both in her fantasies and in her communication with the man. She clearly desires a dominant male who has the ability to wrest all control from her and whom she can worship. In addition, she longs for a loving relationship which offers protection as well as a sense of helplessness. Based upon her fantasies, it appears that if she
36 Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 17. 37 Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 17.
18 were in such a situation, she would be willing to do whatever was demanded of her. A comparison of Beth’s fantasies with those of the man furthers an understanding of why they become so frustrated and disappointed with each other. His sexually graphic and violent fantasies contrast sharply with Beth’s: . He thought of Beth, naked and bound, blindfolded and spread-eagled on the floor of her cluttered apartment. […] [H]e beat her with a whip. Welts rose on her breasts, thighs, stomach and arms. She screamed and twisted, wrenching her neck form side to side. She was going to be scarred for life. […] Perhaps, as time went on, he could bring Beth home and have his wife beat her too. She would do the dishes and serve them dinner. (BB, 35)
Further, Love alleges in her interpretation that the man subscribes to a type of sadomasochism that is informed by patriarchy. This has, through my analysis, already become clear. Consequently, his frustration with Beth becomes slightly more transparent when one applies this interpretation. Beth does not meekly agree to every proposition of the man and even steps outside of the boundaries of her sexual and gender roles to initiate sexual activity, thus threatening his power, much to the man’s disgruntlement. Furthermore, Love maintains that he regains his sense of power and control towards the end of the story, “by designating his wife as the consensual link in the S/M fiction.”38 At the height of his confusion and anxiety, the man fails to keep the two fantasy images of his wife and Beth separated in his mind’s eye. Moreover, the man views Beth, and probably all the other women he has been with, as a victim and, unlike Beth, it appears that love is the furthest thing from his mind. He is married, after all, and seems to be seeking sexual adventure, whereas Beth wants something much more meaningful. I believe that Gaitskill is playing with certain gendered stereotypes for men and women, i.e. that men are only ever interested in conquering women, sexually, while women long for creating meaningful emotional ties with men. For example, Beth views sadomasochistic sex as the highest form of love and she expresses her belief that it has nothing to do with love at all for the male partner. The man disputes her claim and reasons that he behaved so nastily towards her because he was worried about falling in love with her. During the final scene of the story, the two of them seem to have found some common ground and a relationship becomes more of a promising, realistic possibility. They both, however, retreat once again into their own fantasies. It is thus problematic to appoint a straightforward, explicit conclusion to this story. As a reader, one will try to imagine what
38 Love, p. 6.
19 the possible outcome could be, and seeing the confusion, frustration, misunderstanding, etc. that has surfaced throughout the story, it is troublesome for one to reach an unambiguous conclusion. It may be difficult to believe without any reservations, that the relationship between the two could actually turn out successfully. I have already demonstrated how greatly fantasies tend to differ from reality in this story, which has led to disappointment for both characters. Since the story concludes with the man indulging in yet another fantasy, one may question whether this will turn out successfully or not. Nevertheless, this fantasy includes both his wife and Beth (the second fantasy in the story that does so), but this time they do not have contact with each other, which he does not find problematic, as he has little difficulty keeping the images separated in his fantasy. As I have already mentioned, Love referred to this as “re-establish[ing] his power”39 and he now feels in control again, even though he has opened up somewhat and expressed his fear of falling in love with Beth. Expressing fears and speaking openly about love are characteristics often frowned upon for the stereotype of masculinity in patriarchal society. With regard to his coming clean to Beth, it is, thus, unclear whether the man is expressing true feelings or if he is lying to Beth in order to appease her. On the other hand, the last scene could lead to the interpretation that the relationship could work out, as Beth notes that their drive home “was as good as her original fantasy, possibly even better” (BB, 51). The conflict over sexual identity is still present, as the man expresses his belief that Beth is not a masochist. He states that “[she may] have fantasies, but [he doesn’t] think [she has] any concept of a real slave mentality [, because she has] too much ego to be part of another person” (BB, 51, my emphasis – A.V.). Beth disputes this claim with uncertainty by basically saying that it would depend upon the person. The man counters with his opinion that someone with the mentality of a slave would be unable to choose for him/herself. As a dominant, the man has trouble accepting his dependence on an other who, due to the other’s own subjectivity, is outside of his realm of control. Benjamin suggests that “the solution is to subjugate and enslave the other - to make him give that recognition without recognizing him in return.”40 Thus, the other is not viewed as an independent subject by the man, but rather as an extension of his own subjectivity. Another development that is supportive of a positive outcome is that Beth’s conversation is no longer annoying to the man, who finds it “really cute” and “feminine” (BB, 52). It seems that his changed perception of her as now appearing feminine allows him to
39 Love, p. 6. 40 Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, p. 54.
20 once again entertain fantasies of her. However, he is not the only one to do so. It is quite interesting how Gaitskill juxtaposes their respective fantasies so that they almost meld into one. It is also important to note that Beth’s current fantasy contrasts with her previous ones, in that it contains sexual and sadomasochistic elements, which were previously absent.
He was beginning to see her as a locked garden that he could sneak into and sit in for days, tearing the heads off flowers. […] She imagined sitting across from him in a Japanese restaurant, talking about anything. He would look intently into her eyes . . . He saw her apartment and then his. He saw them existing a nice distance apart, each of them blocked off by cleanly cut boundaries. Her apartment bloomed with scenes that spiraled toward him in colorful circular motions and then froze suddenly and clearly in place. She was crawling blindfolded across the floor. She was bound and naked in an S&M bar. She was sitting next to him in a taxi, her skirt pulled up, his fingers in her vagina . . . and then they would go back to her apartment. He would beat her and fuck her mouth. Then he would go home to his wife, and she would make dinner for him. It was so well balanced, the mere contemplation of it gave him pleasure. (BB, 52, my emphasis on Beth’s fantasy – A.V.)
Despite the fact that they are both fantasizing once again, this does not necessarily mean that they will be unable to have a relationship. The overlapping structure of their fantasies gives an impression of oneness and perhaps points to their sexual compatibility and/or to the fact that they have achieved a degree of sexual attunement. In addition, fantasies are an inherent aspect of human behavior. According to Bersani “[a] sense of both the forbidden nature of certain desires and of the incompatibility of reality with our desiring imagination makes the negation of desire inevitable.”41 One could interpret the characters’ disappointment as resulting from their denial of their desire to engage in S/M with the other character, because that desire proved incompatible with their perception of reality. “In denying a desire, we condemn ourselves to finding it everywhere. […] The disguised repetitions of inhibited desires constitute the coherent self.”42 Bersani’s statements help to explain the characters’ repeated return to fantasy in this story. The ambiguity of the conclusion discussed thus far raises what I have found to be one of the major aspects of Gaitskill’s work: characters, events, situations etc. often appear as ambiguous and indeterminate and frequently provide the reader with diverse interpretations. At first glance, something may appear to be determined and indisputable. Love notices something similar and expresses it accordingly, with reference to “A Romantic Weekend”:
41 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 6. 42 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 6.
21 Gaitskill’s description of their mutual misreadings emphasizes the multiple and changing definitions of sexual meanings and roles according to individuals, contexts and interactions with ideology. Although Gaitskill has gained attention for her ability to disrupt sexual categories in her fiction, she refuses to offer easy answers and, instead, turns with ironic playfulness to ongoing dilemmas that apparently never find resolution.43
In her article, “Trauma and Sadomasochistic Narrative: Mary Gaitskill’s ‘The Dentist,’” Barbara Schapiro takes a more negative stance towards this story. According to her:
With characteristic irony, Gaitskill presents the sadomasochistic relationship here as so bound up with an individual’s inner fantasy world that it is more likely to prove suffocating than liberating; it leads only inward, thus preventing any real contact or recognition of the other.44
Schapiro also notes the prominent role that fantasy plays within this story, yet she seems to emphasize the (potential) destructiveness of the sadomasochistic relationships depicted in Gaitskill’s fiction. I do not wholly disagree with her interpretation, but I hope that, through a careful investigation of the sadomasochistic elements present in a number of Gaitskill’s works, I may be able to ascertain whether Schapiro’s claim in the quote above is actually true, and if so, to what extent it is applicable to Gaitskill’s entire oeuvre. Sadomasochism does emerge as problematic in some of Gaitskill’s prose. Nevertheless, many of her characters seem to be irresistibly attracted to these types of relationships. The characters I plan to discuss, some more in depth than others, seem to be chiefly driven by their fantasies and in search of a loving connection and emotionally sound relationship with another human being, a relationship which occasionally happens to contain sadomasochistic overtones. The characters long for this, and often view this type of sex as liberating. However, the reality that Gaitskill sketches creates a tension with the fantasies of the characters. The reality in comparison with their fantasies tends to lead to disappointment, as they are often unable to form meaningful emotional connections with their lovers.
I.3 FANTASY AND MEMORY IN “AN AFFAIR, EDITED”
In “An Affair, Edited,” the reader is confronted with the shifting in the human mind between one’s perception of reality, one’s memories, and one’s fantasies. The male
43 Love, p. 6. 44 Barbara Schapiro, “Trauma and Sadomasochistic Narrative” in Mosaic, p. 48.
22 protagonist, Joel, runs into an ex-girlfriend of his, Sara, on the street. This relationship is described from Joel’s perspective as “such a brief, disturbing affair that he didn’t even think of her as an old girlfriend” (BB, 75). During this fleeting moment, neither party acknowledges the other, yet, the fact that their paths crossed, causes a deluge of memories of their relationship to plague Joel during the following days. His initial recollection of Sara
was like a filmy scrap of dream discovered on the floor during the drowsy journey from bed to toilet, or a girl in an advertisement that catches in the cluttered net of memory and persists, waiting to commit sex acts with you later that night. (BB, 75)
At first, Joel equates the significance of his affair with Sara with that of a dream or of a sexual fantasy, thus negating the full reality of it. At another moment, he even refers to Sara as “the phantom girl” (BB, 76). As the story progresses, Joel’s memories and fantasies blend with reality. His memories of Sara supply more information about their relationship, as well as Joel’s personality. For example, the fact that Sara had run away from home as a teenager and had become a prostitute for a short while “had formed a fascinating gauze that floated over her for the entire time he knew her” (BB, 78). Some details of their affair, such as Joel’s recollection of Sara’s voice begging him to hurt her during a sexual encounter, also reveal that their sexual activity had involved elements of S/M. In addition, the discovery that Joel had put up a blow up doll in his apartment that “wore Sara’s clothes and bore, with Scotch tape, a sign that read ‘Hurt Me Beat Me Fuck Me’” (BB, 83), supports the observation that she is perhaps a masochist. Towards the end of this story, the reader gains more insight into the events surrounding the demise of the relationship. Sara ended up calling Joel in a moment of weakness and desperation, when she was possibly feeling suicidal. Joel’s reaction is entirely insensitive as he fails to enquire about her problem or to offer any help. Instead, he brushes her off because “[h]e couldn’t stand weak women” (BB, 82). Significant here is the ease with which Joel gives Sara up at a moment when she feels she has lost all control over her life. He may have connected this event with their sexual activities in which Sara preferred Joel to be in control and to bring her some pain, and, thus, come to the conclusion that Sara was weak. She perceives herself as “‘stronger than anyone else I know’” (BB, 82), due to her difficult past and the fact that she was forced to grow up faster than her peers, yet, Joel seems to think that her experiences have made her weaker. His reaction to Sara’s call for help reveals that he
23 does not appreciate relationship drama and that perhaps he was only interested in Sara in a sexual way. In Teresa de Lauretis’s book, The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire, she discusses desire and fantasy. She refers to Laplanche and Pontalis who reworked Freud’s theory on desire. Freud influenced psychoanalysis by naming the breast “the object of desire,” yet, Laplanche and Pontalis perceive the breast as the actual object, which is present in reality, and the “fantasy” or “remembered” breast, which is absent, as the sign of the lost object. 45
It is in the second stage that fantasy and desire are instantiated together, by separation and in memory, in the child’s first wishing after the loss of the object [...]. […] [T]he object always functions in desire as a sign, since it stands in for a lost object.46
This theory could be applied to Joel and could be helpful in explaining the meaning of the progression of his memories and fantasies, which culminates in the final scene. Thus, Sara’s image which populates his fantasies signifies the real Sara, his lost object. I would argue that Joel’s spotting of Sara has caused him to realize what he has lost, perhaps subconsciously at first, and that this leads to the increased recollection of his memories of her. Also, the more he thinks of her, the more she figures in his “sheltering cave of sexual fantasy” (BB, 81). In a similar vein, Bersani maintains that
[t]he fundamental condition for desire is an absence or a lack, but desire is never only an absence. It is accompanied by activities designed to satisfy desire, and these activities already constitute in themselves a certain satisfaction of desire. In the excitement which accompanies the irritating lack in desire, we produce mental scenes which - in the masturbatory mode of desire – we may even confuse with the events in the world capable of fulfilling our wish. […] Fantasy is central to desire […] [a]nd desiring fantasies are inventive elaborations of remembered satisfactions. 47
Fantasies are thus not a direct reproduction of our memories, but a re-creation thereof. “Desire makes fiction of reality.”48 As the story progresses, Joel becomes deeply lost in his own thoughts and experiences agitation resulting from his loneliness: “He wished his roommate would come back from Italy. He had never been to Europe or anywhere else, and was sick of people going” (BB, 79, my emphasis – A.V.). Perhaps this is a subconscious expression of his regret for the loss of Sara. It seems that Joel often escapes reality by
45 Teresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 229-30. 46 de Lauretis, The Practice of Love, p. 230. 47 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, pp. 235-36. 48 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 236.
24 entertaining sexual fantasies about actresses, female friends, women he is dating, and Sara, as sexual fantasy offers him a sense of security and control in his life, as well as a fleeting sense of intimacy with another. The following day, Joel purposely follows the same route in an attempt to catch another glimpse of Sara. His plan is successful, and this time they acknowledge each other with a nod. That Joel longs to see Sara again strengthens the observation that Joel is making Sara the object of his sexual fantasies in an attempt to compensate for his loss. At the end of the story, fantasy, memory, and reality blend together during a masturbation scene:
He imagined dozens of intriguing images, perusing the possible nuance of each circumstance. There was Cecilia. There was the girl at the bar. There was Sara. “Get my belt,” he had said to her. She hesitated. “Don’t you think you deserve it?” He masturbated watching a spread-legged Sara arch her neck and rub her injured-looking vagina. He finished. […] A memory separated from the fantasy and lingered. “I love you,” said Sara. “It’s not real,” he said. “It’s puppy love.” “No. I love you.” She nuzzled his cheek with her nose and lips, and her tenderness pierced him. The image became tiny and unnaturally white, was surrounded by darkness, then faded like the picture on a turned-off TV. Come back. (BB, 83-84)
This passage supports the interpretation that Joel wants Sara to be part of his reality again, in more than just a sexual way, for it is the image of her confessing her love for him which he fixates on at the end. Further, he appears to not be consciously in control of the images that appear in his mind’s eye, as the last memory of Sara appears more as an invasion of his fantasy. This aspect as well as the two concluding sentences support the argument that Joel is experiencing delayed remorse for treating Sara so badly during their affair, and that he wishes that they could be a couple again.
I.4 PROJECTED FANTASY AND GENDER PERFORMATIVITY IN “SOMETHING NICE”
“Something Nice” differs from the previous two stories, in that it does not deal with a genuine relationship, but instead focuses on the socially constructed sexual relationship between a prostitute and one of her clients. The middle-aged male protagonist, Fred, is also the focalizer. He visits a brothel and meets a new, young prostitute, Jane, for whom he develops a romantic attachment. Fred ends up constructing a kind of fantasy prostitute as he projects a certain identity onto Jane. His delusions of Jane and their relationship become
25 transparent for himself when he unexpectedly sees her outside the brothel in reality. Thus, his ideal Jane is unmasked as a fiction of his own creation. Morgan Love has come to some intriguing conclusions through her reading of this story, which she expressed in her article, “Mary Gaitskill.” For instance, she states that “the brothel functions as a space where Fred is ‘free’ to invent himself as well as Jane […].”49 Indeed, the brothel appears to be a place that exists outside of reality, to some extent, or outside the realm of the characters’ daily lives. It is a place where men are at liberty to act out their fantasies, while the prostitutes are paid to take on whichever role the client wishes. Love, however, spends little time discussing the role of power in this relationship, or in prostitute and client relationships in general. She does note that this story, “[a]s part of Gaitskill’s critique of relations that are based on patriarchal practices, […] examines how Fred both invests in and feels excluded from the privileges attached to patriarchy.”50 However, I believe that the configuration of prostitute and client also contains complex power relations, upon closer inspection. The male client appears to have more power over the prostitute, as this institution is sustained by patriarchy and capitalism. In reality, however, this power of the individual is illusory, as it is the client’s money which ensures his control. The prostitute could be viewed as more powerful, yet she is also dependent upon the client, i.e. his money. However, she possesses the right to refuse clients or to disagree with their wishes if she finds them threatening or dangerous. It seems that prostitutes also have a great amount of freedom, as well, like Jane in this story, because they keep their real selves hidden from their clients and are at liberty to play different roles. Additionally, the fact that the prostitute’s sexual pleasure is an illusion, while she possesses the power, as it were, to release the client’s sexual desire implies that this profession supplies the female with a certain amount of control over the male. Love concentrates more on the tension between authentic and inauthentic and the fictional constructions which the characters produce. For instance, during their first session together, Fred lies about his age and his job. The prostitute also initially lies about her name and perhaps her age, as well, or so Fred believes. It is as if they are both creating a new self or another identity. Fred also constructs another identity for Jane, as he collects fragments from their real encounters and his own fantasies to form a “Jane network” (BB, 63). Love suggests that
49 Love, p. 10. 50 Love, p. 10.
26 Fred engages with ideology when he ventures into his own fictions, and quickly illustrates his confusion about real and unreal […]. For instance, Fred erroneously views the sexual contract as a basis for growth into a “relationship” based on “real” identities and communication […].51
He believes that something special is developing between them and does not feel that she treats him like a client. This may be due to Jane’s nervousness during their first encounter, as Fred was only Jane’s second client, a fact which makes Fred feel superior. He confuses her hesitation and uncertainty (“‘What do people do now, mostly?’” (BB, 55)) with a kind of innocence, when in reality her initial, hesitant behavior may be caused by her sexuality (cf. later). He is also convinced that she actually enjoys the sex they have together. During his visits to Jane, he ends up denying the reality of their relationship and Jane’s profession.
“[Y]ou didn’t treat me like a customer. That’s nice. There’s hardly anybody that’ll be real with you like that anymore. Sometimes even my wife isn’t honest with me.” […] “You shouldn’t come to prostitutes looking for honesty.” “You’re not a prostitute. Don’t say that about yourself.” (BB, 59)
Fred has trouble admitting that Jane is a prostitute and finds that “[i]t sounded horrible” (BB, 60). In addition, Fred begins to develop feelings of jealousy when Jane is preoccupied with another customer. Eventually, he talks to her about meeting outside of the brothel to have a “real” date as themselves. Jane is hesitant and admits her uncertainty that he will no longer like her outside of the brothel. She doubts that they could act like “normal” people. They do end up making an appointment, however, and he is willing to pay her 500 dollars for her time. This would, thus, be an extension of her prostitute self into the real world. Yet, she stands him up and when he calls the escort service, he discovers that she has quit. Jane may have sensed the danger in developing such a close relationship with a customer. Perhaps she realized how difficult it would be for her to continue to play her fictional role in reality while keeping her real self hidden, without threatening that self with her constructed identity. The story concludes with a scene in which Fred coincidentally sits down to lunch at the same diner Jane is visiting. Neither one acknowledges the presence of the other and Fred, in an agitated state, exits the diner in such a rush that he leaves behind some Christmas gifts. In this scene, his fantasy ideal of her is shattered as he realizes that, in reality, she is nothing like he had imagined and expected she was. On top of that, Fred learns, through eavesdropping on her
51 Love, p. 10.
27 conversation with a friend, that she is perhaps a lesbian or bisexual. One of the definitions of projection in psychoanalysis is that it
describes the relationship to the image of the woman in sexual fantasy. For Lacan, woman becomes an object of fantasy, the place where lack is projected. The man thereby disowns his own experience and, as a result, produces a denigrated and/or idealized image of the woman […]. […] As psychic perceptions, projections do not reflect social realities […].52
The last sentence can especially be applied to Fred’s projection of Jane, as the disparity between the fictive and the real Jane is so great. The possibility of Jane not being heterosexual could help to further explain why she did not want to meet with Fred outside of the brothel. During one of their sessions, Fred remarks upon Jane’s strength, thus sparking a conversation on this topic. Fred asks Jane how she reveals her strength to others outside the brothel, in the real world. Jane replies: “‘I just…don’t let people sway my thinking. I don’t mold myself to fit what other people think I am’” (BB, 60). Paradoxically, however, this is exactly what she is doing in the brothel with Fred. She must have realized that she would be compromising herself if she were to extend this false identity into reality. She does not want to play the heterosexual charade in real life as well, but if she were to tell him the truth then she would hurt him and destroy his fantasy. I would argue that Jane’s act of conforming herself to Fred’s heterosexual fantasy inside the brothel allows her to have more control over the situation, while at the same time, it gives Fred the illusion that he is in control. Judith Butler’s theory on gender performativity could also be applied to the character of Jane. In the words of Butler
acts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence of identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. 53
Butler maintains that both gender and sex are social constructs. Consequently, gender is not a fixed, essential characteristic of a person’s identity. Gender is an activity, something that everyone constantly does in his/her daily life. Further, masculine and feminine behavior is learned and acquired through the process of socialization. Gender roles and behavior have become so normalized that they appear natural, something that is considered a result of one’s
52 Elizabeth Wright, (ed.), Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, p. 353. 53 Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 136.
28 sex. Butler suggests that cross-dressing and butch or femme identities are proof that gender is a construction, because through the process of, e.g., cross-dressing one can take on the gender of the opposite sex simply by performing the correct behavior of the opposite sex. Accordingly, if one interprets Jane as being homosexual, bisexual, or uncertain about her sexuality, then it becomes clear that she is performing another gendered and sexual identity in order to maintain the atmosphere of heterosexual fantasy which permeates the brothel. Her “acts and gestures, articulated and enacted desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core,”54 and this illusion leads Fred to believe that a relationship with her would be possible. It is as if Jane is passing as heterosexual, and through this performance, one could view her as having more control over Fred, despite the fact that it is his fantasy, which is rooted in patriarchy. In addition, Fred learns very little about Jane’s life outside the brothel, as Jane succeeds in evading many of his questions pertaining to her personal life. An example of this occurs during an encounter where Fred admits his jealousy. Jane thinks it strange that he should be jealous of her other clients, since they do not have a special relationship. Fred replies: “‘I guess it’s only natural that you’ve begun to get jaded.’ She snorted. ‘I wouldn’t call it that.’ ‘What would you call it?’ She didn’t answer” (BB, 64). Jane wants to avoid coming out to Fred, as this would destroy the fantasy identity which he has projected onto her and which she sustains inside the brothel. Jane’s sexuality and her performance could also explain why she chooses not acknowledge Fred in the diner. She arguably wishes to leave her heterosexual role behind in the world within the brothel, and so she pretends as if they had never met.
I.5 CONCLUSION
Through my analysis of these three differing stories, I have shown how prominent fantasy and the various aspects thereof are in the prose of Gaitskill, as well as how important fantasy is, not only in sadomasochistic relationships, but in relationships in general. The stories were not chosen randomly, however, numerous other works could have been mentioned. Although fantasy will no longer be the main focus in the following chapters, it will remain significant. By applying psychoanalytical theories to these stories, I have not only indicated how complex social interactions with others are, but also how bound up fantasy is in one’s self and
54 Butler, p. 136.
29 one’s perception of others. Psychoanalysis proves that fantasy should not be seen as the direct opposite of reality, as fantasies can be just as real as reality for one (e.g. Fred or Joel). Likewise, one’s desires and the process of fantasizing partly form one’s identity and are
at the centre of all our perceptions, beliefs and actions. […] Psychoanalysis, then, contradicts the popular belief that fantasies are nothing but wishful scenarios in which a simple subject gains a simple object denied to it in “real life.”55
In this chapter, I have also demonstrated what William Holinger stated, i.e. that “‘the various ‘selves’ of Gaitskill’s characters are unformed, changing, disparate – becoming.’”56
55 Elizabeth Wright, (ed.), Feminism and Psychoanalysis, p. 87. 56 William Holinger, “‘Bad’ Company: First Three Books of Stories”, in Michigan Quarterly Review 28/3 (Summer 1989), p. 455. Quoted in Love, p. 9.
30 CHAPTER TWO: S/M AND TRAUMA IN TWO GIRLS, FAT
AND THIN
II.1 INTRODUCTION AND PLOT SUMMARY
In this chapter, I will contemplate the link between sadomasochism and sexual trauma in Gaitskill’s novel, TGFT. I will be referring to Barbara Schapiro, who has previously tackled this subject in her article “Trauma and Sadomasochistic Narrative: Mary Gaitskill’s ‘The Dentist’” in which her main focus is the short story mentioned in the title. Jessica Benjamin’s book, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination, will also be helpful in understanding the psychological processes which may result in relationships involving domination and submission. After providing a brief plot summary, I will focus on the character, Justine Shade, the thin girl, for she is the one who is drawn to sadomasochism. By presenting background information on Justine’s sadomasochistic experiences it will become clear why someone with such a dualistic personality would seek out intimacy in S/M relations. According to Schapiro,
[t]raumatic events figure into the histories of many of Gaitskill’s characters. The stories themselves, however, focus less on the past trauma than on the current relational binds and dissociated states in which the characters find themselves.57
I agree with this statement, especially when applied to TGFT, and, therefore, I choose not to dwell too long on the actual traumatic moments, but rather the effect of these occurrences on the characters’ present lives, particularly with regard to sexuality and their interactions with others. Therefore, more attention will be paid to their traumatic symptoms, such as social isolation and self-injury. With regard to sadomasochism, I will dispute the claim that this behavior could solely be interpreted as a symptom of trauma. I will, therefore, concentrate on Justine and whether S/M can be considered as an acting-out or working-through of her trauma. Finally, I will present my interpretation of the two girls’ relationship with each other, which culminates in the last episode of the novel.
57 Schapiro, “Trauma and Sadomasochistic Narrative”, p. 39.
31 Before proceeding, it may be helpful to define the terms “acting-out,” and “working- through,” which the trauma theorist LaCapra employs in reference to the different methods of dealing with trauma.58 Acting-out involves such phenomena as nightmares and flashbacks which plague the survivor, who has no control over these symptoms. During moments of acting-out, it as if the victims were stuck in the past, as they are compelled to re-experience the traumatic moment, which has not been properly processed by the mind.
Working-through means work on posttraumatic symptoms in order to mitigate the effects of trauma by generating counterforces to compulsive repetition (or acting-out), thereby enabling a more viable articulation of affect and cognition or representation […].59
It should be noted that working-through can help one to come to terms with trauma, but once this process is begun, it by no means rules out the possibility that periods of acting-out will not return. “[W]hile we may work on its symptoms, trauma […] is a cause that we cannot directly change or heal. And any notion of full redemption or salvation with respect to it […] is dubious.”60 I will be drawing on LaCapra’s distinction between these two methods throughout this chapter. Central to this novel are the lives of the two female protagonists, Justine Shade and Dorothy Never. These two women encounter each other, because Justine, a freelance writer, plans to write an article on the writer Anna Granite and the Definitist movement. Definitism is the type of philosophy created and advocated by Granite and her circle, and is also expressed in her novels.61 Dorothy responds to Justine’s advertisement seeking those who can supply her with more knowledge on Granite and Definitism. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of the two women and after the reader witnesses their initial meeting, Gaitskill delves into their pasts, painting a picture of their childhood and adolescence. The reader is not just given a glimpse into their lives, but Gaitskill highlights many important events that are especially critical in the formation of their identities. Thus, the narratives about the two girls’ pasts are as important as the present day action. Perhaps the most crucial incidents for both girls’ adolescent development are those of sexual molestation. For Justine, this occurs at age five and the crime is committed by a
58 Dominick LaCapra, “Trauma Studies: Its Critics and Vicissitudes”, in History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory, LaCapra, pp. 106-43. 59 LaCapra, p. 119. 60 LaCapra, p. 119. 61 Apparently, this minor character is based loosely upon the writer Ayn Rand. Cf. Lauren Berlant, “Two Girls, Fat and Thin”, in Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory, ed. by Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark, p. 76.
32 colleague and friend of her father’s. Dorothy suffers an incestuous relationship with her father from the ages of 13 to 18, at which point she leaves home for college. There are many other parallels, and differences, between these two girls, some of which will be treated further in this chapter. A minor, yet important, character is Bryan, whom Justine meets in the present time, approximately halfway through the book. She begins a consensual sadomasochistic relationship with him, in which he takes on the dominant role. While she is dating Bryan, she continues to work on her article about Granite. Justine’s relationship with Bryan spirals out of control towards the end of the book and results in sadomasochistic activities that are no longer consensual. The novel climaxes when Dorothy discovers that Justine’s article has been published and she is shocked by the fact that it is not at all like she had imagined. Berlant evokes Dorothy’s angry moment in her essay, “Two Girls”:
Dorothy is acting violent and crazy in public, sputtering curses and wild accusations aloud on the New York City subway while reading [the article]. Dorothy feels both accurately depicted and “raped” by the article.62
During this time, Justine is being “tortured” by her sadistic boyfriend, who is no longer responding to her wishes to stop their sadomasochistic activities. Dorothy arrives at Justine’s apartment in an aggressive rage, and instead of rebuking Justine, she ironically ends up saving the day. The concluding image is one of the two girls in bed together, with Justine asleep in Dorothy’s arms.
II.2 TWO GIRLS, TWO TRAUMAS
II.2.1 JUSTINE SHADE: SADIST AND MASOCHIST
First, I would like to focus on the character of Justine Shade who, due to her home life and sexual trauma, has developed a complex personality and sexual identity. In an interview with Gaitskill, Alexander Laurence noted that her name reminds one of both the Marquis de Sade and Vladimir Nabokov63, an author whom Gaitskill admires. Berlant also mentions this and refers to the actual novels of Pale Fire and Justine.64 In Pale Fire, the protagonist’s last
62 Berlant, p. 99. 63 Laurence, “Interview”, The Write Stuff,
33 name is also Shade. In Sade’s novel, Justine, “[t]he lady of the title role, virtuous as an angel, […] is constantly being violated, beaten, imprisoned, tortured.”65 This Justine shares some similarities with Gaitskill’s Justine, in that Justine’s childhood is invaded by a figure with authority, who destroys her innocence. Afterwards, she is drawn into a vicious cycle in which she aggressively seeks out violation. With reference to her character of Justine, Gaitskill has stated that she “was describing a more negative aspect of S/M sex where it’s unconscious. […] It’s involved with a lot of feelings that she hasn’t fully dealt with or allowed herself to experience even.”66 Throughout her childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, Gaitskill’s Justine entertains sadomasochistic fantasies and engages in both sadistic and masochistic behavior. The character of Justine is, thus, in itself an embodiment of the dichotomy of sadomasochism I have been discussing so far, as she assumes both the role of the sadist and the role of the masochist, at one time or another, but chooses most often for the masochistic role.67 Remarkably, Justine begins to experience sadomasochistic fantasies when she is just seven years old, approximately two years after her molestation. At this age, Justine’s sadomasochistic tendencies begin to form and exhibit themselves in concrete behavior. Justine acts out some of her fantasies with a neighborhood boy, Richie, by, e.g. telling him to “tie her to his swing set and pretend to brand her, as she had seen Brutus do to Olive Oyl on TV” (TGFT, 71). Other times she would convince him to whip her with a tree branch. Ironically, this boy’s family is Catholic and, consequently, Justine develops a fascination, bordering on an obsession, for Catholicism, particularly for the concept of hell and the crucifixion of Christ. Justine is also strongly influenced by and attracted to the violence and torture depicted in cartoons (cf. chapter four):
She watched the animated violence with queasy fascination, feeling frightened and exposed. It was the same feeling she had had when Dr. Norris touched her, and she felt a bond with docile, daydreaming Richie, simply because he was near her while she was having this feeling. (TGFT, 72)
Her masochistic practices, which she exercises alone and with her neighbor, offer her some release from these stifling feelings, yet, she is still too young to understand that it is connected to sex and eroticism, as well. The strong instincts, which compel her to tie herself up and gag herself, appear to be part of some subconscious demand. It is worth emphasizing
65 David Loth, The Erotic in Literature, New York: Dorset Press, p. 197. 66 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 3. 67 For a more in depth investigation of role-reversibility cf. chapter four on power in society.
34 the double reaction that these practices give rise to in Justine, as her personality becomes markedly dualistic. She appears helpless in the face of this uncontrollable demand, which frightens her, but, at the same time, she longs to ease her internal pain with these acts, which bring her pleasure. She may feel that she deserves this punishment, because of the molestation. As Justine enters puberty, her sadomasochistic tendencies become connected to sex. The most horrific instance of sadistic behavior on the part of Justine occurs when she “rapes” one of her girlfriends with a toothbrush. At this point, Justine is in the seventh grade and she occasionally spends time at her friend Rose’s house, looking at her father’s pornography. One of the comics features lesbian bondage, and Justine realizes that Rose must find it the most fascinating, because she continues to return to it. This “made [Justine] want to shove or slap Rose. Instead she said, ‘God, this is no big deal, I’ve done this stuff with Debby. It’s fun’” (TGFT, 128). Justine grows more excited due to her sense of false authority and the “torture feeling,” which she experiences during her private sadomasochistic fantasies, “was roused and roaring” (TGFT, 128). Justine finally succeeds in subjugating Rose and lures her into the bathroom, where she humiliates and partially strips her. She also binds her legs “with [Rose’s] own knee socks to conveniently parallel towel racks” and her hands behind her back, and “stuff[s] her mouth with a small roll of toilet paper” (TGFT, 129). In the description of this scene, Gaitskill evokes images of the dominant and submissive roles, which Justine and Rose take on, respectively.
[E]very surrender filled Justine with a boiling greed that pushed her further into the violation she’d started as a game. The occasional feeble resistance – Rose’s pleading hand on the arm that rampaged down her pants – only increased Justine’s swelling arrogance and made her crave to rip away another flimsy layer of the hapless girl’s humanity. Justine felt her eyes and face become shielded and impenetrable as Rose’s became more exposed; she felt her personality filling the room like a gorging swine. Rose was unquestionably terrified and doubtless would’ve liked to stop, but she had been stripped of the territory on which one must stand to announce such decisions, as well as most of her clothes. (TGFT, 129, my emphasis – A.V.)
What is exceptionally interesting in this passage is the dualities between the two girls, as well as Gaitskill’s rendering of Justine as the aggressive sadist. Benjamin’s book, The Bonds of Love, may be helpful in grasping what occurs within this depiction of the sadist and masochist configuration. The impenetrability of the sadist’s subjectivity that is evoked can also be found in other sadistic characters in TGFT, e.g. Dorothy’s father and Bryan. This type of sadist appears as if totally independent from the submissive. However, the submissive is
35 actually vital for the sadist, as it is the submissive who feeds the sadist’s power and authority.68 Additionally, in this negative view of sadomasochism, the dominant is often characterized as being dissociated from the submissive, thus, implying the impossibility of mutual recognition between the two subjects. Before Justine realizes what she is doing, she invades Rose’s body with a toothbrush,
[b]ut it was not [Rose’s] tears that brought Justine to her senses, it was the stiff, horrified contraction of the violated genitals which she felt even through the ridiculous agent of the toothbrush, a resistance more adamant than any expressed so far. (TGFT, 130)
This brings Justine back to reality and she flees from Rose’s house. During Justine’s almost unconscious act of violation, I believe that Justine recognizes that Rose, who she had previously perceived as a victim and as an object in her possession, is also a subject, like herself. Through the rigid resistance of Rose’s genitals, Justine becomes confronted with her own subjectivity, which frightens her. Benjamin introduces the concept of the “intersubjective view,” which perceives the social interactions between different subjects as essential in the development of a subject.69 This theory also emphasizes “that the other whom the self meets is also a self, a subject in his or her own right. It assumes that we are able and need to recognize that other subject as different and yet alike […].”70 I believe that, through Justine’s confrontation with Rose’s genitals and their resistance, Justine could identify with Rose because of the violation of her own body, in the past. Rather than perceiving Rose as an other, which is demonstrated in the passage by Justine’s distance, Justine is awakened to the fact that Rose is a subject, by her transgression of the boundaries of Rose’s self. Justine has undergone this process of recognition and realized that she is just as much of a victim as Rose. Through the action of recognition, Justine realizes that Rose is not an object, fantasy image, or cartoon character, but that she is real, and very much like Justine. Around this same age, Justine begins to experiment sexually with boys. These adventures, however, do not bear very much emotional significance, which often leads to disappointment for Justine. She willingly allows these inexperienced teenage boys to take control of her body, because this excites her and she longs to surrender to men. It appears that it is the sexual violation that she seeks, at this point in her life, and not sexual pleasure per se. She is aroused by the “dirtiness/nastiness” of sex. Later, however, her longings become
68 Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, p. 57. 69 Benjamin, pp. 19-24. 70 Benjamin, p. 20.
36 influenced by romance ideologies, as she fantasizes about a powerful, masculine ideal to whom she can submit. In the following paragraph, I will discuss the episode in which she loses her virginity to the teenage boy, Rick, whom she is not even dating, as it is a perfect example of this and also illustrates an integral attribute of Justine’s personality: obsession. Justine is described as
morbidly attracted to obsessions, particularly the useless, embarrassing obsessions of the thwarted. She could not help but be drawn to the spectacle of flesh-and-blood humans forming their lives in conjunction with the shadows invented by a mediocre novelist. (TGFT, 16)
This quote, which refers to Justine’s reasons for writing the article on Granite and the Definitist movement, is certainly applicable to Justine herself and her own obsessions. Justine is especially attracted to those obsessions that bring no release and/or do not end happily and, thus, bring the obsessor pain. Upon meeting Rick, Justine immediately thinks that she has fallen in love with him, but it is merely an obsession. In an interview, Gaitskill mentioned “when people get obsessed by something – women are encouraged culturally to do this more than men – they have an idea about someone or something that has nothing to do with the alleged object.”71 My observation is that this is being expressed in Justine’s relationship with Rick. His personality and the way he treats her definitely leaves her wanting more, but also seems to feed her obsession, as the following quote demonstrates.
He passed her in the hall with a smile and hand flap. She was wounded but ignored that and submerged herself once more in the loud theme song of their great love. […] They didn’t have much to talk about, and the conversation that did occur was strange and arduous. This disturbed Justine, but she found the disturbance easy to ignore. Making out with Rick, his big tongue disporting itself in her head, was a little world which existed beyond the uncomfortable job of conversation and which could be literally touched upon at any moment. Even the distance of reserve and incompatibility had an odd charm; across the distance she could occasionally feel his desultory signals answering her ardent emanation, and the slight tickle of contact was so poignant in contrast with his coldness that it felt to her like a full embrace. (TGFT, 178, my emphasis – A.V.)
It appears that Justine is living in a fantasy world in which she manipulates those aspects of reality that do not agree with her desired perception. For example, she feels a strong connection with Rick and is convinced that these feelings are mutual. What is especially important in this quote, is that her obsession is blinding her and it allows her to
71 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 2.
37 ignore those painful elements which do not fit into her fantasy. She longs for romance and to be loved, but also seems to appreciate, or at least accept, the distance that exists between her and this young man. This distance, which exists in her interactions with others, is partially a symptom of trauma. She seems incapable of making true or meaningful connections with people (cf. later). It would be helpful to look at an example of one of the “hellish fantasies” (TGFT, 178), which plagues Justine during this period, in order to fully demonstrate the influence of not only romance ideologies on Justine, but also obsession. It is perhaps not exceptional that Justine experiences being in love in such a negative manner. The fantasies she has are described in such a way as to invoke a sense of violence. This is perhaps due to the power obsession possesses over the obsessor. It is, thus, no wonder that the fantasies of her obsession become personified.
All day, all night, [her fantasies] battered her until her body was alternately in an agony of sensitivity and completely numb. He lay on top of her in an enormous double bed, cosseted with chiffon and silk, his eyes waxy with desire. Their richly appointed boudoir exploded with flowers; lace curtains flailed the air as the thunderstorm raged outside. Everything in the room became monstrously enlarged and pulsated as the huge event transpired on the bed. He would hurt her but only because he loved her. (TGFT, 178-79)
Due to Justine’s sadomasochistic background, one may be startled by the absence of S/M elements in this fantasy. The last sentence could be interpreted as originating in the mind of a masochist, but this type of sentence is also not out of place in a romance novel. Gaitskill also stated on the topic of obsession that people often mistake obsession for romance. “Romance can be rather hideous. […] [Y]ou can romanticize something to a point where it’s a grotesque distortion. […] There’s usually an underpinning that’s nasty.”72 The sexual reality which unfolds between Justine and Rick contrasts sharply with the fantasy above. Justine is responsible for the construction of the whole scene and places herself in a position where she, at first, willingly gives up all control. Rick behaves as if he is just fulfilling his duty; he uses her and then neglects her. The reader learns that Justine’s sadomasochistic yearnings remain an important force in her adult life, as she reveals to Dorothy: “I had a relationship with someone who sort of … in bed, opened me up in a way that I had no control over” (TGFT, 36). In addition, the episode in which she meets Bryan in a bar and ends up spending the night with him is a prime
72 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 2.
38 example of how easily she gives herself over to men and ends up in situations that appear to be devoid of any emotional substance. The reader also gets a peek into Justine’s thoughts on men the morning following this one-night stand, as she spends some time
mentally listing all the people she’d screwed since she’d been in Manhattan, and categorizing them in terms of the emotional quality of the experience, good, bad, or neutral. The numbers changed depending on her mood […] but even at her most cheerful, there was an abundance of neutrals and bads and, out of twenty-six, only two or three grudging pluses. (TGFT, 283)
Justine’s ruminations strengthen and support this argument that she longs for a meaningful emotional connection with another, yet, she herself has problems opening up to others and seems to attract the type of man who only has a sexual interest in her. There are definitely some vulnerable qualities that she exposes when she attempts to open up to men, which they seem to pick up on. As one of the interviewees remarked in Thomsen’s doctoral thesis, “‘if you’ve been abused as a kid you tend to draw people like that into your life, your [sic] somewhat prey to them . . .’”73 According to Benjamin, when someone, like Justine, desires to surrender to another, she longs
to overcome her clinging helplessness and separation anxiety even as she simultaneously expresses and gives way to it. Such a person is likely to seek a “heroic” sadist to submit to, someone who represents the liberating father rather than the engulfing mother.74
It seems that Justine perceives submission to an ideal male as the pathway to freedom.75 A presentation of Justine’s molestation may be helpful to further a better understanding of why Justine seeks liberation through sadomasochism. The abuser is Dr. Norris, who accompanies five-year-old Justine and his own son on trips to the park. Justine remembers the first incident quite clearly, in which Dr. Norris, upon Justine’s request to go to the bathroom, brings her to another area of the park, where he removes her pants. “She didn’t stop him because he was an adult, a gentle adult she trusted. […] She felt horrible standing naked except for her shoes and her shirt” (TGFT, 63). He instructs her to urinate, “but her whole body was suddenly stiff and she couldn’t pee. It felt so stiff it felt like wood. Even her face felt like wood” (TGFT, 63). To “help” her, he fondles her between the legs. Justine
73 Edith E. Thomsen, Techniques of SM that are helpful in gaining comfort with sexual intimacy for survivors of child sexual abuse who practice SM play,
39 does not receive any pleasure from this situation. She senses that Dr. Norris’s actions are wrong and, because she is a child, she does not understand why he is doing it. Justine recalls that Dr. Norris continued to take her to the park, but “she doesn’t remember how many times” (TGFT, 64), “[m]aybe three or four” (TGFT, 23). Compared with the continuous verbal and sexual abuse that Dorothy is made to suffer, Justine’s traumatic experience is less extreme, and she is much more capable of having sexual relationships with others than Dorothy. However, she feels the need to put herself in demeaning positions and constantly finds herself in relationships devoid of emotions. For example, she has been with men who believe that being sexually abused was a good experience for her, because it taught her something about pleasure. These men’s comments are reminiscent of a libertarian opinion of sexual abuse, in that they do not believe that children should be protected from sexual acts. According to Sade, sex was not something shameful, but something enjoyable that children should be allowed to take part in.76 Justine feels unable to dispute what such men say and relate to them her opinion on it and the feelings such an experience raised in her, because it would open herself up too much.
She didn’t argue […] because she didn’t know how to explain that this uncomprehended attack of invasive sensation had not felt like pleasure at all but rather like the long claws of some unknown aggression that had gripped her organs and her bones and never quite let go. (TGFT, 64)
It seems that she tries to get close to others, e.g. her lovers, by telling them about this incident, but it fails to give her any closure. The process of turning trauma into a narrative and having someone bear witness to that fails to help her work through the trauma,77 as the men she shares her story with interpret this as an exciting sexual tidbit from her past. However, the understanding that culminates between Justine and Dorothy appears to be based upon their revelations of experiencing sexual abuse. As a result of the sexual abuse, it appears that pain has become linked to Justine’s genitals, and later becomes extended to sexual acts for Justine, which is especially important in an investigation of the connection between sexual trauma and sadomasochism. It is not that Dr. Norris touches her in a violent or rough manner that brings her pain, but that “[h]er bladder was full and it hurt” (TGFT, 63). Consequently, sadomasochism could be read as a subconscious attempt to confront her traumatic feelings. From Justine’s point of view, S/M
76 Gert Hekma, “Seks, Sade en sadisme”, in Ethiek en maatschappij, 2 (1999) 3 (Oktober), p. 122. 77 Cathy Caruth, “Trauma and Experience: Introduction”, pp. 9-11 and “Recapturing The Past: Introduction”, pp. 153-56, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. by Caruth, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
40 play also offers a way to gain intimate contact with others. However, some of the experiences which are depicted in the novel, like the incidence with Rose and her relationship with Bryan, which becomes non-consensual, appear to be more along the lines of acting out. Schapiro refers to Judith Herman, who quotes from the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, in her book, Trauma and Recovery: “the common denominator of psychological trauma is a feeling of ‘intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation.’”78 It is exceptional that these feelings can also be invoked during a sadomasochistic scene, for pleasure and for the maintenance of the dominant’s power. However, in S/M, these psychological states would result from the staged fantasy and would, thus, not be threatening.79 By re- experiencing these feelings in a safe atmosphere in which she is in control, Justine can arguably come to terms with her trauma.80 In the following two sections, I will explore in detail two symptoms of trauma, isolation and self-injury, which are visible in both Justine and Dorothy.
II.2.2 ISOLATION
Both protagonists are characterized as lonely women who have distanced themselves from family, who have isolated themselves from others, and who have no close friends. In her study of the S/M practices which may help sexual abuse survivors to work through their trauma, Thomsen refers to Courtois who points out that one of the major symptoms of sexual trauma is a “difficulty trusting others and difficulty with intimate relationships […].”81 This helps to explain why both women are determined to isolate themselves from others. Schapiro also notes, with reference to Cathy Caruth and Judith Herman, that “[t]he trauma victim may paradoxically seek both exposure and concealment, intimacy and isolation.”82 This dualistic behavior is brought about by the fact that the traumatic event defies understanding and classification. Sexual abuse is a violation of the body, but can also be seen as a violation of the mind, as the event becomes internalized without having properly been processed, and, thus, continues to haunt the victim. Caruth states that “the event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who
78 Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery, New York: Basic Books, 1992, p. 33. Quoted in Schapiro, p. 38. 79 G.W. Levi Kamel, “Leathersex: Meaningful Aspects of Gay Sadomasochism”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, pp. 237-38. 80 Thomsen, Techniques of SM. 81 C.A. Courtois, PhD, Adult survivors of child sexual abuse, Milwaukee: Families International, 1993, p. 9. Quoted in Thomsen, p. 33. 82 Schapiro, p. 40.
41 experienced it.”83 The survivor becomes hypervigilant with regard to one’s own boundaries separating the self from the outside world and attempts to prevent the self from being annihilated. One can perceive this duality of being drawn to intimate relationships while at the same time feeling the need for distance from others in both female protagonists. It may seem that Justine houses this dichotomy more than Dorothy, as she seems to be more desperately in search of real, often sexual, intimacy than Dorothy. However, Dorothy longs for it, as well, but appears to have given up, in reality. During her teenage years, she achieves a “false” intimacy through reading, especially Granite’s novels, and by creating her own fantasy world.84 As a young woman, she gains a temporary intimacy with both Granite and Knight, her one-time consensual lover, but after her affair ends and Granite passes away, she reverts back to her old habits of isolating herself and overeating. At the moment that she meets Justine, she seems to be resigned to being isolated and alone, but still longs for the recognition of another. The entrance of Justine into her life seems to be a spark of rejuvenation for Dorothy (cf. later). The act of isolating oneself for Dorothy begins quite early in her life, even before she experiences sexual intercourse with her father. As a child, she does have a very close and intimate relationship with her parents. Her mother’s love seems somewhat suffocating and protective, though, and it is her mother who plants the seed of fantasy in Dorothy, as they make up stories together, draw pictures, read together, etc. Dorothy’s family moves quite often and she always becomes the victim of teasing and harassment at school. Dorothy obtains few friends and the ones with whom she does socialize outside of school, fail to ease her sense of isolation. These friendships are, in her opinion, “like an aberrant pocket of comfort that could not emit enough warmth to extend into the coldness surrounding it” (TGFT, 90). In the words of Berlant, “[t]he alien eyes of her peers force Dorothy to disfigure her family romance and family romance in general. This is played out as her physical withdrawal from the machinery of familial narcissism.”85 Dorothy ends up just existing, bodily, alongside her family and begins to actually live internally in her fantasy world, which is fed by literature and television. After her father begins to sexually abuse her, Dorothy herself figures less and less in her fantasies. The following example, however, describes the epitome of her loneliness and isolation. Dorothy longs for recognition and admiration from
83 Cathy Caruth, “Trauma and Experience”, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. by Caruth, p. 4. 84 The importance of fantasy in Dorothy’s life is also symbolized in her name, Dorothy Never, which refers to The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan, two stories incorporating dreams and fantasies. Berlant notes that Dorothy’s changing of her last name “negates her family, marks her historical anonymity and stakes out her attachment to a transformational harmony of desire and will through the idea.” p. 89. 85 Berlant, p. 80.
42 others, but wishes to remain dissociated from society. This fantasy describes well the paradoxical behavior of trauma survivors, who seek out intimate contact with others, while simultaneously longing to withdraw from social interactions.
I imagined myself sealed in an enclosure of darkness that could be seen into but not out of […]. […] I was condemned to eternity in the impenetrable enclosure that would drift through space until I floated out of my solar system into a black dimension. Space travelers would tell stories about the legend of the beautiful lady trapped in the impenetrable column. Those who had actually seen me could barely refrain from weeping at the sight of my beautiful face, frozen and transfigured by pain. (TGFT, 153)
When Dorothy is away at college, she once again feels completely disconnected from the other students. During this time, she visits an on-campus counselor, yet, she cannot bring herself to tell this woman about her traumatic past. Dorothy continues to contact her parents through telephone phone calls, but these tend to reinforce her social isolation, as the conversations cause her to re-experience the feelings she had during her abuse. Dorothy’s sense of being very unlike her peers, which began to develop in junior high and high school, due to her special relationship with her father, becomes markedly stronger while she is in college, and eventually leads her to the verge of a psychological breakdown.
I had had sex with my father. Sometimes I would gloat over this fact in a perverted way, feeling weirdly vindicated and special, enormous and corporeally real in comparison with the hateful skinny boys and girls prissing around me […]. But most of the time I felt as if my body had been turned inside out, that I was a walking deformity hung with visible blood-purple organs, lungs, heart, bladder, kidneys, spleen, the full ugliness of a human stripped of its skin.” (TGFT, 194)
I believe that, at this moment, Dorothy is caught in a cycle in which she moves from acting- out to the threshold of coming to terms with her trauma. She ruminates often about her difference, and experiences an urge to discuss this with someone. Yet, she never reaches that point while she is still connected to her family, as her contact with her parents throws her back into the process of acting-out her trauma, which strips her of the courage to share her experience with another. Her perceived difference from others grows stronger and leads to further estrangement, for she feels that she could never properly conform. It is this alienation from a seemingly “normal” society that brings her to the brink of a psychological breakdown, because deep down she wishes for acceptance, normalcy, and a life without the pain of her trauma, but feels that this is now impossible.
43 After rediscovering Anna Granite during college, Dorothy’s self-esteem begins to improve, as she becomes strongly influenced by the theories of Definitism put forth in Granite’s books. She feels the need to “gradually […] cut out anything that threatened [her] new world” (TGFT, 199), which includes putting a halt to all communication with her parents and dropping out of college. It may appear that it is Granite who “saves” Dorothy and gives her the strength to survive, which is how Dorothy herself perceives it. However, I view the impact of the books upon Dorothy as just another form of isolation. The books do push her into forming intimate contacts as she eventually forges a close relationship with Granite and others in her circle. Definitism also gives Dorothy strength, for she employs this philosophy as a tool and is finally able to put her trauma into perspective. Thus, Granite’s influence helps her discover the strength within herself to work through her trauma, but these meaningful relationships do not last forever, as the Definitist movement surrounding Granite eventually fizzles out. Justine, on the other hand, is included in the popular group of tough girls throughout her early school career. These children achieve their high status by harassing and picking on the unpopular students. Towards this behavior, Justine has an ambivalent attitude, which is similar to her psychological response to her S/M experiments. She goes along with the others’ behavior to gain acceptance, and the overwhelming sense of power she achieves excites her. Yet, at the same time, she identifies with the victims, and, thus, experiences embarrassment and disgust with herself. In light of Justine’s dual personality, i.e. she shows both sadistic and masochistic characteristics, this ambivalence becomes more understandable. By the time she reaches adulthood, Justine has already experienced betrayal on several levels from people whom she trusted, starting with Dr. Norris, the man who sexually abused her. This incident is followed by a betrayal from her parents, who in Justine’s eyes allowed this to happen, yet, chose to do nothing about it. Justine also feels betrayed by her psychiatrist, with whom she forms a strong connection, for she opens up to him by confessing many of her secrets, e.g. her sadomasochistic experience with Rose. After the session involving these revelations, her mother decides that Justine no longer needs to see the psychiatrist. Justine’s reaction is one of shock: “It was like being on the verge of consummating your love and then being snatched from the arms of your loved one and borne out the door” (TGFT, 186). Shortly after her first experience of sexual intercourse, Justine is also betrayed by her best friend, Watley. She develops a close relationship with this girl, who she perceives as the opposite of her previous girlfriends. Justine describes her as mature and intellectual, and she is strongly influenced by Watley’s romantic opinion of sex. Partially
44 through this relationship, Justine cultivates her ideal view of sex, which is informed by conservative romantic ideologies. Justine eventually exposes herself by telling Watley the truth about how she lost her virginity. At first, Watley believes that she was raped, because at the last moment Justine had no longer wanted to go through with it. After Justine’s emotional confession, rumors are spread around the school about how Justine, in desperation, had dragged the boy into her garage and forced him to have sex with her. Justine’s learned lesson from this incident, which she subsequently applies to society, is, according to Berlant: “Vulnerability makes you worthless: Survival depends on producing forms of hardened identity and closeting the soft remainders.”86 Consequently, Justine winds up isolating herself from everyone:
Thus she calmly moved from parent to parent to school, counting the months, holding her aloneness around her like a magic cloak. When she moved to New York after graduating from college years later, the cloak was wound about her so completely she no longer knew it was there. (TGFT, 191)
While in New York, Justine continues to behave in a similar way. She seeks connections with people, but refuses to open herself up, and, thus, uses sex in order to feel something bordering on intimacy. However, these relationships are devoid of emotions. On the sexual problems of incest survivors, Thomsen maintains, with reference to Courtois, that the sexual patterns of survivors can range from total abstinence to promiscuity. Justine could be considered promiscuous as she resorts to sexual activity to achieve intimacy; yet, she fears commitment as she has difficulty trusting in others.87 Justine seems to feel something exceptional for Bryan, as they are able to connect through their sadomasochistic sexual practices, but this relationship becomes chaotic, partially because of a lack of communication and understanding between the two and a violation of trust on Bryan’s part. In this section, I have shown that both girls’ isolation partially stems from, or is heightened by their traumatic experiences. However, the need to continue isolating themselves is also attributable to their non-traumatic encounters with society.
86 Berlant, p. 79. 87 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 33.
45 II.2.3 SELF-INJURY
According to Deborah Horvitz, for many incest survivors, “powerlessness becomes eroticized, then entrenched within the victim’s self-identity.”88 In order to regain a sense of being in control and to prevent the perceived threat of annihilation, trauma victims may feel compelled to preserve themselves through “self-injurious, self-destructive acts.”89 Both girls engage in self-injury to different degrees. Surprisingly, Dorothy begins to engage in what could be viewed as self-destructive behavior even before her father starts to verbally and sexually abuse her. I believe that this is due to her social alienation, which was discussed in the previous section. Perhaps this sense of alienation is initially a result of her family’s multiple moves while she is young, which ultimately causes Dorothy to view herself as an outsider. By neglecting her hygiene and overeating, Dorothy expresses the lack of appreciation she perceives others have of her and emphasizes her sense of being different. After her father’s abuse begins, this pattern continues.
Slowly, starting first with veiled attacks on “selfish turds” and “fat slobs,” he began to tell me how awful I was. […] “You sit there on your fat butt night after night wearing the clothes I bought you, stuffing yourself with my food, stupid and ugly, contributing nothing.” […] Tears ran down my face and over my lips as I ate, mixing in my mouth with my hamburger. My mother ate her salad and traced a little design on the table with her finger. “Not only do you contribute nothing, but you attack. You attack a woman who’s never done anything but give you attention and affection.” […] Those dinner tribunals occurred with such frequency that I developed the ability to divide myself while they occurred; the external person who sat and cried while her father reviled her and the internal person who helped herself to more salad as he ranted, and noticed that the scalloped potatoes were particularly succulent tonight. With bitter pride I hugged the inner me to myself at night and thought how I had enjoyed dinner, no matter what. But my pride was marred by the dim awareness that it sometimes felt as though it was the external person who ate her dinner in dignified silence while the internal person hurt. […] It seemed that part of my father wanted to destroy me for leaving him, and that another part of him, which I could sense only at certain moments, wanted to follow me into my retreat, to wrap his arms around me and never let me go. (TGFT, 142-43)
This is one of the many episodes in which Dorothy’s mother silently allows the father to berate and threaten Dorothy. The mother thus enables him to possess all the power and authority in their family. Dorothy splits into two in order to cope with the abuse and this also
88 Deborah M. Horvitz, Literary Trauma: Sadism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in American Women’s Fiction. Albany: SUNY P, 2000, p. 21. Quoted in Schapiro, p. 42. 89 Schapiro, p. 42.
46 prevents her father from completely destroying her sense of self. Consequently, food becomes one of the few pleasures in her life and an anesthetic for the internal pain she suffers. Her obesity could be seen to function as a buffer or shield, protecting her fragile, internal self from the pain and cruelty she experiences from her father and the rest of society. Dorothy appears to be trying to make this stronger, larger self, which she projects to the outside world, impenetrable, and even invisible. Berlant remarks that this also helps to further her social isolation: “Obesity and ugliness create a force field around her, seeming to neutralize what, in those ‘gatherings of the normally proportioned,’ might come from others – curiosity or attachment (169).” 90 In the above passage, Dorothy is perceptive to the fact that her father wants to hurt her, because her attitude towards the family has shifted. He must struggle with his feelings that she does not care about or love her family any longer. Dorothy has indeed distanced herself from the family, as she spends increasingly more time reading and creating fantasies. The conflict between Dorothy and her father arguably arises because Dorothy is trying to assert her independence and because Dorothy and her father have quite similar personalities. According to Benjamin “[d]omination begins with the attempt to deny dependency. No one can truly extricate himself from dependency on others, from the need for recognition.”91 I perceive this in both Dorothy and her father. Dorothy’s father expects both his wife and daughter to be dependent upon him, but also to recognize his authority. He feels threatened by Dorothy’s independence and her refusals to submit to her parents’ wills. Her father is, thus, also dependent upon her and desires her recognition. The description of the father as being divided into two different selves, as well, is also worth emphasizing. One part wants to annihilate Dorothy, while another part of him wishes to join her in an escape from the cruel reality. It is not long after this moment that Dorothy’s father begins to sexually abuse her. Regarding incest, Armstrong states “when you sexualize a child to fulfill adult male needs, you are socializing her to subjection.”92 One could, thus, interpret his raping Dorothy as a last resort in his struggle to achieve her recognition and to force her into submission. Schapiro makes reference to Judith Herman while she discusses forms of self-injury. During such an act the victim is in control of the infliction of physical pain and through this experience, some of the pent-up psychological pain is released.93 At one point, when she is
90 Berlant, p. 77. In my edition of TGFT, this quote appears on p. 205. 91 Benjamin, p. 52. 92 Kalí Tal, Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 166. 93 Schapiro, p. 42.
47 away at college Dorothy ends up on the brink of a psychological break-down and longs to hurt herself, after experiencing a flashback of her father’s abuse.
I clawed backward into the past and found no comfort in anything there unless “comfort” could be had in the excruciating sight of brute, ignorant love, cowed and trapped, exposed by the wildly panning camera of my memory. I felt locked out of my own fat body, as if I were a disembodied set of impulses and electrical discharges, disconnected rage and fear, something like what real humans feel in abandoned houses and call “ghosts.” I remembered my father on top of me, mashing my lungs, making my breath smaller and tighter until it barely existed, opening my body with his fingers, infecting me with his smells, his sounds, grinding his skin on mine until it came off as powder and filtered into my pores, spewing his deepest poison onto my skin where it was subtly absorbed into my blood and cells and came out in my sweat, my urine and shit, even my voice and words. I felt so saturated by his liquid stench, I didn’t even think to wash it off when he left. I let it dry on my stomach or chest or ass, as I lay still with tears in my eyes. I sat in my dorm room and thought of taking a knife and cutting my face. I went into the bathroom and turned on the light and took off my shirt to stare at and hate my body. There were pimples on my chest and I welcomed them, wishing they were boils or scars, anything to more fully degrade this body, loathed even by its own parent. […] I sat on the floor and banged my head on the wall and cried […]. Why, why, why can’t I be like everybody else? (TGFT, 195-96 my emphasis – A.V.)
Dorothy experiences all the immense pain that she attempted to bury beneath her weight. She feels disconnected from and disgusted by her body, because of the abuse it suffered. She could neither protect herself nor prevent her father from taking possession of her body. Due to the flashbacks and persisting pain, she still occasionally perceives her body as not her own, which explains her disgust with it. In this passage, Dorothy is acting-out her trauma; she believes that she deserves physical pain or gross disfigurements, which could signify her trauma. If she could bear it in the form of a scar on her body, then she would gain the ability to control it, and this would also lend her a release from the psychological pain. I will now discuss how Justine’s “sense of powerlessness and intense shame”94 manifests itself in sadomasochistic behavior, through which she attempts to achieve power and control, as well as a release from pain. Schapiro interprets masochistic behavior “as a form of self-preservation”95 in many of Gaitskill’s works. This could be applicable to Justine who appears powerless in the face of her masochistic tendencies and therefore unable to escape from them. It seems that she attempts to work through her trauma by engaging in sadomasochistic sex, which is not always a pleasurable experience for her. Schapiro continues
94 Schapiro, p. 42. 95 Schapiro, p. 43.
48
the original trauma induces dissociation and numbness, yet the experience is also felt to be at the “foundation” of one’s being or experience of self. Simulations of that humiliating experience thus paradoxically represent the only path back to the recovery of feeling or authentic self-experience.96
Schapiro perceives masochism as self-destructive behavior for trauma survivors. I believe that, in the case of Justine, and perhaps also in general, it is slightly more complicated, as masochism involves another person, in contrast to e.g. self-mutilation. It seems to achieve a similar effect as self-injury does, such as a release from internal pain, but the element of control involved appears to be much more central. For example, Justine shows a very aggressive side and is very much in control during her S/M experiences with Bryan. Also, as previously discussed, S/M serves as a pleasurable way for Justine to open up to another and escape her social isolation and loneliness. Since Justine’s behavior is too complex to interpret solely as a self-injurious symptom of her trauma, I will discuss it further in the following section.
II.2.4 S/M: HEALING OR HURTING?
In this section I will focus mainly on Justine and the question of whether the process of engaging in S/M with another can be helpful for a survivor of sexual abuse. First, I would like to present the two girls’ opinions on S/M. Schapiro points out the link of sadomasochism between the two female protagonists in TGFT: “Justine falls into repeated sadomasochistic behavior while Dorothy becomes part of a cult idolizing an Ayn Rand-like figure, Anna Granite, whose writings feature masochistic female characters.”97 Dorothy, however, does not associate masochism with Granite’s female characters. During their first meeting, when Justine interviews Dorothy for her article on Anna Granite, the two actually begin to discuss sadomasochism.
“[Justine:] Do you see a contradiction in the sexual behavior of her characters – the pattern of dominance and submission that she says is, in other spheres, irrational? Do you find that the behavior of her female characters is a denial of themselves in reality - for example, when Skip beats up Solitaire and she likes it?” […] “[Dorothy:] Solitaire likes it, not because she’s hit, but because it’s Skip. It’s totally different from the kind of neurotic masochism you’re implying.” “[Justine:] Well, then, there’s the rape thing with Asia Maconda and Frank Golanka.” “[Dorothy:] Look, I’m a sex abuse victim
96 Schapiro, p. 43. 97 Schapiro, p. 43.
49 and so are you, and you ought to be able to understand. Asia is presented as having a problem, for one thing. She’s neurotic and she needs this kind of crushing force to act upon her because she needs to be broken in a way, but it’s got nothing to do with masochism. Asia is exalted when Frank Golanka takes possession of her. She is not demeaned. A masochist is somebody like my mother who was demeaned by her subservience to a cruel, dishonest, contemptible man. When the women in Granite’s books submit, they do it out of strength, out of choice, as a gift. That’s the difference between masochism and love, and if you don’t see that, then, you’re crazy.” […] “[Justine:] I know what you mean. I even know what you mean when you say that Asia needed to have something taken from her by force for it to mean anything. I’ve had an experience like that myself.” (TGFT, 34-36)
I find this an interesting passage which highlights the differences between Justine and Dorothy at the level of sadomasochism. Justine begins by talking about masochism, without actually using the word, but Dorothy immediately realizes what she is implying. She interprets masochism differently than Justine, however, and consequently, reacts defensively. Dorothy’s discordant view of masochism has been formed by her experiences at home during her childhood and adolescence. For her, sadomasochism involves cruelty and aggression, as she equates it with the relationship between her mother and father, and her own relationship with her father, who sexually abused her. Her view that only the sadist has power is based upon her mother’s and her own powerlessness in the face of her father’s aggression. She perceives S/M negatively and does not comprehend it as something that could form part of a loving, consensual relationship, which is how she would describe the sexual relationships depicted in Granite’s novels. Dorothy admires the “loving[,] […] empowering[,] and enlarging” (TGFT, 24) aspects of sex, but struggles with the actual biological activity. Justine, on the other hand, actually picks up on the masochistic traits of some of the characters, perhaps because of her own experience with S/M relationships. Due to Justine’s molestation, pain and sexuality are connected. She certainly receives enjoyment from her experiences, yet she seems unable to control herself or her masochistic urges. That Justine’s masochism is, thus, partially unconscious, leads me to believe that it is connected with the trauma. In addition, the participation in sadomasochistic play seems to ineluctably remind Justine of her trauma. The encounter will not necessarily result in a flashback, but Justine’s feelings will border on or overlap with those she felt as a child in her interaction with her abuser. For example, during one of her sexual encounters with Bryan, he ties her hands behind her back, which clearly enhances her pleasure.
Her body opened more deeply until she felt herself split and revealed all the way into the pit of her guts, a place of heat and light that shone with tenderness for the lover who had come at last. […] [A]lthough she didn’t make this association, she felt as she
50 had when she was alone with her father in his car and he had made her say what Dr. Norris had done; pinned, helpless, exposed. Only now she felt her opened being contacted and stroked instead of coldly regarded. She thought: I love you. (TFGT, 318)
She experiences emotions that are connected to her traumatic experience, but does not consciously realize this. It is worth stressing that she experiences a connection with Bryan, during their moment of intimacy. Justine is driven by a desire for recognition; she longs for the recognition from a powerful master. Through her submission, she hopes to discover herself and lose herself at the same time.98 The moments when she experiences the loss of control and feelings of exposure and helplessness share a parallel with her molestation. The contrast, however, is that she has willingly given up her control and is, thus, able to open herself up to the powerful dominant, which allows her to experience pleasure. Likewise, Justine experiences the power and authority of the dominant as a form of protection.99 Consequently, Justine translates this intimate connection into love. During a situation such as the one sketched in the passage above, it seems likely that Justine would be able to deal with those feelings she had only previously associated with her molestation, and thus work through her trauma, as an experience of this sort transforms the feelings into something positive and pleasurable. In her analysis of Story of O, Benjamin states that:
The pain of violation serves to protect the self by substituting physical pain for the psychic pain of loss and abandonment. In being hurt by the other, O feels she is being reached, she is able to experience another living presence. O’s pleasure, so to speak, lies in her sense of her own survival and her connection to her powerful lover. Thus as long as O can transpose her fear of loss into submission, as long as she remains the object and manifestation of his power, she is safe.100
I believe that this can be applied to Justine, as well. She is seeking intimacy and contact with Bryan through S/M play. However, according to Benjamin, domination also implies a distance from the other, as well as an objectification thereof, which lends Justine a sense of safety. Justine appreciates this, because she paradoxically seeks both isolation and intimacy, as a result of her trauma. The whipping incident with Bryan continues, however, into an unsettling direction:
He struck her with the whip. The pain cut her drunkenness and shocked her so badly she couldn’t scream. He struck her again, harder, and she did scream. Her panicked body jerked against its restraints and tried to close in defense; from her depths there
98 Benjamin, p. 60. 99 Benjamin, p. 60. 100 Benjamin, p. 61.
51 burst a terrified creature, all elongated hands and wild distended mouth, its body twisting crazily as it flew into her throat, silently crying, No, no, don’t let him hurt me. But it was too late. (TGFT, 318-19)
It appears from this passage that Justine does not receive any pleasure through the pain from the whipping, although it was she who suggested that they engage in this activity. Instead, other feelings arise in her being which are connected to her molestation, as a result of the pain. I believe that, consciously, she would rather avoid these emotions, yet, a subconscious part of herself propels her into such behavior so that she can confront and rework the traumatic feelings. She continues to experience the feelings of being open and exposed, yet, her defensive reaction to the painful sensations is a longing to close up again, to prevent the dissolution of her self. The creature, which also appears at other moments in the novel during her sexual encounters with Bryan, could possibly be seen to signify her as a five-year-old child when she was molested. Perhaps this creature symbolizes her trauma. In another excerpt, which reinforces the latter interpretation, her masochistic behavior is explicitly linked to her molestation.
[S]he could barely feel the welts on her back. Her knees hurt, she thought. He beat her as she squirmed on the floor, caught in the steel trap that had closed on her when she was five years old. The upper strata of her thoughts and feelings had ruptured, and the creature long trapped beneath was out and gnawing her with its teeth. (TGFT, 346)
This creature appears to take control of Justine when she is with Bryan and they engage in S/M practices. The presence of the creature also appears to push her further, causing her to expand her limits and long for more pain and/or humiliation. The Language of Sadomasochism defines limits as the “[o]utermost boundary of pain willing to be tolerated by a masochist”101, yet in the sadomasochistic subculture limits are not necessarily restricted to the masochist or only applicable to activities involving pain. Kamel defines “the setting of limits [as] […] a determination of how far a person goes in a scene - what he likes and dislikes.”102 Regarding the expansion of limits, in the above passage, Justine no longer experiences pain from the whipping, as she notices more pain in her knees than in her back. Therefore, directly after this quote, Justine orders Bryan to urinate on her body. According to Kamel, the intention of incorporating urination into S/M play “is to degrade the slave and ‘exalt’ the master. […] [B]eing urinated on becomes symbolic of being degraded, used, and
101 Thomas E. Murray and Thomas R. Murrel, The Language of Sadomasochism, p. 91. 102 Kamel, “Leathersex”, p. 241.
52 worthless.”103 Justine’s trauma forces her to feel like she deserves this treatment. It could appear in this passage that, by engaging in these activities, Justine is acting-out her trauma rather than working-through it. The fact that her sexual relationship with Bryan steadily weakens her, until Dorothy saves her, supports this interpretation. Despite her terrible experience with Bryan towards the end of the novel, Justine still expresses an attraction to sadomasochistic play in her attempt to explain herself to Dorothy.
“[Justine:] I’m glad you came.” Her voice trembled, and she seemed to be trying to hide her face from me. […] I said again, “Why did you let him do that to you?” “I didn’t let him do anything,” she snapped. She looked at me almost insolently. “I told him what to do.” Her jaw twitched violently. “Except towards the end.” “Why?” She looked away and slightly down and shrugged one small shoulder, the gesture of an adolescent in the principal’s office. “I don’t know. […] Does it disgust you?” “No. Yes. I don’t know. I think so.” “Well, you’re probably right. Although it’s not as awful as it looks when you just sort of burst in on it like that. I mean when you’re doing it, it’s, you know. Except this got a little . . .” […] “You don’t disgust me,” I said, uncertainly. (TGFT, 384-85, my emphasis on lines 2-4 – A.V)
One notable aspect in this excerpt is Justine’s remarks regarding what occurred between Bryan and her. That she suggested many of the S/M activities points to the fact that she was not completely powerless and also expresses two extremely crucial features of sadomasochistic play: communication and consent. It also reveals that submissives or those who take on a “slave” role may paradoxically have more control than the actual activities would suggest (cf. chapter four). In an interview, Gaitskill also remarked upon the dualistic nature of masochism:
the victim role which a masochist chooses to play may look really passive, but in some sense it’s a very aggressive stance […] in [sic] an internal level, because [Justine]’s putting herself in a passive position; dangerously so in the case of Bryan […].104
Justine longed to feel helpless and to give up control to Bryan, but she still communicated to him what she wanted. It was not until the end that he became too powerful and would no longer listen to her anymore. As Benjamin notes:
Eventually the other’s unreality becomes too powerful; the sadist is in danger of becoming the will-less thing he consumes unless he separates himself completely. And the masochist increasingly feels that she does not exist, that she is without will or desire, that she has no life apart from the other. Indeed, once the tension between
103 Kamel, “Leathersex”, p. 235. 104 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 3.
53 subjugation and resistance dissolves, death or abandonment is the inevitable end of the story […].105
This could also help to explain the evolution of Justine’s character once she becomes sexually involved with Bryan. Through the S/M practices she engages in with Bryan, Justine’s self becomes increasingly weakened. Her subjectivity is broken down and fragmented through her objectification. Gaitskill’s fictional portrayal of engaging in consensual sadomasochistic behavior can have a liberating and helpful effect on those of her masochistic characters that suffer from trauma. Thomsen, for example, wrote her doctoral thesis on certain aspects of sadomasochism which can be healing for victims and helpful for working on traumatic symptoms. Through her research, Thomsen discovered that engaging in consensual sadomasochism offered the survivors a safe arena in which they could experiment with various sexual activities, because of the specific limits that are recommended for a safe S/M scenario. The interviewees therefore “felt they were able to overcome certain inhibitions that evolved from their experience of sexual abuse achieving emotional and sexual communication which they had not previously been able to attain.”106 Thomsen refers to Staci Haines who maintains that active participants in the S/M subculture can “consciously” come to terms with their trauma by incorporating their abuse into S/M scenarios. She suggests several methods, such as reattempting certain activities that may remind one of the abuse. Survivors “may find it powerful to reenact abuse scenes and write new endings for them.”107 It is worth emphasizing the conscious effort that is necessary when engaging in S/M in order to overcome the negative experiences and emotions attached to one’s abuse, which Haines notes. I believe that Justine is shown to be only partially conscious of this process, that she is trying to confront her trauma, and, that therefore, S/M proves to be unsuccessful. The observation that sadomasochism fails to offer Justine full liberation from her trauma is also attributable to Gaitskill’s rendering of Justine’s risky behavior, which is present throughout her life. For example, Justine does not seek out a loving dominant, rather, she recklessly goes to bed with Bryan shortly after meeting him, despite the fact that certain character traits of his frighten her. In her dissertation, Thomsen mentions the possible negative practices which could be perceived as dangerous for incest survivors, such as
105 Benjamin, p. 65. 106 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 1. 107 Staci Haines, The Survivor’s Guide To Sex: How To Have An Empowered Sex Life after Child Sexual Abuse, San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1999, p. 192. Quoted in Thomsen, p. 10.
54 “humiliation,” “degradation,” and “mind games.”108 Further, some dominants take advantage of their position of authority and turn abusive towards their submissives.109 In the last sadomasochistic session between Justine and Bryan, Bryan forces Justine to act out such a scenario in which Justine’s abuse is reenacted. They do not discuss beforehand whether or not this would be a comfortable scene for Justine to engage in. Justine grows weaker and more powerless as a result. It does not appear to give her any control over her past sexual abuse. However, during this episode, Justine longs to disappear or be obliterated. Rather than that occurring, she becomes completely opened and exposed, an object to be possessed and penetrated by Bryan. This seems to be what she longs for, but at the same time (or at this moment) wishes to escape. Schapiro refers to Emmanuel Ghent who has also written about masochism and “surrender,” a term that can be applicable to what Justine desires to achieve. He makes the claim that the desire which seems to drive the actual process of masochism or surrender is “the longing for, the wish to be found, recognized, penetrated to the core, so as to become real, or as Winnicott put it in another context, ‘to come into being.’”110 I believe that, by recalling the fact that Justine embodies both sadism and masochism, one could perhaps partially grasp Justine’s dualistic nature. Benjamin states that “[t]he underlying theme of sadism is the attempt to break through to the other. The desire to be discovered underlies its counterpart, namely, masochism.”111 Justine longs, thus, for the control or domination over another, while at the same time, she desires recognition.
II.3 MUTUAL RECOGNITION
In the remainder of this chapter, I would like to focus on one of the most important relationships in this novel, i.e. the one between Justine and Dorothy. The two girls develop a strong connection which is foreshadowed throughout the narrative through Gaitskill’s employment of several parallels between the two girls.112 At their first meeting, in which Justine interviews Dorothy on Granite, the first similarity, which forms the basis of their connection, is brought to light, i.e. the fact that they were both victims of sexual abuse. The similarity of surviving sexual abuse is not the only parallel between the two girls, but is one
108 Thomsen, pp. 102-103. 109 Thomsen, pp. 60-63. 110 Emmanuel Ghent, “Masochism, Submission, and Surrender?”, in Contemporary Psychoanalysis 26 (1990), p. 122. Quoted in Schapiro, pp. 45-46 111 Benjamin, pp. 71-72. 112 Morgan Love notices this as well in her article, cf. p. 17.
55 through which they experience a bond upon their first encounter. Through the many parallels, e.g. multiple moves to the same U.S. states, similar schoolchildren, etc., I, therefore, believe it is possible to confuse the two girls at certain points, while performing a quick read of this novel, even though the two are very different. Schapiro’ article mainly discusses “The Dentist,” but some of its statements could also be applied to TGFT, as both sexual trauma and sadomasochism are featured in both works. For example, Schapiro comments on the use of a third-person viewpoint in “The Dentist”, which
enforces a simultaneous intimacy and distance. We are granted access to Jill’s inner thoughts and feelings (and only hers), but we lack the immediacy of a first-person point of view that would invite a more direct identification with the character/narrator.113
One is confronted with this as well with regard to Justine, and I believe this fits her personality well. However, Gaitskill employs two narrators in her novel, and the shift from Justine to Dorothy also includes a shift from a third-person to a first-person point of view. I do not believe that this practice invites the reader to identify more strongly with Dorothy than Justine. In my opinion, Gaitskill employs a first-person narrator for those chapters told from Dorothy’s point of view, because Dorothy is the ironic hero of the novel. This observation will be further clarified. During their first conversation together, which occurs on the telephone, Justine’s reaction to Dorothy’s voice is telling for her personality as well as their coming together at the end of the novel. Dorothy’s voice is described as “riddled with peculiarity and tension,” and it “stroked Justine along the inside of her skull in such a way that both repelled and attracted her” (TGFT, 19). Once again, there is that duality which is omnipresent in Gaitskill’s work. The contrasting feelings which Justine experiences could perhaps be explained by her personality and the fact that she is a trauma sufferer. She longs for an intimate connection with others, yet, at the same time fears this, and tries to prevent people from getting very close to her. Strangely enough, Dorothy brings out these feelings in her, which is possibly due to the similarities in their lives. While being interviewed, Dorothy reflects on their situation and falls once again into her fantasy world, something which has been a part of her life since she was a young girl. “We could be friends. We could be more than friends; she would be the one to at last tell the
113 Schapiro, p. 40.
56 truth about Anna Granite to an ignorant world” (TGFT, 30). In Dorothy’s fantasy, it is the fact that Justine would write about Granite in such a manner that would earn Dorothy’s respect and vice versa that would spark their friendship. They do become friends, however, under very different circumstances, even though Justine does not tell Dorothy’s truth about Granite, and her article humiliates and angers Dorothy instead. Schapiro interprets the achievement of mutual recognition between the two girls and their friendship as coming about because at the peak of Dorothy’s anger she witnesses Justine in a similar humiliating position.114 However, I am certain that this moment of mutual recognition goes deeper than that and will investigate this in the remainder of this chapter. To fully develop this argument, it is worth noting an evolution that occurs between the two female protagonists, which involves the duality of weak versus strong. Throughout their childhoods, both girls are rather weak, as children are dependent upon their parents, but Justine is very needy of her mother and Dorothy only feels safe in the house of her parents. While Justine is an adolescent, she is accepted into the popular circle of girls that she views as the most powerful at school. They feed their sense of power by harassing those weaker than them. Under their influence, Justine also begins to perceive her own sexuality as powerful. Dorothy, on the other hand, is one of those weak children who become the victim of the stronger children. In their later adolescence and early adulthood, both girls appear to become stronger due to their isolation (i.e. they do not allow others to gain access to their internal selves, thus preventing themselves from any further pain or betrayals), but this eventually weakens Dorothy to the point of a nervous breakdown. Perhaps Dorothy’s experience of meaningful relationships in her past with Anna Granite and Knight, the man she falls in love with, and only man with whom she has consensual sexual intercourse causes her to become stronger. She feels good about herself at this point and believes she has a purpose in life. In addition, Dorothy loses a lot of weight during this period, which symbolizes her emergence from isolation. Her obesity functions as a wall between her and the rest of society, and she reverts back to overeating and reconstructing this wall after these intimate relationships become terminated. Likewise, around the time when Dorothy meets Justine, she begins to work out, gaining muscle and physical strength, which could be interpreted as a consequence of being reminded of Granite, Knight, and Definitism. I believe, rather, that her lust for life is actually rekindled by the appearance of Justine in her life. Justine haunts Dorothy, and she fantasizes about sharing a friendship with her. In her own words: “I wanted to be close with
114 Schapiro, p. 46.
57 her. I had wanted to be close with her from the moment I met her” (TGFT, 334-35). At the same time, Justine becomes trapped in a chaotic relationship with Bryan that continuously weakens her. Furthermore, she suffers from anxiety attacks and struggles to eat enough during this period. In the end, it is Dorothy who rescues Justine at a crucial moment when she is in danger. While I would agree with Schapiro that the last scene could be interpreted as a moment of mutual recognition between Dorothy and Justine, I believe that its deeper implication is much more complex and that other relevant factors are involved besides just humiliation and trauma. To demonstrate this, it will be enlightening first to reassess the character, and sexuality, of Dorothy. In an interview, Gaitskill responded to a query about the “lesbian overtones” in TGFT: “The reason I see it having gay overtones is that I see Dorothy as being gay. […] Most of her feelings toward Justine have erotic undertones.”115 I am not suggesting that Dorothy saves Justine because she has romantic feelings for her. However, she encounters Justine in a predicament which she is familiar with. Her bottled-up anger, which she was going to release upon Justine, erupts into violence in the face of male dominance and aggression. Though Dorothy equates Bryan’s behavior with her father’s, one can also read characteristics of her father in her own behavior. Despite the abuse, Dorothy has identified more with her father, in that she also has a passive-aggressive personality. For example, Justine seems to notice Dorothy’s aggressive, almost sadistic, side: “the woman seemed to get angry at her for no reason; as in the interview, Justine found herself inexplicably intimidated by her” (TGFT, 238). Dorothy is at first frightened and almost paralyzed by the close contact she has with Bryan’s aggression, and is about to escape, when Justine’s plea for help gets through to her. Also significant for my in interpretation of the final episode of this novel is the fact that Dorothy saves Justine, which is reminiscent of some of her own childhood fantasies in which she played the hero-role. For example, she had a detailed fantasy of saving her mother during a tornado. Berlant notices this as well, and refers to one of Dorothy’s fantasies, which occurred after reading The Little Match Girl, which seems to have come true, to some extent. “She imagines rescuing the poor little girl, feeding her Cream of Wheat, and then sleeping with her […].”116
115 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 4. 116 Berlant, p. 100.
58 Regarding Dorothy’s sexuality, when she gets older, she begins to fantasize more and more about others, especially her female classmates, about whom she creates erotically tinged stories. She herself, however, is not present. Dorothy also fantasizes often about the female characters in Granite’s novels, and compares some of her classmates to them. At one point, she does mention a male protagonist from the books:
“If I could see aspects of Asia all about me, even in myself, I could see Frank Golanka nowhere in my world. This did not make him less real than Asia Maconda—on the contrary. The absence of his reflection in my daily life rendered him exalted, immune to my vulgar fantasies, more inviolate than Asia behind her wall. His absence cast a silent spell over my world, he was all life’s potential suspended in a state of constant possibility, the prince who could awaken me with a kiss.” (TGFT, 160-61)
This passage could be interpreted as the influence of the romantic heterosexual ideology of dominance and submission, to be found in Granite’s novels, on Dorothy. Granite’s women are characterized as strong, and yet, they always surrender to men, who are portrayed as more powerful. Although Granite gives power to women, she does not subvert patriarchal ideologies with regard to sexuality, as a hierarchy remains in her depictions of sexual intercourse. However, Dorothy also identifies more with this man than the other female characters, and longs to have the power of male dominance, which makes women surrender to one. Therefore, he remains absent and invisible, and also because Dorothy has not come to terms with her sexuality. In addition, after her interview with Justine, Dorothy “envisioned pale Justine in the arms of her powerful lover, her small head thrown back in surrender. I felt a pinch of pain” (TGFT, 39). I believe that this supports my interpretation that Dorothy has lesbian feelings, but that she also longs to be the beneficent, yet dominant, hero—a stereotype from popular Western culture. This is, ironically, what she becomes. Though Justine does not surrender to her in a sexual manner, the act of sleeping in Dorothy’s arms causes Dorothy’s fantasy image of Asia Maconda to shatter. Dorothy is, thus, finally able to replace her fantasy world with reality. To support my understanding of the coming together of these two girls, it is worth emphasizing that the final scene bears a striking resemblance to one of Justine’s fantasies, which expresses her desire for an ideal loving and protecting male. One night, she attempts to find sleep while imagining “Bryan holding her in his arms and cupping her head against his chest, which he never did and probably never would do” (TGFT, 353). This fantasy comes true, however, with Dorothy in the place of Bryan:
59 “I can’t sleep,” said Justine. Her voice was so worn that I turned to her with an impulse to comfort. At the same time she turned towards me. Her thin arms went around my body, her face pressed against my shoulder. I held her side and cupped her head […]. (TGFT, 387-88, my emphasis - A.V.)
Ironically, it appears that Dorothy signifies the dominant hero whom Justine has been dreaming of. Significant in this interpretation is the differences between the two girls, as well as their similarities. I do not wish to suggest that these two will engage in an erotic S/M affair, but their dominant and submissive sides, along with their weak and powerful sides, seem to fit together like a puzzle. Through their similarities, they can identify with each other and respect the other’s difference, thus achieving mutual recognition.
II.4 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have attempted to present the rich complexity that Gaitskill sketches in TGFT through the limited scope of an analysis of the connection between trauma and sadomasochism. By investigating the symptoms of trauma, I discovered that the symptom of isolation was actually reinforced by society for both girls, and, in the case of Dorothy, this symptom originated as a result of her perception of her inability to interact “normally” in society. Through a detailed character analysis of Justine, I have shown that, at first glance, S/M behavior appears to be a traumatic symptom. However, in her adulthood, S/M becomes a means through which she can confront her traumatic emotions. As Justine is not totally conscious of her own behavior, she resorts to taking risks and ends up in a dangerous situation. Gaitskill, thus, offers a friendship involving the safety, protection, and emotional intimacy that both girls need and desire as a possible source of healing/recovery. For Schapiro, Gaitskill’s “characters may be sexually stimulated by the sadomasochistic relationship, but they are never emotionally fulfilled or freed by it.”117 It may seem that this describes Justine’s experiences with S/M in this novel. However, I disagree with applying such a bold statement to Gaitskill’s whole oeuvre. In the following chapter I will look more in depth at a few other short stories of Gaitskill’s and through reference to other sources I hope to further assess whether sadomasochistic relationships can be liberating and a meaningful form of intimacy, even if the emotions are not wholly reciprocal.
117 Schapiro, p. 47.
60 CHAPTER THREE: ROLE-PLAY AND ROLE-REVERSAL
III.1 INTRODUCTION
In the second chapter, through an analysis of the connection between sadomasochism and trauma, I have discovered the tension which Gaitskill creates around sadomasochistic practices. On the one hand, these acts appear to offer liberation and intimacy to the practitioners. On the other hand, engaging in sadomasochistic behavior can cause the opposite by, for example, further contributing to one’s sense of isolation. As previously stated, Schapiro does not believe that a sadomasochistic relationship could be potentially positive and liberating for Gaitskill’s characters. Her opinion, however, is formed by a reading of a few of Gaitskill’s works from a trauma theoretical point of view. The purpose of this chapter will be to present both the positive and, what could be perceived as, the negative effects of role-playing for Gaitskill’s characters. I will treat the possible motivations for engaging in role-play and the attraction thereof for different characters. The first story that will be analyzed, entitled “The Blanket” (BTWT, 89-101), deals more with the aspects of power and control within relationships. The following story, “The Wrong Thing” (BTWT, 189-254), contains acts of role-playing, as well, but focuses more on the tension between the fantasy aspect of role-playing and reality. Therefore, the range of discussion will not be restricted to role-play, but will also encompass the difficulty of gaining access to the self. In both stories, one is further confronted with the concept of role-reversal, which I will also return to in the following chapter on power in society.
III.2 PLAYING WITH POWER IN “THE BLANKET”
In “The Blanket,” role-playing appears to lead to a form of emotional liberation and intimacy for both partners in the depicted relationship. This story is not without the usual complexities which are often present in Gaitskill’s work, yet, it does appear to end on a positive note, leaving the reader with the hope that the relationship could possibly be
61 successful. The story centers on the sexual relationship between Valerie, a 36-year-old woman, who has not had a sexual relationship for two years, and Michael, a young man of 24 years. In this story, one does not bear witness to the raw, sadomasochistic activities that Gaitskill portrayed in TGFT. The reader is, however, exposed to role-playing, a salient feature of most S/M relationships. According to the definition in the dictionary The Language of Sadomasochism: A Glossary and Linguistic Analysis, to role play means to “[a]ct out various sadomasochistic fantasies, including domination, various fetishes, the arts, etc.” and a role set is defined as a “[p]air of characters agreed to be role-played by a dominant and submissive in a scenario; such pairs typically include teacher/student, kidnapper/victim, rapist/victim, master/slave, and guardian/child.”118 In addition, Thomsen defines “SM [as] […] a consensual sexual act involving the dynamics of control, role-play, and power differentials, and for some it can also include bondage and/or pain […].”119 Based upon these definitions, although Michael and Valerie do not experiment with bondage and physical pain and, instead, choose to limit their activities to the playing with power,120 one can characterize their relationship as a sadomasochistic one. Very early on in their relationship, Valerie broaches the subject of role-playing, or “[a]ct[ing] out fantasies” (BTWT, 90) to Michael. As the idea is originally Valerie’s, who is also the older partner, she could also be viewed as more experienced and the one with the most control. It is not revealed in the story, but quite possible that Valerie has engaged in role-playing in her previous relationships. Her desire to embark on these sexual adventures with Michael and her satisfaction with the results, consequently leads me to believe that she prefers this type of sex. Initially, Michael finds “[t]he idea […] a little embarrassing, yet it also intrigued him; under the cheesy assurance of it, he felt her vulnerability, hidden and palpitant” (BTWT, 90). It is plausible that Valerie, as a woman, does not want to succumb to the typical submissive role held by women in heterosexual relationships. Perhaps she is drawn to role-playing, because both partners can be viewed as equals, both outside of, as well as within the frame of role-play, for there are many possibilities of roles to choose from, both dominant and submissive. Valerie occasionally desires to surrender to Michael, yet only in the safe arena of a role-play, which implies that in the reality of the relationship itself she does not have to completely relinquish her control. In addition, the fact that they experiment with
118 Murray and Murrel, The Language of Sadomasochism, p. 115. 119 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 6. 120 Bersani, Homos, p. 91.
62 different role sets, in which both partners fill the passive role at one time or another, informs one of the importance of role-reversibility for Valerie.
She would be a slutty teenager who’s secretly hoping for love, and he would be the smug prick who exploits her. He would be the coarse little gym teacher trying to persuade the svelte English teacher to let him go down on her after the PTA cocktail party. She would be a rude girl with no panties flaunting herself before an anxious student in the library. (BTWT, 90)
In the above quote, one is confronted with a shifting of power between Valerie and Michael. At first glance, in the first scenario Michael would be more in control, while in the second example, Valerie would possess more power. In the third fantasy, it appears that Valerie would exercise the power of her own sexuality through the performance of her role. This list of role sets is, thus, not insignificant, as it reflects diverse fantasies and points to another prominent aspect of sadomasochism: the reversibility of roles. Neither character is permanently dominant or submissive in play or in reality. Furthermore, with regard to the most powerful or most dominant role, it is worth nothing that within each of the separate fantasies given above, there exists plenty of room for nuance. Thus, I would argue that, during the actual enactment of the fantasy, rather than the amount of control being fixed, each role would possess a shifting degree of control. In his studies on sadomasochism, Thomas S. Weinberg has investigated the importance of fantasy and theatricality in S/M.121 Considering that sadomasochism relies so heavily on fantasy, one can define S/M play itself as the creation of another world by the partners involved. In the same vein, Thomsen remarks upon the “suspension of reality” that lies at the heart of sadomasochistic play.122 Weinberg also refers to Erving Goffman and his theory on frameworks. Goffman suggests that there are several different types of frameworks in society, which help one to interpret certain situations and which inform one of the correct language, behavior, etc. to employ. Weinberg maintains that Goffman’s theatrical frame can be applied to S/M play, including instances of role-play. The theatrical frame reveals, thus, the illusion of e.g. danger in S/M play. It also gives the participants themselves the sense of having more control over their lives and/or society, in that they can construct a story with a satisfying outcome. When role-playing, one is allowed to “‘play the world backwards,’ that is, to arrange now for some things to work out later that ordinarily would be out of anyone’s
121 Weinberg, “Sadism and Masochism: Sociological Perspectives”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, pp. 127-35. 122 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 70.
63 control and a matter of fate or chance.”123 With regard to the reversibility of roles, Goffman maintains that the shifting of power between participants can “result[] in a mixing up of the dominance order found among the players” and can consequently lead to a confirmation or subversion of power relations in reality.124 Weinberg states further that “[w]ithin a fantasy scene, traditional sex roles may be reversed without threatening the participants, if it is defined as ‘just make-believe.’”125
Michael pretended to be a sleazy boss dropping in on an unsuspecting housewife just after her naive husband has left for work. The boss was a terrible malefactor, but in the haven of fantasy, he was safely confined to her script. There was great drama as the poor housewife struggled to resist him, but to no avail: Valerie opened her eyes just in time to be a little startled by the look of almost demented malice on Michael’s young face as he ejaculated across her mouth and nose. […] He sat in his boxer shorts, with his long legs spread, exuding succulent boyness just faintly shaded with dim, inchoate cruelty. (BTWT, 93, my emphasis – A.V.)
This is an example of one of their scenarios, in which Michael takes on the dominant role. The Language of Sadomasochism defines scenario as “a script of events or activities previously negotiated and agreed upon and then followed by all participants.”126 The roles depicted could possibly be read as a confirmation of gender roles in society. Since Michael’s role is also to some extent a caricature of society, as it plays with the idea of a stereotypical tyrannical boss who not only has power over his male employees, but also their spouses, I believe that Gaitskill is also trying to present role-playing as one of the possible ways in which people can undermine typical power structures. One sees clearly the element of fantasy in this scene and realizes that Valerie does not condone typical sex roles, especially extremely dominant males who abuse their authority. Yet, she feels at ease, because they are only pretending and she has control as well, in that she helped construct the fantasy. Michael does appear to enjoy dominating Valerie during their sexual play, but, in reality, he treats her respectably and appears to feel more comfortable with her having slightly more power in the relationship. However, in this passage, Valerie perceives certain characteristics of Michael’s role in his real self, after the game has been terminated. Perhaps this is part of her imagination, or only remnants of the role that have not yet been released by Michael. At first, Valerie views the relationship as a strictly sexual one, even though she begins to develop stronger feelings for Michael, which seem to extend beyond the bedroom. Perhaps
123 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. Quoted in Weinberg “Sadism and Masochism”, p. 129. 124 Goffman, Frame Analysis. Quoted in Weinberg “Sadism and Masochism”, p. 131. 125 Weinberg, “Sadism and Masochism”, pp. 131-32. 126 Murray and Murrel, The Language of Sadomasochism, p. 119.
64 the influence of social norms regarding age differences in relationships leads her to believe that they could not really make a serious couple. In a discussion with a friend of hers, she attempts to explain the situation:
“We are involved, in a profound, sexually spiritual way. But we’re not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend.” “But you like it when he calls you his girlfriend.” “I do. […] It’s like another version of the slutty-teenager fantasy. It’s real, but only in the erotic realm. I mean, we have feelings for each other, but they can’t be permanent.” (BTWT, 91)
In addition, her explanation is perhaps intended to achieve more insight, for herself, on the relationship. She seems in need of gaining a grip on her own insecurities, as she expresses doubt, and contradicts herself. Valerie attempts to refute any emotional involvement by likening her feelings to their role-play fantasies, thus, defining them as illusory, but her emotions already appear too real. Michael is a bartender, but is also a member of a rock band. At one point in the story, this group gets a gig in another state. After their show, a young woman tries to seduce Michael into going to bed with her. Michael surprisingly rejects her by telling her that he is “in love with this girl in San Francisco” (BTWT, 92). Significant in this episode is of course his admittance of his love for Valerie, as well as his reference to a “girl” instead of a woman. I believe that one could read this as proof that he views Valerie as his peer, or equal, in their relationship, and that he does not necessarily think of her as a woman 12 years older than himself. Valerie’s level of sexual playfulness may also be a weighty factor in the forming of this perception of her. When he returns home and tells Valerie of his experience they
had sex while imagining a heartless scene between Michael and the Seattle girl he’d rejected. About halfway through the fantasy, Valerie stopped being a bystander and became the poor girl. She pleaded with him to fuck her, but when he did, she felt a terrible rush of emotional pain that shocked her into tears. Mistaking her shudders for excitement, he became too rough, and she cried out for him to stop. They separated and Valerie turned on her side, just in time to see Michael’s expression of impersonal cruelty devolve into confusion and injury. He clasped her wet face in his hands. “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t mean it . . .” They started again and she cried more, but she didn’t want to stop. (BTWT, 94)
Here, the role-playing becomes more intensified than usual, and it could appear that the fantasy has become too powerful for Valerie, as she is too involved in her character. This passage also demonstrates Michael’s concern and love for her. She, however, seems to perceive “Michael’s expression of impersonal cruelty” as directed towards her, personally, and not just an element of the game, for she equates herself with the Seattle girl. Therefore,
65 she is momentarily unable to comprehend that Michael is acting out another role. Perhaps the role-play transcends the boundaries of the theatrical frame this time, because Michael, while playing the role of himself, reveals to Valerie another side of himself. In his mind, he is having meaningless sex with someone he finds insignificant. Weinberg mentions that “[b]y taking a role which is not ‘really’ his ‘own,’ the individual reinforces the definition of the situation as ‘play,’ ‘make-believe,’ ‘fantasy,’ and the like.” 127 The problem here can perhaps be attributed to Michael’s role, which lends the role-play a too realistic quality. I believe that one could read the last sentence of the passage above in two ways. After the break in their intercourse, it appears as if they continue to make love as their real selves. However, another possible interpretation is that, as a result of the fantasy, the role of the rejected Seattle girl has formed a part of Valerie’s real self. Perhaps Valerie’s error of partially becoming the Seattle girl has actually heightened the emotional intensity for both partners. The following day, the experience seems to have been too extreme for Valerie, and she suggests they take a break for a while. She may feel that the sexual side of their relationship is getting out of control. Valerie also struggles with Michael having more control in and out of their role-play scenarios. It appears that she does not want to be reduced to feeling totally vulnerable when with him, which happened in their last role-playing session. “She was older than he was! Their fantasy life was her idea!” (BTWT, 95) The story takes a twist, which is reminiscent of TGFT and other stories by Gaitskill that combine sadomasochistic behavior and sexual trauma (cf. chapter two). Valerie reveals to Michael that she was raped in the past. This confession results in a misunderstanding and a failed connection, as Michael is intrigued and aroused by her story. He proceeds to compare it to their sexual role-play scenarios. Valerie’s confession eventually leads to a foolish act on Michael’s part. Without communicating his wishes to Valerie or discussing his plan with her first, which is one of the most important rules in sadomasochistic play, he attempts to instigate a fantasy scenario that consists of the rapist in the dominant role, and the rape victim in the submissive role. Michael proceeds to drive Valerie out to a deserted road, but she is quickly on to him and becomes thoroughly frightened. She must also feel offended, as he has misunderstood her and has perceived her story as an invitation. The emotional attunement that was previously present between the two has broken down, because Michael fails to grasp that this incident from Valerie’s past was an unpleasant, painful experience and, instead, likens it to a fantasy.
127 Weinberg, “Sadism and Masochism”, pp. 133-34.
66 Michael is surprised and shocked by Valerie’s frightened reaction, which is tinged with anger. She prepares to defend herself against Michael’s possible “attack.” He definitely has no intention of actually hurting her, and probably views her behavior as overreactive. He realizes that rape itself is a terrible thing, but their previous role-playing sessions have led him into confusion.
“I don’t think I can see you anymore,” said Valerie finally. “This was just too awful.” “Too awful? What was too awful? Nothing happened! I was only playing, I wasn’t going to do anything if you didn’t want it.” “You already did something I didn’t want.” She shoved open the car door and stepped out onto the pavement, then spun back on the first step. “What do you think? You spoiled, stupid, ignorant little shit! I tell you I don’t want to fuck, I tell you about being raped, and you set up a rape fantasy? What’s wrong with you!” “I was just doing what we do all the time.” “It’s not the same!” But his quiet, injured voice had interrupted her anger, and besides what he said was true. She sat in the car and stared at the sidewalk. She abandoned her anger. “You were disrespecting me,” she said quietly. “For real.” (BTWT, 99)
Valerie was prepared to end the relationship after this incident, yet, she understands that she is perhaps partially at fault for his confusion and forgives him, to a certain extent, by letting her anger subside. She still expresses uncertainty about the future of their relationship, and blames his behavior on his being from another generation and raised with different morals. However, Michael in turn feels wounded by her reaction and, perhaps surprisingly, Valerie professes her love to him. The fact that Michael’s love for Valerie, which he admitted to the Seattle girl, turns out to be reciprocal, perks Michael up, and he seems to feel remorse for disrespecting Valerie. Michael eventually convinces Valerie to allow him to stay the night with her; he will be away for a week on a tour with his band and wishes to spend this last night with her, especially now after they have confessed their love for each other. To put her at ease, he offers to sleep on the living room floor, so as to prove that he is not just interested in the sexual aspect of their relationship. Valerie replies:
“That’s ridiculous. It would be much too uncomfortable. […] You can sleep on the bed, but you have to wear your clothes and stay outside the blankets.” She felt like a little girl with a rhinestone tiara on her head. She waved her plastic scepter. “You have to promise.” (BTWT, 100)
Valerie’s mental image of a girl pretending to be a princess signifies that she feels she has regained her power over Michael. I have further interpreted Valerie’s rape confession as a hint as to why she enjoys or prefers to role-play during sex. Perhaps she does not want to find herself in a position with a man where she is too vulnerable and could be taken advantage of. With the scripting of and
67 acting out of certain fantasies in role-play sessions, Valerie retains control over the situation, even if she chooses to perform a submissive role. In her doctoral thesis, Thomsen discusses the factors which are imperative for creating a safe environment for S/M play. Incorporation of these factors into a relationship and/or scene ensures that, rather than being powerless, the submissive is regarded as an equal. In many ways, the masochist actually can be perceived as having more control over the dominant, because he/she must make clear what his/her limits are. Additionally, because S/M play can be potentially dangerous, regarding the infliction of pain, the masochist has a safety net in the form of a “safe word,” which can be expressed by the masochist in order to halt or temporarily slow down the present activities.128 The Language of Sadomasochism defines safe word as a “[w]ord which, when uttered […], lets the sadist know that the masochist has reached his or her limits of pain or believes that things are generally getting out of hand and wants to stop.”129 As the reader has witnessed in this story, the masochist’s limits are not necessarily restricted to physical pain. Considering Valerie’s experience of violation in the form of rape, she has no desire to engage in a role- play fantasy which deals with that subject, as it would invade her boundaries of psychological pain. In the following chapter I will delve deeper into the questions surrounding power and control in sadomasochism, including the question of which role in a sadomasochistic pair has more control. I would argue that one could even perceive the final passage of this story as a form of role-play, which does not involve any sexual activity. I view Michael as initially being in the submissive role and Valerie as taking on the dominant role. They are both, however, “playing” themselves - that is, they are not assuming some fantasy persona.
He was cold to the bone by now, but he didn’t move even to shut the window. He was respecting her. “Michael? […] What’s wrong? You’re shaking so - oh, you’re cold! Come under the blanket!” “It’s all right. I said I would stay outside the blanket and I will.” “Don’t be silly. Come under the covers.” She lifted the blankets, greeting him with her warmth and smell. “Come on. You’ll get sick or something.” He hesitated, drawing out the moment. “Don’t you . . .” She faltered. “Don’t you want to?” “Yes,” he said. “I want to.” And he did. (BTWT, 101)
Michael is respecting the power that Valerie has, and is enjoying his punishment. He wants to keep his word and comply with Valerie’s wishes. The conversation they had about him spending the night could be read as their script or the rules they agreed upon beforehand. Significant here, with regard to the theory that the submissive or the masochist has just as
128 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 9. 129 Murray and Murrell, The Language of Sadomasochism, p. 118.
68 much, if not more, control than the dominant or the sadist, is that Michael hesitates before obeying what could be interpreted as Valerie’s command. He is perhaps enjoying this painful moment as well as the satisfaction he gets by playfully teasing her. Once again, Gaitskill has created an open ending that could be understood in another manner. If one looks more closely at the dialogue, one will notice Valerie’s faltering as a result of Michael’s hesitation. This possibly reveals her own insecurities with regard to his rejecting her. Michael may not want to surrender so easily, and his actions allow him to reclaim some of his power and, at the same time, to demonstrate his ability to wield this power. Regarding the title of this story, I believe that the blanket, which plays an important role in the conclusion, signifies their relationship. In Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary, a blanket is seen to represent “comfort” and/or “security.”130 Thus, one can interpret that Valerie feels safe and secure when she has the power and control in the relationship, i.e. when she is the only one sleeping underneath the blanket. During this scene, Michael willingly obeys her command to remain outside of the blanket, which could also signify his relinquishing his power to Valerie. As Valerie also enjoys submitting and abandoning control as long as she is in a safe environment, she, therefore, ends up inviting him inside the blanket. The blanket, thus, symbolizes the safe arena they create together in which they are free to explore and play with power. Valerie, then, offers Michael the choice to rejoin her in a relationship in which the power will be equally shared; no single partner will remain in the dominant position. In conclusion, “The Blanket” is one of Gaitskill’s stories in which the characters achieve something positive through their act of role-playing. The characters have solved their misunderstanding and they discover comfort in their relationship and achieve mutual respect in the final scene. However, the practice of role-playing could also be perceived as a way to remain distant or to hide one’s real self from the other partner. By playing a role, one may appear less authentic and one’s real personality may be harder to pin down for the other, as the acting out of different roles can lead to the fragmentation of one’s self. In this story, we have seen how both Valerie and Michael appear to internalize parts of the roles that they play, and that these fragments may, perhaps only temporarily, become part of their real selves. For example, this occurs with Valerie during the fantasy about the rejected girl. Also, Michael may have internalized some of the cruel characteristics of some of his roles, which perhaps leads him to set up the rape fantasy. And yet, in the end, this does not seem to pose a problem
130 Steven Olderr, Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary, Jefferson: McFarland, 1986, p. 13.
69 for the characters. However, in the next section of this chapter I will investigate another story of Gaitskill’s in which the dichotomy of authentic and inauthentic proves to be problematic, for at least one of the characters.
III.3 “THE WRONG THING”
The story which was contrasted with “The Blanket” at the end of the previous section, entitled “The Wrong Thing” (BTWT, 189-254), consists of four short stories: “Turgor,” “Respect,” “Processing,” and “Stuff.” All these stories center on the main character, Susan, who is also the first-person narrator, and each story focuses on a different incident in her life. “Processing” and “Stuff,” which will be the area of concern for the remainder of this chapter, relate Susan’s sexual relationship and friendship with Erin, a lesbian. This relationship includes aspects of sadomasochism and role-playing. First, I would like to look at how role- playing is presented and how each of the characters reacts to this practice. I will also focus on the sharp contrast between each partners’ attraction to role-play. The presence of role-play in this story differs from that in “The Blanket,” in that Susan perceives role-playing as problematic in achieving authentic emotional intimacy with Erin. In A Future for Astyanax, Bersani wrote that “the desires of other people have a kind of decentering effect on their personalities which frustrates our attempts to know them.”131 This futility of gaining pure knowledge of the other is often expressed in Gaitskill’s prose. In “The Wrong Thing,” this forms the main obstacle for Susan in cultivating an authentic and satisfactory relationship with Erin, or perhaps anyone.
Personality and perhaps even gender provide fragile identities which desire easily disrupts. Desire makes being problematic; the notion of a coherent and unified self is threatened by the discontinuous, logically incompatible images of a desiring imagination.132
In these two stories, Susan struggles with understanding what she perceives as Erin’s inescapable desire to engage in sadomasochistic sex, which includes elements of role-playing, humiliation, cruelty, aggression, and some pain. Susan is both attracted to and repelled by this “dense, insensible neediness that rose through [Erin] in a gross howl, momentarily shouting out whatever else her body had to say” (BTWT, 211).
131 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 84. 132 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 84.
70 On “The Wrong Thing” Schapiro wrote, regarding role-playing, that “Gaitskill’s fiction suggests the enactment of sadomasochistic fantasy, rooted in trauma, is ultimately futile, for it can never lead to the nourishment, the genuine recognition of self and other that is unconsciously sought.”133 Schapiro, thus, connects Erin’s desire for S/M with trauma. She views Erin as “unable to escape her need to enact the fantasies,” 134 as a symptom of trauma. The information given in the story does not reveal whether Erin has undergone any sexual trauma and, therefore, I find it difficult to completely agree with Schapiro. It appears that through a strictly trauma theoretical point of view, Schapiro has become somewhat shortsighted with regard to the presence of dualities and multiple meanings in the fiction of Gaitskill. She does note, however, that “sadomasochistic fantasies […] are not the whole story. These fantasies are constantly in tension with opposing desires, feelings, and self- states.”135 I completely agree and this will subsequently become clearer. However, a similar statement could be applied to trauma. As I have already shown, a limited scope does not do justice to the diversity and multiplicity that are characteristic of Gaitskill’s prose. Schapiro has discovered these aspects,136 but in my opinion she has not fully explored them. It appears that Schapiro views many of Gaitskill’s characters as victims, because she has created several who harbor a traumatic past. Nevertheless, I do not feel it is correct to make such assumptions or generalizations, especially considering the fact that the personalities of Gaitskill’s trauma sufferers are presented as being affected by so many other factors besides trauma. It appears that Gaitskill is trying to reveal the dualities inherent in human behavior and psychology as well as the complexities of personality. It is no wonder, then, that she focuses for the most part on the social and intimate interactions between people. Through reading Gaitskill, one gets the impression that sexual intimacy is the most revealing, yet, at the same time, most obscuring form of human connection. During a panel discussion, “The Sexual Body,” at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference, Gaitskill expressed her understanding of how sexual acts, in a complex fashion, affect the participants. She views the psychological awareness of participants during sexual intercourse as shifting through multiple states or levels. On the basic level sex is a blunt physicality, while on the second level, one becomes increasingly mentally alert and aware of the actual act. On the following level, which appears to be in opposition to the previous, Gaitskill describes one’s mental state as
133 Schapiro, p. 48. 134 Schapiro, p. 48. 135 Schapiro, p. 50. 136 Schapiro, p. 51.
71 irrational. At this moment, one’s true personality is expressed most strongly, but is also erased.137 I believe that in this story, Gaitskill evokes the tension which arises due to these diverse mental states, as Susan seems to notice Erin’s shifting selves when making love to her. Susan initially blames this on their role-play scenario. However, Erin’s identity remains elusive, which only leads Susan further into frustration. Susan struggles with understanding Erin’s need to role-play and engage in S/M and it appears, thus, that Susan does not achieve the kind of emotional satisfaction she would like from a relationship that incorporates sadomasochistic behavior. She has a rather ambivalent attitude towards this type of sex, but also relationships in general. For example, at the very beginning of this short story, in “Turgor,” Susan reveals to a store clerk that she has “‘deep longings that will never be satisfied.’” Later, she explains: “It’s the kind of thing that I enjoy saying at the moment but that has a nasty reverb. I want it to be a joke, but I’m afraid it’s not” (BTWT, 191). It seems that Susan’s personality bars her from receiving total enjoyment from her relationship with Erin. Susan harbors conflicting desires, as she is looking for an authentic relationship without power games and fantasies with Erin, yet, she continues to be involved in relationships in which these activities occur. It appears that she is constantly pursuing “the wrong thing.” With reference to Erin’s need, Susan’s confused thoughts are rather telling: “[I]t was the need that pulled me toward her. Not because I imagined satisfying it - I didn’t think that was possible - but because I wanted to rub against it, to put my hand on it, to comfort it. Actually, I wasn’t sure what I wanted with it” (BTWT, 211, my emphasis – A.V.). In addition, although Susan appears slightly bored or disappointed with S/M sex and role-playing, she continues to make comments about the lifestyle and ends up in such a relationship with Erin, who still seems to be testing out her own limits in and exploring S/M. For example, while at a party, Susan makes a statement which seems to be taken as an invitation or hint by Erin: “‘One should always maintain a few shreds of honor, […] [i]n order to give people something to violate’” (BTWT, 209). Upon meeting Erin, Susan does try to clarify what she is seeking in terms of a relationship, but it appears that Erin’s attraction to S/M play sweeps her along.
[S]he sometimes described herself as a “butch bottom” but lately she was questioning how accurate that was. I told her I was sick of categories like butch bottom and femme top or vice versa. I said I was looking for something more genuine, although I
137 Mary Gaitskill, “The Sexual Body,” a panel discussion held on March 30, 2007 at the University of North Dakota Writer’s Conference in Grand Forks, North Dakota. [Notes obtained through email from David Joseph Jameson, who attended the discussion. Address: [email protected]]
72 didn’t know yet what it was. She said she thought she probably was too.” (BTWT, 210)
This turns out not to be what Erin wants, however. During their first night together, Erin initiates a role-play scenario based upon an event that had transpired between Susan and young man, which she had previously related to Erin.138 Susan had met the man at a party and brought him home with her - note the similarity with Erin - and had performed oral sex on him. Susan had actually possessed quite a bit of control in this heterosexual episode. For example, she was the one who initiated the oral sex, who told him to have sex with her, and who then changed her mind about intercourse. When Erin enters Susan’s apartment, she says: “‘Do I get to be the bad boy? Are you gonna suck my cock?’” (BTWT, 212), thus initiating a role-play session in which she plays the role of a rough dominant, by slapping Susan and giving her orders. The following day, Susan is confronted with complex feelings about Erin and the activities of the previous night. Her memory of the experience “felt both safe and cruelly stifling” (BTWT, 213). Her thoughts on Erin were “like a smell that is both endearing and faintly embarrassing” (BTWT, 213). Susan realizes how the act of role-playing caused her to view Erin as “split in two” (BTWT, 213), which consequently leads to her discordant emotions. She finds her memory of the experience both appealing and disappointing. On their second date, the two women discuss role-playing. Susan expresses her desire for something more real. She finds the structured roles too “mechanical” and “not deep” (BTWT, 214). Although Erin agrees that they should be themselves in their relationship, she is clearly hurt by Susan’s perception of their role-play as inauthentic. She expresses her experience of the role-play session as extremely intense, as it was one of the first times that she performed a dominant role. After they agree to begin anew by trying to just be their “real selves” and by excluding role-play, Susan ends up even more confused. Perhaps this proves the futility of trying to be oneself. There are too many facets to one’s personality and the interaction with the other will determine which aspects will more dominantly be revealed. As previously stated by Bersani, the desire of an other can affect one’s self and lead to certain states, such as jealousy. One’s own desire can conflict with one’s self and lead to the fragmentation of the self. “Desire makes being problematic; the notion of a coherent and unified self is threatened by the discontinuous, logically incompatible images of a desiring imagination.”139 During their lovemaking session as themselves, Susan is confronted with a feeling of dissociation from
138 The actual incident appears in the story “Turgor,” pp. 194-200. 139 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 84.
73 Erin. The incident also includes intense moments that incorporate violence, which once again draw a dualistic reaction from Susan:
She slapped me and she pulled my hair – but she demanded that I beat her between her shoulder blades. And when I did she whispered “thank you,” her face transfigured with sorrow so abject that I was for one violent second absolutely repelled, and then drawn back with equal violence. (BTWT, 217)
With regard to “Processing,” Love states that “the characters struggle to discern between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ in their emotional lives.”140 Susan appears to be preoccupied with this, not only with regard to Erin, but also with the other characters who appear in “The Wrong Thing.” The fact that she cannot grasp who Erin really is, leads to the fizzling out of their sexual relationship. “What I saw in front of me and what I had imagined both seemed real, yet one seemed to have nothing to do with the other. I was appalled to realize that I didn’t want to see her again” (BTWT, 223). During their last act of lovemaking before they break-up as lovers, Susan is even more bewildered by the multiplicity of Erin:
I kissed her to locate her, but it was no good; she was all in fragments. […] Inwardly, I rushed forward, trying to engage her, to find one tiny place we could wiggle around in together. She flew by me in an electrical storm. She had discovered that I didn’t want her, but she was ignoring her discovery. Without knowing why, I ignored it too. I rifled my memories of her, all her different faces; none of them stayed with me. (BTWT, 223)
What makes the relationship difficult, if not impossible, for Susan to continue is her denial of the multiplicity of the self. According to Bersani: “The self in psychoanalytical interpretation is not a personality; it is a succession, or the simultaneous presence, of experimental, partial identities.”141 Susan is unable to accept all of these different fragments which make up Erin’s personality as Erin’s real self. A scene in which they make love, expresses these various selves:
[Erin] would veer away, immersing herself in some internal personality that didn’t know or care about me. She was a nasty teenaged boy, she was a silly kid, she was a full, deep woman all the way down to her private organs. (BTWT, 216-17)
Susan also avoids coming to terms with the multiplicity of her own self, which Erin notes before she leaves after their final, failed attempt to have sex. “‘[Y]ou seem so vulnerable […]. You say you want to be real. But you don’t. Not really’” (BTWT, 224).
140 Love, p. 6. 141 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 168.
74 Love maintains that “[f]or Gaitskill, the self is not fixed but is always in process”142, which I, along with Bersani, agree with. It is interesting to note a parallel with, on the one hand, what both Bersani and Love suggest about the self and, on the other hand, one of the topics of the story, i.e. the futility of achieving concrete knowledge about one’s self and an other self. This parallel occurs within the story itself. Susan is at a reception and one of her colleagues expresses his disgust for people who, through therapy, seek answers about themselves: “‘They talk about ‘really getting to know themselves,’ […]. As if any of us can know ourselves, as if any of us can ever explain the brutality of sex’” (BTWT, 229). Not only does Susan struggles with attempting to understand Erin’s multiplicitous self and her desires which motivate her behavior, but Susan also feels disenchanted that she cannot form a coherent perception of who she herself really is (cf. her own conflicting thoughts and desires). The fact that the self is always changing, Love suggests, “might facilitate self- invention and exploration, [however,] it also complicates any attempt to locate concrete knowledge and transparent feeling.”143 Erin, on the other hand, appears to be on the path of exploring her sexuality and discovering her self and is not too concerned about gaining absolute knowledge about the other. For example, Erin became at one point the “slave” of a heterosexual couple, something she enjoyed for a while. Also, after she stops dating Susan, Erin acquires a new girlfriend who takes on the dominant role and with whom she can role- play. After this relationship ends dramatically, Erin seeks out “‘somebody to hurt me and humiliate me’” (BTWT, 244) and proceeds to meet with a German dominatrix who specializes in cutting. Susan perceives Erin’s interest in a sadomasochistic lifestyle as some inescapable urge and not necessarily an element of her sexual identity. She longs to comfort Erin and eliminate the pain which she perceives as the root of Erin’s “destructive” behavior. Susan eventually expresses her concern to Erin: “‘I’ve done it and it’s . . .it’s human and everything. But it’s like you want that stuff because you think you deserve it. And you don’t. You just don’t’” (BTWT, 251-52). Erin’s reply seems to affirm that Susan’s thoughts about Erin’s neediness may just have been projections on the part of Susan:144 “‘you’re so sweet I just want to tie you up and torture you. But that stuff is what gets me off. It’s not about self-hate or anything icky. It just gets me off’” (BTWT, 252). Perhaps the age difference, though not too large, could help to explain this misunderstanding, as Susan is 39 and Erin is 32. Susan has most likely been approximately where Erin is at present, in her past. She reveals in the
142 Love, p. 7. 143 Love, p. 7. 144 Cf. Love who notes that “Erin’s real and unreal aspects are to some degree both created by Susan’s perceptions and bound up in Erin’s numerous self-inventions.” p. 7.
75 story that she has experienced S/M and also been in abusive relationships. Perhaps at that time she was subconsciously searching for her “real” self, and as she got older, the search became more and more conscious. Love suggests that
[t]here is ample confusion in ‘Processing’ about how to recognize or reach any real self, emotion or sexuality. Thus, at one point, Susan realizes that the real and unreal, or authentic and artificial, aspects of the self resist classification mainly because they in fact constitute the self […].145
Susan notices that at certain moments when she is together with Erin that she
felt disgruntled and ashamed of myself. […] I was aware that I was offering her only a superficial tidbit of myself, a tidbit tricked out to look substantial. […] [P]erhaps it was not fair to call her behavior dishonest, since she was so used to it that to her it felt true. (BTWT, 221)
Despite the fact that Susan reaches this deep realization, the sexual relationship appears to be doomed as “Susan expects her struggle to contact the ‘real’ aspects of the self to succeed, thereby validating her relationship with Erin, despite her own inability to access her own ‘real’ emotions and identity.”146 Susan ends up failing in her search, which is partially the reason why she feels the need to stop the relationship. Gaining access to one’s multiple selves as well as the many fragments of an other’s self appears to be futile. Not only “The Wrong Thing,” but also most of Gaitskill’s prose demonstrates this fact, which is also maintained in psychoanalytical theory. Bersani, for example, discusses in A Future for Astyanax
the mirror as a metaphor for the inaccessibility of one’s possible selves to one’s present consciousness. It is a spatial representation of an intuition that our being can never be adequately enclosed within any present formulation – any formulation here and now – of our being. It is as if the experience of perceiving ourselves elsewhere suggested the possibility of our becoming something else. Mirrors represent as a phenomenon of distance our capacity for unpredictable metamorphoses. 147
The identities of Gaitskill’s characters are never fixed, and it is through their relationships with others that they appear to exist. Interactions with others, however, imply a confrontation with another’s desires and self, which impacts one in such a way as to render one’s perception of the self as intangible.
145 Love, p. 7. 146 Love, p. 8. 147 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 208.
76 Despite the failure of Susan and Erin’s relationship, they remain friends and the end of the story seems once again to be positive, as Susan appears to have a revelation. She is in Erin’s garden, at night, along with Erin and their other friends.
For a moment I felt I was in a limbo of shadows and half-formed shapes which would dissolve into nothingness if I touched them. I felt loneliness so strong it scared me. Then Jana laughed and Erin brushed by me, thoughtlessly caressing my spine with one hand. I was in a garden with my friends. I could not fully see what lay about me, but still, I knew it was there, abundant, breathing, and calm. (BTWT, 254)
Especially the last sentence seems to reveal that Susan has gained some knowledge through her experiences. She has come to accept the fact that she cannot totally grasp the “real” selves of those around her, because they are composed of so many complex and shifting parts, but that the concrete knowledge of who they are is insignificant. What matters is that others, her friends, who she can connect with and, to a certain extent, get to know, surround her. These people are real, whether or not they may sometimes play diverse roles or appear elusive.
III.4 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, I have investigated both the elements of power and control, as well as the tension between fantasy and reality which were all revealed as intrinsic to role-playing. In the analysis of “The Blanket” I have shown how engaging in role-play implies a construction of a fantasy life which exists within the wider scope of the relationship. Within this other world, the participants are free to play with power and perform roles, which they may be excluded from in reality. Gaitskill appears to be offering role-play in relationships as a potential method to share power and achieve equality. However, this is not without a caveat. I would argue that the boundaries of both this fantasy world and one’s identity are not static, as Gaitskill evokes the possibility of the seepage of certain elements from the fantasies into reality. In “The Wrong Thing” S/M, including role-play, appears to be more than just a “suspension of reality.”148 In this story, S/M and role-play are given as the initial obstacle for Susan in achieving authenticity with Erin. However, Susan’s confusion about identity and sexuality extends beyond S/M to relationships with others in general. Perhaps Gaitskill is trying to demonstrate the impossibility of achieving “the genuine recognition of self and
148 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 70.
77 other”149 which her characters attempt to discover through their sexual relations. Schapiro attributed this impossibility to sadomasochism induced by trauma. However, through my analysis, it has become clear that this futility may actually be caused by the multiplicity of the self, which due to the constant shifting of desires and mental states, remains intangible.
149 Schapiro, p. 48.
78 CHAPTER FOUR: POWER IN SOCIETY VERSUS POWER IN S/M
IV.1 INTRODUCTION
I have, thus far, demonstrated the complexity of social and sexual interactions, which is fundamental to Gaitskill’s fiction. Through treating several aspects of the diverse relationships created by Gaitskill in the previous chapters, I believe I have shown both the dualistic nature of the sexual act and of sexuality as well as the multifaceted quality of identity. I have also fleetingly referred to some characters who, mainly unawares, behave under the influence of heterosexual and patriarchal ideologies. In this chapter, I will shed more light on power relations, which appear to be so ingrained in society in general that the structure of dominance and submission in relationships may appear natural. I will be investigating to what extent Gaitskill’s relationships can be seen to confirm or subvert this structure. Considering the predominance of sadomasochistic elements in her fiction and the fact that power and control often perform significant roles in the relationships she creates, one could infer that she believes that a degree of dominance and submission is fundamental to all relationships. In the first section, I will analyze two stories which focus on the structures of power informed by patriarchal ideologies. Both stories could be read as expositions of how men in society validate their right to violate and degrade women through their dominance and authority. A further discussion of the dominant and submissive configuration in society will follow, in which I will investigate what implications sadomasochistic relationships, which incorporate this configuration, have for society, i.e. in parodying this structure, does S/M undermine dominance and submission or further authenticate it? I will also explore, in more detail, the debate about who is actually in control in an S/M configuration, which has arisen in previous chapters. The topic of role-reversibility will also be broached.
79 IV.2 POWER RELATIONS AND IDEOLOGY
Love refers to several of Gaitskill’s works, some of which she suggests deal with “characters who identify with dominant and privileged aspects of society, especially patriarchy and capitalism.”150 The focus of this first section will be on the structures of power relations in society and how patriarchal ideologies appear to naturalize the social constructions of gender roles for men and women. My main aim will be to present how deeply rooted dominance and submission are in Western culture, and how for many this appears normal and acceptable. Sadomasochism, on the other hand, incorporates certain practices in which this structure of dominance and submission is reflected, and yet, no one is effectively hurt or enslaved based upon their gender, race, sexuality, etc.151 However, this fringe practice still remains unacceptable for many. I am partly indebted to Love, whose following statement served as inspiration for the following analyses. She remarks:
Gaitskill’s insightful attention to the workings of power and gender […] often centers on constructions of masculine subjectivity within American patriarchal culture. Gaitskill explores how men negotiate a sense of identity bound up in social privilege that also carries with it an intrinsic violence, which potentially unsettles any attempt at a coherent, if not moral, selfhood. With irony and humor, Gaitskill exposes patriarchal efforts to justify misogyny and control.152
I will be exploring Love’s observation further in the two short stories: “The Secretary” (BB, 131-47) and “The Girl On The Plane” (BTWT, 121-36). Initially, these stories may appear to differ greatly from each other. However, both stories contain incidences of the objectification of women by a dominant male with authority, as well as what, at first glance, could be interpreted as nonconsensual acts of violation. Yet, the intermingling of sadomasochistic practices in the first story complicates a straightforward condemnation of the male protagonist’s – to employ the title of the short story collection in which this story features - “bad behavior.”
150 Love, p. 9. 151 Cf. e.g. Bersani, Homos, and Weinberg, (ed.), S&M. 152 Love, p. 11.
80 IV.2.1 SEXUAL HARASSMENT OR S/M PLAY? “THE SECRETARY”
“The Secretary” is, perhaps, one of Gaitskill’s strangest and most complex stories. Surprisingly enough, this short story was expanded into a screenplay by Erin Cressida Wilson153 and released as a film directed and co-produced by Steven Shainberg in 2002.154 In my opinion, the film does not do justice to Gaitskill’s creation, as the film’s straightforward, romantic premise that the two main characters are soul mates detracts from the ambiguity present in Gaitskill’s original story. The story begins in medias res, when Debby, the first-person narrator, is following a typing course in order to obtain a clerical position, such as that of a secretary. Upon completion of the course, she embarks on a job-hunt with her mother, and receives employment from a lawyer as his personal secretary. Debby shares some of the characteristics which are present in Gaitskill’s trauma survivors, such as Justine and Dorothy from TGFT. Debby appears to be suffering from some type of mental illness or disorder, which has perhaps manifested itself as a result of trauma. However, the story does not present a great many details about her personal life or past and one cannot speculate that Debby’s self-imposed isolation and dissociated personality are symptoms of trauma. The reader never learns Debby’s age, yet, it is safe to assume that she is an adult, due to her employment, despite the fact that she still resides with her parents. When Debby first meets the lawyer for the job interview, she is caught off guard by the sudden physical contact: “He took my hand with an indifferent aggressive snatch. It felt like he could have put his hand through my rib cage, grabbed my heart, squeezed it a little to see how it felt, then let go” (BB, 134). It seems that she recognizes the aggressive and dominant qualities in him, which causes her to feel that he could penetrate through the shield she has built to protect herself from others, and simultaneously discover and expose her. After the interview, he remarks that she is “‘[…] closed up, […] tight […] like a wall’” (BB, 135), which reveals that he is perceptive to this type of passive behavior. He expresses his wish that she should open up and reveal slightly more about herself. This story confronts one with a depiction of sexual harassment in the form of S/M play. Yet, due to Debby’s reaction to the lawyer’s behavior, questions arise regarding such issues as the definition of sexual harassment and consent. One could interpret the lawyer’s behavior as stemming from his decision to attempt to open up Debby in another way,
153 Erin Cressida Wilson and Molly Haskell, Secretary: The Screenplay. 154 Secretary, 2003, author unknown, < www.secretarythemovie.co.uk/html/home.html > (4/4/2007).
81 considering he senses in her personality that she is too fearful to do this of her own accord. The lawyer resorts to punishing Debby for her typing mistakes following her first two weeks in his service. Initially, he just points out the errors to her, scolds her, and makes her retype the document until it is flawless. Over the continuous occurrence of the typing mistakes, Debby perceives that a connection between the lawyer and herself is beginning to form:
Each time, the lawyer’s irritation and disbelief mounted. In addition, I sensed something else growing in him, an intimate tendril creeping from one of his darker areas, nursed on the feeling that he had discovered something about me. (BB, 138)
I believe that this connection is based upon a, perhaps subconscious, recognition or understanding of the other’s psychological nature. Debby appears rather disturbed by the turn of events and fantasizes about meeting with the lawyer so that she could explain herself to him. She fears that he suspects she is purposefully making errors in order to incite his reprimands. One could perhaps interpret Debby as a fallible or unreliable narrator, seeing her social behavior and the fact that she neither defends nor incriminates herself for the reader. Since she keeps her own self and emotions hidden behind a blank façade in her interactions with others, I find that she does the same in her narration of these events. Considering she has recognized certain sadistic characteristics, such as aggression, in what she perceives as the lawyer’s darker side, she is possibly testing him to see how far he will go in his rebuking of her. As the story progresses, it becomes very plausible that she harbors hidden desires for humiliation and punishment. On another occasion, the lawyer invites her into his office and once again discusses Debby’s behavior, i.e. the fact that she is such a complicated and introverted person. He suggests that she open up and talk to him. Debby’s response is quite revealing when looked at in the light of sadomasochism: “‘It’s hard to think of having that kind of discussion with you […]. You have a strong personality and . . .when I encounter a personality like that, I tend to step back because I don’t know how to deal with it’” (BB, 139). That the lawyer is “clearly pleased with this response” (BB, 139) shows his receptiveness to submissive behavior, especially in interaction with someone dominant, which ultimately leads to his violation of her. Debby is really touched by their conversation and as she commits another mistake the following day, one could interpret an ulterior motive in her actions. Perhaps she does this in the hope of having another intimate conversation with him. Instead, the lawyer reacts angrily and punishes her by spanking her repeatedly while she reads the document aloud. “The word ‘humiliation’ came into my mind with such force that it
82 effectively blocked out all other words. Further, I felt the concept it stood for had actually been a major force in my life for quite a while” (BB, 140). In The Language of Sadomasochism, humiliate is defined as: “Deliberately lower the status of the submissive in a sadomasochistic relationship, usually through emotional and/or psychological means; humiliation is the psychological counterpart to physical pain.”155 It appears that Debby enjoys more the humiliating and degrading position she is in, rather than the physical contact and pain. Humiliation is a common practice in S/M play, though some prefer not to engage in it, as some find psychological pain more intense and invasive than physical pain.156 The main purpose thereof is to establish the power and the authority of the sadist.157 It becomes clear that this incident has aroused and excited her, as she becomes preoccupied with what she terms “the thing” (BB, 141) and masturbates repeatedly while fantasizing about it. This pattern of sadomasochistic behavior involving humiliation and discipline continues between Debby and the lawyer. On Debby’s last day of work, instead of spanking her, the lawyer masturbates on Debby. Debby seems horrified by the violation, yet, after his performance, Debby slips into the bathroom to masturbate. She is unable to sleep that night and does not get out of bed in the morning for work. She never calls the lawyer and never returns to work. The following weeks, she lives an extremely lazy life and masturbates obsessively “always thinking about the thing” (BB, 146). A different interpretation, which I have already alluded to, is that one could perceive the lawyer’s behavior as a gross abuse of his power and authority. The story seems to reflect, in an exaggerated manner, the male and female gender roles in patriarchal society. Bersani refers to Monique Wittig, who suggests that “the heterosexual relationship ‘has been the parameter of all hierarchical relations.’”158 In these relations, the male always has the authority, while the female is viewed as subaltern. Further, “the domination of one group by another is a necessary social structure.”159 Perhaps the lawyer has taken advantage of Debby, because through his observation of how meek and passive she is, he came to the conclusion that she would be an easy target. Her behavior and weak demeanor may have reassured any fears he harbored that she would report his behavior to the authorities. It may appear that the lawyer’s violation of Debby was nonconsensual and could, thus, be considered sexual harassment. He does appear to be playing it safe, as he gives Debby orders, thus allowing her
155 Murray and Murrell, The Language of Sadomasochism, p. 84. 156 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, pp. 60-63. 157 Kamel, “Leathersex: Meaningful Aspects of Gay Sadomasochism”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, pp. 234-35. 158 Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays, Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, pp. 42-43. Quoted in Bersani, Homos, p. 38. 159 Bersani, Homos, p. 39.
83 the possibility of refusing him. Since it is her boss, the one who possesses power over his employees, Debby may have indeed feared that any attempt at prevention, aside from quitting, would prove futile. After quitting, Debby receives her paycheck in the mail, the amount of which was “a little over two hundred dollars more than he owed” (BB, 145). This, along with the enclosed note (“I am so sorry for what happened between us. I have realized what a terrible mistake I made with you. I can only hope that you will understand, and that you will not worsen an already unfortunate situation by discussing it with others. All the best.” (BB, 145)), could be read as his attempt to use his authority and money to keep Debby silent. Another incident, which adds weight to the sexual harassment interpretation, is the phone call Debby receives near the end of the story from a journalist looking for “damaging” information on the lawyer (BB, 147), who has decided to run for mayor. Debby reveals nothing, but the fact that the journalist reveals that the lawyer “has an awful reputation” (BB, 147), could point to the possibility that he has committed sexual transgressions in the past. As I have demonstrated, however, it appears that, for whatever reason, Debby thoroughly enjoys her punishments. What may appear as sexual harassment for an uninvolved, outside party, could be perceived very differently by the participants in the activity. The lawyer never seeks her consent, but he seems to have sensed her masochistic side, which may have given him the reassurance that she would gladly accept the violation. Furthermore, the lawyer never touches Debby to force her into a certain position; the only time he touches her - aside from their first meeting when they shake hands - is to spank her. As he commands her to bend over the desk, to read the letter, etc., Debby has the choice of refusal. In addition, when he masturbates on her, he also orders her to bare her behind, while assuring her that he has no intent of raping her. It is especially Debby’s response to the lawyer’s behavior that leads me to the conclusion that this story is a demonstration of Gaitskill’s belief that “‘violation [can be] a form of contact’”160 rather than “a social statement about the evil of jobs and the horror of sexual harassment”161 as some have interpreted it. It appears that the two have formed a psychic and sexual connection and that Debby experiences the discipline and humiliation as a form of intimacy and not necessarily as a sexual assault. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that after the lawyer begins to punish Debby, she experiences recurring dreams about him, one of which she describes as follows:
160 Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard. Cult Fiction: A Reader’s Guide. London: Prion Books, 1998, p. 106. Quoted in Love, p. 2. 161 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 5.
84
I walked with him in a field of big bright red poppies. […] We were smiling at each other, and there was a tremendous sense of release and goodwill between us. He looked at me and said, “I understand you now, Debby.” Then we held hands. (BB, 141-42)
This dream supports an understanding of this story as expressive of an unspoken link between Debby and the lawyer, which entails that their respective dominant and submissive characteristics unavoidably attract the other. It also appears that his acts have broken through her shield and caused her to feel sexual desire as well as emotional tenderness. It is unclear, however, why Debby then chooses not to return to work. Another element to be noted is Debby’s reaction to discovering that the lawyer is running for mayor:
For the first time, I felt an uncomplicated disgust for the lawyer. Westland was nothing but malls and doughnut stands and a big ugly theater with an artificial volcano in the front of it. What kind of idiot would want to be mayor of Westland? (BB, 146, my emphasis – A.V.)
This seems to imply that she has dualistic feelings about him, that she was perhaps already disgusted with his behavior, but also her own reaction to it. I would also argue that Debby’s enjoyment of the lawyer’s violation is also bound up with fear. Perhaps she could not bring herself to return to work because she was too ashamed by what had occurred. It is difficult to form a concrete conclusion, partly because she is such a matter-of-fact and distant narrator.162 One could, however, rely on Benjamin’s theory of the master slave configuration in erotic domination for an explanation. She suggests that by breaking down the boundaries of the masochist, the sadist risks “becoming the will-less thing he consumes unless he separates himself completely.”163 Through the sadist’s objectification and the masochist’s submission to the sadist, the masochist slowly loses his/her subjectivity and becomes, as it were, part of the sadist. Without “the tension between subjugation and resistance […], death or abandonment is the inevitable” conclusion.164 Perhaps Debby was afraid of an escalation in
162 It may be helpful to present a textual example which demonstrates Debby’s narrative and emotional distance. The following passage occurs on Debby’s last day of work. “Susan, the paralegal, was standing in the waiting room with a funny look on her face. She was a blonde who wore short, fuzzy sweaters and fake gold jewelry around her neck. At her friendliest, she had a whining, abrasive quality that clung to her voice. Now, she could barely say hello. Her stupidly full lips were parted speculatively. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Just a minute.’ She noted the awkwardness of my walk, because of the lowered panty hose. I got to the bathroom and wiped myself off. I didn’t feel embarrassed. I felt mechanical. I wanted to get that dumb paralegal out of the office so I could come back to the bathroom and masturbate. Susan completed the errand and left. I masturbated. I retyped the letter. The lawyer sat in his office all day” (BB, 143). 163 Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, p. 65. 164 Benjamin, p. 65.
85 their S/M activities and that through these activities, she would lose her self, and eventually be abandoned by the lawyer, and, therefore abandoned him first.
IV.2.2 CONFESSIONS OF A RAPIST: “THE GIRL ON THE PLANE”
This story is told from the point of view of the male protagonist, John, and recounts his encounter with Lorraine, the girl on the plane. The two talk about their lives and discover that they are both from Minnesota, and John realizes that Lorraine reminds him of Patty, a girl he once knew during his college years, who actually grew up in the same town as Lorraine. Love suggests that these similarities cause John to “fabricate[] a conclusive connection that subsumes Lorraine into his recuperated past and motions towards a sense of belonging and control […].”165 John ends up recalling memories of Patty and his college years, which he describes as “‘the greatest time of my life’” (BTWT, 125). He worked with Patty and even though they socialized with different circles of friends, “he liked her” (BTWT, 126). Patty has a “bad” reputation of being promiscuous and John’s friends consequently tease him, because they notice Patty’s attraction for John. Eventually Patty admits this to John: “Her humility embarrassed and touched him. ‘Well, I am attracted to you. Sort of. I mean, you’re beautiful and everything. I’m just not attracted enough to do anything’” (BTWT, 128). John seems flattered by her confession, but it appears that he is more worried about his own reputation and what his friends would think. They warn him about her with such comments as: “‘I wouldn’t touch her, man. The smell alone’” (BTWT, 129). Despite John’s liking Patty, he does not do much to defend her in front of his friends and even laughs at the jokes they crack about her. John views women as sexual objects and spends his adolescence drinking with his friends and trying to conquer women, sexually. Love notes that John stereotypes Lorraine as promiscuous – which arouses him - by equating her with Patty so that she can fit into his past. She suggests that
his definitions prove problematic because they increasingly reveal John’s own ambivalence about the codes of patriarchal behavior. This ambivalence is manifested in John’s conflict between his loyalty to Patty LaForge and his loyalty to his male friends.166
165 Love, p. 11. 166 Love, p. 12.
86 It is also true, as Love suggests, that Lorraine shatters the fiction that John has created about women and the power that males have over them, which is advocated by the ideologies of patriarchy. Lorraine does so by revealing that she is a recovering alcoholic, a problem that began in her teenage years. Her experience growing up in Minnesota contrasts sharply with John’s, as she did not enjoy it at all. She explains that she struggled with “‘doing stuff for other people’s expectations or just to feel you have a social identity’” (TGFT, 134). She also grappled with the formation of her own identity because of all the “projections” from others “of who and what” she was expected to be (BTWT, 134). She settled with the role of “[a]cting the […] pretty, sexy girl” (BTWT, 133). This role is often projected or forced onto women in order to control them. Benjamin states that
[t]he “sexy” woman […] is sexy, but as object, not as subject. She expresses not so much her desire as her pleasure in being desired; what she enjoys is her capacity to evoke desire in the other, to attract. Her power does not reside in her own passion, but in her acute desirability. […] [T]he power of […] the sexy woman can [not] […] be described as the power of a sexual subject.167
After Lorraine’s personal admissions, John feels compelled to recount to Lorraine a gruesome moment in his past involving Patty. He participated in a gang rape, in which Patty was the victim. Love notes that he takes on “the patriarchal perspective that the rape is Patty’s responsibility,” because of her promiscuous reputation and her drunken behavior.168 In addition, he does not view it as “a real rape” (BTWT, 135), because Patty knew every one of the men who forced themselves upon her. However, through his interaction with Lorraine “he begins to connect misogyny and violation with the erasure of Patty as a person.”169 During this grotesque scene, it is very clear to the reader that the violation of Patty is nonconsensual.
He sat awhile, watching guys swarm over Patty and talking to the ones waiting. […] Then some guy wanted to pour maple syrup on her, and John said, “No, I didn’t go yet.” He sat on the bed and, for the first time, looked at her, expecting to see the sheepish bitter look he knew. He didn’t recognize her. Her rigid face was weirdly slack; her eyes fluttered open, rolled, and closed; a mix of half-formed expressions flew across her face like swarming ghosts. “Patty,” he said, “hey.” He shook her shoulder. Her eyes opened, her gaze raked his face. He saw tenderness, he thought. He lay on her and tried to embrace her. Her body was leaden and floppy. She muttered and moved, but in ways he didn’t understand. He massaged her breasts; they felt like they could come off and she wouldn’t notice. (BTWT, 133)
167 Benjamin, p. 89. 168 Love, p. 13. 169 Love, p. 12.
87
Patty appears to be drunk and on the verge of passing out. The depiction of John’s turn is much gentler than the others, as he longs for some response to his movements and claims that he sees tenderness in his eyes. However, he does absolutely nothing to try to stop the situation or to prevent other boys from degrading her even further by throwing their beer in her face. After Lorraine hears his confession - “If you want to talk about mistakes—shit, I raped somebody. Somebody I liked.” (BTWT, 135) - she no longer wishes to communicate with John. John seems to expect some sort of forgiveness from Lorraine for his mistake as he has finally admitted to himself that this act was a rape. However, Lorraine reacts frightened and upset, which causes John to become angry and to blame Lorraine for “start[ing] this crazy conversation” (BTWT, 135). He then tries to lighten the impact of this disclosure by once again denying that it was nonconsensual. As they are exiting the plane, he calls after her and apologizes. This could be seen as an apology to Patty, as he equates her with the girl on the plane.170 Thus, despite the fact that he seems to realize the full extent of his actions and to feel remorse for his violation of Patty, one gets the impression that the patriarchal ideologies which influenced his adolescent behavior are still too deeply rooted in his identity. He is unwilling to accept blame for his actions, and prefers instead to shift this blame onto women. Benjamin suggests that violation against an other is meant to strengthen one’s own boundaries of the self.171 I would argue that this claim not only forms a possible psychoanalytical explanation for John’s behavior, but that it also could be reconciled with the influence that patriarchal ideologies holds on him. Violation could certainly be considered as a defense mechanism brought about by John’s fear of the female other’s power. I would suggest that John, thus, objectifies women so as to validate his power and authority and also to deny his responsibility for raping Patty. He is attracted to promiscuity, yet, only in a purely sexual way. This can be seen in his refusal of a relationship with Patty because it would ruin his reputation, but he has no problem at all joining in on the gang rape, as there are no strings attached. He finds promiscuity safe in women, as their power remains limited to their desirability, and, consequently, this power is bestowed upon them by males.172 In presenting two very different examples of the violation of women by male characters who take advantage of their male authority, power, and privilege, I have shown how pervasive, yet complex, patriarchal power structures can be. In “The Secretary,” one is
170 Love suggests this as well, cf. p. 13. 171 Benjamin, p. 77. 172 Benjamin, pp. 89-90.
88 confronted with a nuanced form of violation, which may question one’s definition of sexual harassment. Even if one interprets the lawyer’s actions in that story as an abuse of his power, one cannot deny the significance of the effect on Debby. In “The Girl on The Plane,” John’s doubts about his behavior regarding Patty seem to reflect a certain instability of patriarchal ideologies.
IV.3 “THE EROTICISM OF THE MASTER-SLAVE 173 CONFIGURATION”
I would like to proceed with the topic of power relations and, more specifically, the structure of dominance and submission. As the roles in sadomasochism appear to mirror this structure, I will discuss their political implications for this fringe practice. This comparison will be explored further in the following sections, in which the elements of S/M which distinguish it from social domination and subjugation will be investigated. Foucault stressed the ineluctability of power relations in both sexual relations and society, in general.174 When thinking about sadomasochism, which is based upon a seemingly unequal organization of power, it appears to be unavoidable to make the connection with society in which certain roles are assumed to be intrinsically powerful, while others are viewed as weak and dependent. In this section, I will focus on Gaitskill’s portrayal of the configuration of dominant and submissive, strong and weak, powerful and powerless, master and slave present in society. According to Bersani: “It is frequently maintained that S/M both exposes the mechanisms of power in society and provides a cathartic release from the tensions inherent in social distributions of power.”175 Through the reliance on certain role sets whose origin can be found in society, it may seem as if S/M confirms patriarchy. However, the significance of theatricality in sadomasochistic role-playing should not be underestimated, as this may actually undermine the society S/M paradoxically imitates. First, I would like to return to TGFT to look at a few incidences in the two girls’ lives in order to launch a discussion of the possibly inherent eroticism of power structures. The reader may recall that Dorothy is adamantly against sadomasochism, as she equates sadism with her father’s behavior. Surprisingly enough, there are a few passages from the point of view of Dorothy in this novel in which an attraction to sadomasochism seems to emerge.
173 This phrase is not an original creation. I have borrowed it from Leo Bersani, cf. Homos, p. 89. 174 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I, New York: Vintage Books, 1990. 175 Bersani, Homos, p. 83.
89 However, these instances take place before her father begins to sexually abuse her. One example occurs when Dorothy is relating some of her life experiences around the age of seven or eight.
We watched Combat! every Tuesday. […] The theme was about fighting and winning but it was also about something more subtle and intimate, something voluptuous. I didn’t know exactly what this something was, but it had a lot to do with Lt. Hanley. […] He was always getting captured or wounded. Even when he wasn’t getting captured, there was something about him that made his capture seem imminent. Episode after episode featured Lt. Hanley bound on the floor or to a chair while a large German stood over him, arrogantly resting his jackbooted foot on a table or something. […] [T]here was always a small moment when it was so nice to have Lt. Hanley tied up and looking at his captor with those brave, flowerlike eyes […]. (TGFT, 69)
Dorothy appears to be attracted to this power play, which the actors enact in this television series, yet she is too young to completely understand the possible erotic connotations. In Bersani’s book, Homos, the author treats the topic of whether power structures in society are inherently erotic. Bersani refers to Foucault’s claim that Nazism was devoid of any erotic overtones, in order to refute it. However, he explains that Foucault’s purpose in making this statement was “to distinguish the master-slave relation in S/M from oppressive social structures of domination.”176 Foucault considered sadomasochism, thus, as “an acting out of power structures by a strategic game” which may result in “sexual […] or bodily pleasure.”177 Bersani disagrees and believes that it is the master-slave binary, the structure of power itself, found both in sadomasochism and Nazism which results in pleasure. Rather than
dissociating itself from a fascistic master-slave relation, [S/M] actually confirms an identity between that relation and its own practices. It removes masters and slaves from economic and racial superstructures, thus confirming the eroticism of the master- slave configuration.178
His argument proves the point being made in the passage above and that which Dorothy slightly perceives and is fascinated by: dominance and submission can be provocatively sensual. It is arousing for Dorothy (perhaps for the viewer as such) to see Lt. Hanley in a helpless position, and to anticipate and enjoy viewing his bondage. As in sadomasochistic scenes involving bondage and psychological pain or actual physical pain, or the illusion thereof, this depiction of torture in a television series is also safe.
176 Bersani, Homos, p. 88. 177 Foucault, interview in Advocate, p. 30. Quoted in Bersani. Homos, p. 88. 178 Bersani, Homos, p. 89.
90 Mark Edmundson delves into a similar topic in his book, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and The Culture of Gothic,179 in which he tries to describe Western culture’s fascination with violence and torture in films. He offers as an explanation for the enjoyment received from “see[ing the hero] tortured” the viewer’s knowledge that the hero is going to get his revenge. 180 Viewers are familiar with the formulas used in these types of films. He mentions, moreover, that “the more outrageous the torture, the more violence we’ll be able to enjoy with a clean conscience. […] [V]iolent revenge is OK if the crime being answered is heinous enough.”181 Gaitskill’s expression of this fascination with torture scenes in TGFT is erotically charged. This becomes much more transparent/explicit with regard to Justine, who as I have shown in chapter two, begins to engage in both sadistic and masochistic behavior at a very young age. She also develops an obsession with violence and torture. For example:
When Justine was ten she read a poem about French resisters during the Second World War in her children’s classics book. In it, a French hero was crucified to a barn door with bayonets and tormented by SS men before a crowd of weeping French patriots. The poet dwelt voluptuously on the hero’s torment, and the poem climaxed with the death of the smirking SS captain. It excited her even more than the cartoons that had induced her to make Richie tie her to the swing set. She kept the children’s classics under her bed so she could read it at night with a flashlight and masturbate. (TGFT, 104)
Justine’s fascination with torture scenes and power plays strengthens Edmundson’s argument that people are fascinated with this because they know that the enemies will eventually get their due. One could assume that the SS captain’s death was an act of revenge on the part of the tortured hero. Her consequent arousal also supports Bersani’s claim that such configurations are erotic. Pat Califia also discusses power and society in his182 essay “A Secret Side of Lesbian Sexuality.” He notes that “S&M roles are not related to gender or sexual orientation or race or class.”183 One’s desires will decide whether one will take on a dominant or submission role. Califia determines therefore that sadomasochism poses a “threat[] to the established
179 Mark Edmundson, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and The Culture of Gothic, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 135-41. 180 Edmundson, p. 136. 181 Edmundson, p. 136. 182 Pat Califia underwent a sex change in the 1990’s and is currently known as Patrick. To remain consistent, I will employ masculine pronouns to denote his current sex, however, at the time of writing this article he was female. Suspect Thoughts: A Journal of Subversive Writing, 2003?, author unknown,
91 order […] [because] [o]ur political system cannot digest the concept of power unconnected to privilege. S&M recognizes the erotic underpinnings of our systems, and seeks to reclaim them.”184 In his opinion, this is the reason sadomasochism “is so heavily penalized and persecuted” in Western society.185 “In an S&M context, the uniforms and roles and dialogue become a parody of authority, a challenge to it, a recognition of its secret sexual nature.”186 “The eroticism of the master-slave configuration”187 could also support an explanation for the presence of sadomasochistic elements in modern Western culture, despite the taboo surrounding sadomasochistic sex. Thomas S. Weinberg and Martha S. Magill, in their article “Sadomasochistic Themes in Mainstream Culture,” discuss sadomasochistic themes present in the media, literature, film, music, art, fashion, etc.188 They state that since the 1980’s
S&M has come out of the closet and into the living rooms of Americans. […] However, this does not mean that most Americans have an understanding of S&M or that they accept it. Nor does it mean that they perceive various aspects of popular culture as having anything to do with S&M.189
One can even witness the penetration of children’s culture by sadomasochistic elements, such as bondage and torture. Gaitskill has noticed this, and brings to life the possible effect it could have on a child who was sexually abused. I have explored Justine’s fascination with these types of cartoons in chapter two, but would like to turn to a cartoon about hell featuring images of violence and torture, which Justine sees and becomes obsessed with. The cartoon awakens feelings in her that are akin to those she experienced when she was molested. She is still too young to understand the opposing feelings she experiences, but does connect it to the sexual abuse.
It had upset her, but she thought of it again and again. At night she would lie in bed and imagine being tormented forever because you had envious thoughts or were angry at someone. She didn’t have the vocabulary to express, even to herself, the feeling these images evoked in her; it was too overpowering for her even to see clearly what it was. It seemed to occupy the place that all her daily activities and expressions came from, the same place Dr. Norris had touched. It felt like the foundation that all the other events of her life played upon. […] At the time she soothed the demanding feeling by tying herself to her bedpost, gagging herself, and forcing morose but compliant Richie to beat her, or to pretend to. (TGFT, 73-74)
184 Califia, p. 147. 185 Califia, p. 147. 186 Califia, p. 148. 187 Bersani, Homos, p. 89. 188 Weinberg and Martha Magill, “Sadomasochistic Themes in Mainstream Culture”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, pp. 223-30. 189 Weinberg and Magill, “Sadomasochistic Themes”, p. 223.
92
Regarding the character of Justine, I believe that Gaitskill attempts to illustrate what Bersani suggests in Homos, i.e. “S/M makes explicit the erotic satisfactions sustaining social structures of dominance and submission.”190 I think that she achieves this creation of a link between power structures in society and sadomasochism by demonstrating it within the character of Justine herself. Justine’s obsession with cartoons, literature, etc. depicting violence and torture awakens an unnamable desire in Justine and leads to further sadomasochistic behavior. However, I am not suggesting that the sadomasochistic elements which have slowly seeped into popular culture over time will result in a massive participation by the population in the sadomasochistic lifestyle. In this section I have shown how sadomasochism takes over the dominant-submissive binary from society and that this structure of power forms the foundation of S/M. This structure in itself contains a sensuality which is fully expressed in S/M practices. I have also investigated the claim held by certain writers, such as Bersani and Califia, that there is a fundamental S/M dimension to sexuality. This dimension also reveals itself in Western culture, unbeknownst to many. Gaitskill is not only perceptive to the latter movement, but she also portrays the hidden eroticism of these power structures. This leads me to the conclusion that she, along with Bersani and Califia, is of the opinion that sadomasochism forms an inherent component of human psychology.
IV.4 WHO’S THE BOSS? AND ROLE-REVERSIBILITY
I would like to look more closely at what the implications of the power relations in society are for S/M. I will discuss some different theories on who is actually in control in the S/M configuration – the sadist, or the masochist. Sadomasochism differs from societal power relations, in that S/M participants willingly choose to submit to another, around whom an illusion of authority is created. Furthermore, the relinquishing of control occurs in a safe environment and could be considered as being staged, because the masochist remains in control of the situation. In other words, the sadist could be seen as serving the masochist’s needs as he/she is totally fixated on bringing the masochist pleasure by fulfilling his/her needs
190 Bersani, Homos, p. 97.
93 and desires.191 A further application of these theories to some of the S/M relationships depicted in Gaitskill’s works, which were discussed in the previous chapters, will follow. Gaitskill’s prose implies that the organization of power in relationships, both sadomasochistic and conventional, is not fixed. Finally, I will investigate the topic of role-reversibility in sadomasochistic relationships, which is another distinguishing characteristic of S/M that is not present in the power relations in society. To begin, I would like to return to Justine’s sadomasochistic relationships and encounters in TGFT. The first relationship of this type is with her neighbor, Richie. In her “relationship” with Richie, Justine is very much in control, more so, perhaps, than a masochist normally would be in a consensual S/M scene. This is due to the fact that she basically forces Richie to take on the role of the sadist: “When she began making him tie her up, she couldn’t tell if he wanted to do it or if he were passively following her lead. She recalls his face as furtive and vaguely ashamed” (TGFT, 72). Consequently, Justine appears more sadistic than Richie, as he is actually submitting to her will and does not possess a very powerful demeanor. Thus, Justine does not achieve a sense of total submission. During Justine’s sadistic violation of Rose, Rose is represented as having very little control. However, she is clearly intrigued by bondage and S/M and it takes very little to coerce her into the bathroom. Furthermore, her struggle against Justine is not very convincing and, after the fact, she appears to have enjoyed the incident as she, on another occasion, “blurt[s] out an invitation to Justine to come play the game they played before, in the bathroom” (TGFT, 131). As I have also shown in chapter two, Justine is aggressively in control in her relationship with Bryan, at least until the last scene in which he disregards her limits. In “A Romantic Weekend” (cf. chapter one), Gaitskill demonstrates a sadomasochistic couple’s struggle for power. The male protagonist is of the opinion that the male sadist should always remain in control, as the female masochist has no real will of her own. Beth struggles against his power, because his actions fail to achieve the desired effect on her. She subsequently tries to force them into a situation in which she will feel protected and connected to him, so that she can submit and relinquish all control. According to Bersani, “[u]nlike nasty patriarchal society, [the S/M] community only inflicts torture on people who say they want to be tortured. And the victim is always in control: he or she can stop the scene at will.”192 Other authors and theorists also support this
191 Bill Thompson, “De fabriek der verzinsels: de sociologie van het sadomasochisme”, in Ethiek en Maatschappij, pp. 21-24. 192 Bersani, Homos, p. 87.
94 notion that the masochist, or submissive partner, remains in control throughout the sadomasochistic activity. For example, Thomsen touches upon this subject, in her doctoral thesis. She maintains that “[p]ower is the element that is played with in a scene; the submissive relinquishes power to the dominant.” She also refers to the use of the safe word, which enables the submissive to either slow down or bring the activities to a halt. In addition, she points to the fact that it is the submissive who “willingly” allows the dominant to have power over him/her.193 She suggests, thus, that “aspects of SM play such as ‘dominance’ and ‘submission’ and ‘control’ are multifaceted.”194 Many submissives believe, thus, that they are in control, because if it were not for their willingness to give up their power, there would be no possibility for S/M play in the first place. Bill Thompson also agrees with this theory that S/M scenarios create the illusion that the sadist is in total control and demonstrates his/her power in interaction with the masochist. However, it is actually the masochist who controls the sadist, as the sadist is usually totally focussed on bringing the masochist pleasure in the manner that he/she wishes.195 Weinberg has also taken part in this discussion and has noted that many theorists as well as those involved in a sadomasochistic lifestyle have wondered who is really in control.
While some practitioners feel that the submissive should be able to control the interaction because neither partner could precisely know what his limits are beforehand (Naerssen et al. 1987), this does not appear to be an accurate description of what usually happens during a scene. Probably the most realistic description of what actually occurs is that both dominants and submissives are actively involved in the development of the scenario (Califia 1979; Kamel 1980; Kamel and Weinberg 1983; Lee 1979). In an S&M scene, the action is often, but not always, scripted and therefore collaborative, so that neither the dominant nor the submissive usually has complete control.196
This sense of equality at the level of power and control is expressed by Gaitskill early in the relationship between Justine and Bryan. The most persuasive example of a relationship in which the distribution of power appears equal, however, is to be found in “The Blanket” (cf. chapter three). In this story, the power shifts back and forth from Valerie to Michael, yet, they both remain in control. This is partially due to the fact that they engage in various role- play scenarios, a practice which prevents each character from permanently acting out a fixed
193 Thomsen, Techniques of SM, p. 9. 194 Thomsen, p. 69. 195 Thompson, “De fabriek der verzinsels”, pp. 21-23. 196 Weinberg, “Sociological and Social Psychological Issues”, in S&M, p. 294.
95 role. In addition, one can perceive this shifting of power in their “real” relationship, i.e. in their interactions with each other outside the role-playing sphere. Bersani discusses sadomasochism at length in some of his analytical works. In A Future for Astyanax, Bersani at one point refers to Freud’s theory of the sexual arousal of the sadist in “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes,” which, according to Bersani, appears to come about through an “identification” with the masochist’s experience.197 Freud explains the different successive stages that he assumed a sadist would go through, one stage being a masochistic stage:
As a result of this connection, the wish to dominate others is also sexualized, and we will sadistically enjoy their pain. We are erotically stimulated by someone else’s pain because we identify with it, having already experienced pain as pleasure […].198
Freud thus already noted the connection between sadism and masochism, although for him, what bound the two together was the idea of pain as a pleasurable experience. The sadist recognizes this in the masochist because s/he has already experienced it him/herself. Bersani further suggests that “every sadist needs a master,”199 thus pointing both to the degree of control possessed by the masochist, as well as, the reversibility of roles in S/M. The character of Justine could, thus, be seen to typify sadomasochism itself, as her dualistic nature includes the incorporation of the binary of sadomasochism I have been discussing so far. As a child, when she experiments with sadomasochism alone, she splits into two and accordingly becomes both sadist and masochist. In this context, it may be useful to cite the definition of sado-masochism offered by The Oxford English Dictionary Online:
The co-existence of sadism and masochism in one individual; the need to inflict and to suffer pain or to assert power over another and to be submissive combined as one psychic condition evidenced in sexual relationships (freq. in fantasized manner) or socially, as an outlet for aggressive or destructive impulses.200
In much of the recent literature on sadomasochism, both sociological and psychoanalytical, most theorists agree that the majority of S/M practitioners view themselves as switchable in their roles. A certain amount will prefer one role above the other, but are still
197 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 300. 198 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, pp. 300-301. 199 Bersani, A Future for Astyanax, p. 303. 200 The Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007,
96 willing to take on the opposite role.201 Other writers state that many sadists who participate in S/M started out by first exploring the role of the submissive.202 Bersani mentions that sadomasochism “argues for the permeability of the boundaries separating” the dominant and the submissive.
The reversibility of roles in S/M does more than disrupt the assignment of fixed positions of power and powerlessness (as well as the underlying assumptions about the natural link between dominance and particular racial and gendered identities).203
Bersani concludes that “inherent in the very exercise of power is the temptation of its renunciation”204; the two (sadism and masochism, dominance and submissiveness, power and powerlessness, control and loss of control) are inextricably linked. With regard to fantasies, Weinberg makes a significant point that they “are not unique, private, and idiosyncratic, but instead, involve culturally general resources - typifications of persons, of typical actions and situations, and so forth. Fantasies are part of the culture.”205 The roles themselves mirror dominant society and such familiar behavior cannot be seen as a questioning of social power structures. In Homos, Bersani suggests that S/M does not politically challenge the structures of power in society by breaking down gender categories or sexual roles. He disagrees, thus, with Califia’s opinion that, through the performance of social roles in S/M, one can successfully dispute these societal power configurations.206 Rather, he finds that
S/M sympathizers have an extremely respectful attitude toward the dominance- submission dichotomy itself. Sometimes it seems that if anything in society is being challenged, it is not the networks of power and authority, but the exclusion of gays from these networks.207
One could extend this emphasis on homosexuals to include the entire sphere of all those who are on the subordinate side of the power structure, including women, ethnic minorities, etc. Bersani perceives, thus, that the subversion of power relations in society by S/M is a consequence of the fact that in S/M play everyone has a chance to take on the role of the dominant, if they wish, and experience power and authority, even those from whom power is
201 Cf. Paul H. Gebhard, “Sadomasochism”, in S&M, ed. by Weinberg, p. 42: “Relatively few sadomasochists are exclusively sadists or exclusively masochists; there is generally mixture with one aspect predominate.” 202 Cf. Weinberg and Kamel. “S&M: An Introduction to the Study of Sadomasochism”, and Kamel, “Leathersex”, in S&M. 203 Bersani, Homos, p. 96. 204 Bersani, Homos, p. 96. 205 Weinberg, “Sadism and Masochism” in S&M, p. 134. 206 Cf. pp. 91-92 of this thesis, and Califia, pp. 147-48. 207 Bersani, Homos, p. 85.
97 excluded, in actual society. However, the role-reversibility of sadomasochism “can be a relatively mild challenge to social hierarchies of power.”208 One must not forget the significant fact that the masochist either possesses more control than the sadist or shares control with the sadist.
IV.5 CONCLUSION
This chapter has demonstrated the connection between power relations in society and those in S/M. The omnipresence of the configuration of domination and submission perhaps stems from the basic structure of sadomasochism which possibly lurks in us all. I have also dealt with the elements which distinguish S/M from the unjust power relations in society, such as the choice to submit, the reversibility of roles, and the sharing of power. I find Gaitskill’s complex presentation of sadomasochism not exactly a debunking of the power structures in society, as most of her constructions of sadists are male. She does, however, ironically expose stereotypes not only of the dominant male who objectifies women, but also of the longing female who desires intimacy and romance with an idealized male figure to whom she can submit. In this chapter, I have suggested that she attempts to reveal that relationships and sex are inherently sadomasochistic. Moreover, one cannot escape or underestimate the role that power and control will play in one’s interactions with others. In such stories as “The Blanket”, Gaitskill offers a positive view of the S/M relationship. It seems that by doing so, she offers S/M as a possible way to play with power in a safe and pleasurable manner and to achieve liberation from the confinement of society. Yet, she also shows that relationships exist under the influence of so many other factors, which may hinder a pleasurable and safe experience, e.g. Justine and Bryan in TGFT or Beth and the male protagonist in “A Romantic Weekend.”
208 Bersani, Homos, p. 86.
98 CONCLUSION
Love makes the accurate claim that in Gaitskill’s fiction both “[r]eal and unreal cloud together […] without pointing in a particular direction or to a particular conclusion, except to raise more questions and to complicate our need to find and fix meanings.”209 The dualistic character of Gaitskill’s prose makes straightforward interpretation problematic. By considering different topics in each chapter, I hope not only to have familiarized the reader of this thesis with the diversity of Gaitskill’s fiction, but also to have presented accordingly the variety of relational constellations bodied forth in her work. The wide spectrum of interpretations which could be applied to Gaitskill’s work extends beyond the scope of this thesis, but could certainly supply fuel for further studies. This thesis is a discovery of both the great value of Gaitskill’s fiction and the richly facetted world she creates, which would invite and reward further analysis. In an interview, in response to a question about S/M forming a part of all relationships, Gaitskill revealed her belief that S/M “[i]s always there in the spectrum whether people choose to act on it or not.”210 I am quite confident that I have revealed sufficiently throughout my thesis that power and control are inherent aspects of many of Gaitskill’s relationships. I believe that, with the help of Love’s, Schapiro’s, and Berlant’s critical essays as well as psychoanalytic and sociological literature, I have made some significant headway in revealing Gaitskill’s portrayal of the nuanced forms of control and power in intimate relationships. In the first chapter, through an analysis of fantasy and reality, I have shown how fantasy can give one with the sense of being in control (cf. e.g. the male protagonist in “A Romantic Weekend,” Joel in “An Affair, Edited,” and Fred in “Something Nice”). The disparity between fantasy and reality can also lead to disappointment, in that one can control one’s fantasies, but has very little control over reality and the desires of others. It was also revealed that fantasy and reality are not oppositional to each other, but that one’s fantasies and desires help to form one’s identity and perception of reality. With regard to control in chapter two, I have demonstrated how both Justine and Dorothy become powerless in the face of trauma, and how they subsequently struggle to gain control over their traumatic experiences. Justine, for example, turns to sadomasochism, a practice which gives her a sense of being in control, but at the same time, through the implied
209 Love, p. 8. 210 Laurence, “Interview”, p. 3.
99 loss of control, she confronts her traumatic feelings. Dorothy finally achieves control over her own fears and her life by forming a connection with Justine and, thus, breaking out of her suppressive fantasy world. In the third chapter, I dealt with the concept of role-playing, the basis of which is the playing with power. In “The Blanket” Gaitskill exhibited the practice of role-play as something positive, through which the participants can achieve equality. However, she also demonstrates that control is not a static element, but involves many facets, and that, especially when one performs a variety of roles, it becomes very nuanced. The significance of the fantasy and reality dichotomy returned in this chapter, as S/M play is distinguished from reality by the theatrical qualities and the elements of performance involved. Gaitskill explores this further in “The Wrong Thing” and extends it to the futility of attempting to gain control over the elusiveness of the self and the other. Many of the different aspects of control in relationships discussed in this thesis, culminated in the fourth and final chapter, in which a comparison of the power relations in society with those in S/M was central. I first juxtaposed two different forms of violation by males whose actions could be perceived as a consequence of the influence of patriarchal ideologies. However, the S/M practices evident in the first example complicate any attempt at moral judgment. I also demonstrated that Gaitskill portrays the binary of dominance and submission, which is omnipresent in society, as appearing intrinsically erotic. Gaitskill depicts some of her S/M practitioners as perceptive of this. I delved further into the characteristics of S/M which differentiate this subculture from the power structures in society, which Gaitskill also explores. Gaitskill’s work contains both negative and positive examples of S/M sex. Many of the sexual relationships in her work are presented as if they are doomed to fail, not just the sadomasochistic ones. The failure of relationships can thus be partially attributed to other factors, such as the incompatibility of the couple, the disparity between one’s fantasies and reality, and general misunderstandings. I believe that Gaitskill’s incorporation of S/M elements signifies her acceptance of S/M as another form of sexuality (cf. her expression of the dualistic nature of sex), despite the fact that she has constructed some characters who do not consciously understand their attraction to S/M or are too incompetent to engage in it safely. Gaitskill’s fiction could possibly be helpful in deconstructing the mainstream society’s myth surrounding S/M: that it is dangerous, perverse, and criminal. Many of Gaitskill’s characters yearn most of all for contact and understanding with another, yet, their attempts to achieve this may appear futile. However, sex is definitely
100 presented as a way to connect with someone, even when few emotions are involved. The meaningful emotional connection which is sought after does not appear to be only an illusion, as some characters do achieve this (e.g. Dorothy & Justine in TGFT and the couple in “The Blanket”). In my opinion, Gaitskill does not write didactic novels. I hope I have fully demonstrated this by looking at the multiple interpretations of some of her open-ended short stories. With regard to S/M, she does not consistently condone or reject this type of sex, but sees it as another possibility for the characters to make contact with others and to possibly free themselves. Also, since power is presented as an inescapable attribute of human interactions, S/M could, thus, be conceived as a method in which one can achieve liberation from the confinement of reality and the strictly fixed power relations in society. In closing, I gladly offer Gaitskill the last word, in the form of a quote attributed to Dorothy, one of the female protagonists in TGFT. This concise passage demonstrates the tension between fantasy and reality which Gaitskill portrays. The shifting element of control, present elsewhere in Gaitskill’s work, is also expressed implicitly here. Initially, Dorothy was fully in control when inventing the fantasy figures that inhabited her imagination. However, following their creation, they began to grow and gain control over Dorothy’s life. Perhaps this quote could also be perceived as a comment by Gaitskill on the creative process of developing characters. In any case, the “phantoms” in Dorothy’s fantasy world remind one of the numerous, memorable characters in Gaitskill’s fictional world, who persist in haunting the reader long after the narrative has ended.
I attached these bright phantasms and others like them to the people around me, like exuberant billowing shadows more real than the flesh they shadowed, phantoms living full lives that I was excluded from, even though I had created them. (TGFT, 139-40)
101 BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gaitskill, Mary, Bad Behavior, New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
———, Two Girls Fat and Thin, New York: Bantam, 1992.
———, Because They Wanted To, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
———, Veronica, New York; Pantheon Books, 2005.
SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benjamin, Jessica, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination, New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Berlant, Lauren, “Two Girls, Fat and Thin”, in Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory, ed. by Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark, New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 71-108.
Bersani, Leo, Homos, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
———, A Future For Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
Butler, Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge, 1990.
Caruth, Cathy, (ed.), Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Cressida Wilson, Erin and Molly Haskell, Secretary: The Screenplay, New York: Soft Skull Press, 2003. de Lauretis, Teresa, The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Edmundson, Mark, Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and The Culture of Gothic, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I, New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Gaitskill, Mary, “The Sexual Body,” a panel discussion held on March 30, 2007 at the
102 University of North Dakota Writer’s Conference in Grand Forks, North Dakota. [Notes obtained through email from David Joseph Jameson, who attended the discussion. Address: [email protected]]
Hekma, Gert, “Seks, Sade en sadisme”, in Ethiek en maatschappij, 2 (1999) 3 (Oktober), pp. 117-31.
LaCapra, Dominick, “Trauma Studies: Its Critics and Vicissitudes”, in History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory, LaCapra, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004, pp. 106-43.
Laurence, Alexander, “Interview with Mary Gaitskill”, 1994, The Write Stuff,
Loth, David, The Erotic in Literature, New York: Dorset Press, 1994.
Love, Morgan, “Mary Gaitskill”, in Post-war Literatures in English, 46 (March 2000), pp. 1- 18.
Murray, Thomas E. and Thomas R. Murrel, The Language of Sadomasochism: A Glossary and Linguistic Analysis, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Olderr, Steven, Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary, Jefferson: McFarland, 1986, p. 13.
The Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, < http://dictionary.oed.com > (17/4/2007)
Schapiro, Barbara, “Trauma and Sadomasochistic Narrative: Mary Gaitskill’s ‘The Dentist’”, in Mosaic, 38/2 (June 2005), pp. 37-52.
Tal, Kalí, Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Thomsen, Edith E., Techniques of SM that are helpful in gaining comfort with sexual intimacy for survivors of child sexual abuse who practice SM play, [Doctoral thesis] Center for Psychological Studies, Berkeley, California, 2001,
Thompson, Bill, “De fabriek der verzinsels: de sociologie van het sadomasochisme”, in Ethiek en maatschappij, 2 (1999) 3 (Oktober), pp. 6-28.
Weinberg, Thomas S., (ed.), S&M: Studies in Dominance and Submission, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995 [Rev. ed.].
Wright, Elizabeth, (ed.), Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.
103 Other Internet Sources
Barnes and Noble.com, 2005?, Biography courtesy of Random House, Interviewer unknown,
Secretary, 2003, author unknown, < www.secretarythemovie.co.uk/html/home.html > (4/4/2007).
Suspect Thoughts: A Journal of Subversive Writing, 2003?, author unknown,
Syracuse University, 2006?, author unknown,
104