Marriage and Sexuality in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying by Alexandr Belov Supervisor: Rebecca Scherr A Thesis presented to The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages The University of Oslo in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Master Degree in English Literature Spring Term 2011 Acknowledgments I want to thank my supervisor, Rebecca Scherr, for giving me academic advice, help and support in the course of creating this work. Thank you, my friends Mark, Lukas, Sander, Vincent, Bjorn, Lars, Julie, Alex, Matthew, Caspar, Francisco, Weronika, Petra, Tom Erik, Grazia, wherever you were, for your emotional support and encouragement. I love to you all. I am grateful for the experience of good and bad times shared with my partner and my mother during this period, which strengthened my desire to write and sharpened my will to know. I love to you. 2 CONTENTS Introduction 4 Chapter 1. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening 12 1. Marriage as Arrangement 15 2. Freedom, Confinement and Desire at Home 22 3. Desire Outside Home. Idealization of Relationships and Recognition of Reality 28 Chapter 2. D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover 42 1. Relationships of Personalities and Power 45 2. Relationships of Connection and Integrity 53 3. Reconciliation of Personality, Impersonal connection, Sensuality and Reality 60 Chapter 3. Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying 69 1. Marriage as Escape into Legitimacy and Escape from Loneliness. Looking for Love 72 2. Extra-marital affairs as Escape into Adventure and Escape from Control. Living your life 83 3. Other Possibilities and Alternatives to Marriage. Creating your Life 91 Conclusion 98 Bibliography 102 3 INTRODUCTION Marriage and sexuality are not often discussed together in the context of studying literature. Marriage is rather a well-trodden topic of discussion due to its abundance in literary works. Sexuality is a quite recent focus in literary studies, but while many universities started offering numerous courses on the literature of sexuality since 1970‟s, its separate field did not have enough contribution, in my view, to the subject of marriage. Though psychology, sociology, biology and history of culture and arts do have a lot to say about their interconnections, literary studies tend to overlook the importance marriage and family have in the formation and production of alternative sexualities. That‟s why the major aim of this thesis is to look more deeply in the way how marriage and sexuality interact in light of three literary works from different time periods, each coloured by its own cultural context and development, scientific and scholarly change and historical realities. It is sometimes not so easy to see the obviousness of fact that marriage itself is an institution that regulates human sexuality by the state with the help of the law, the state represented by the humankind that creates the law, the set of rules, obligations, rights and standards, according to which each citizen is supposed to fulfil him/herself. In this context, this project‟s goal is to analyse marriage‟s contribution to the production of sexuality, its variations and forms by viewing artistic literature of three different periods of late nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Kate Chopin‟s The Awakening in light of the fin de siecle, decadence, bohemian culture, the New Woman and first-wave feminism; D. H. Lawrence‟s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in light of 1920‟s culture of freedom and sexual expression, changing attitudes towards gender roles and positivism of sexual discourse; Erica Jong‟s Fear of Flying in light of 1960‟s-1970‟s sexual liberation, second-wave feminism and popularisation of sex and private life. Art often can say and express humankind‟s needs, yearnings, worries and preoccupations that are not so easily communicated through law and public relations. Literature as part of art is one of the ways to address audiences with important issues and problems of the time. But in my analytical approach it is vital to refer to the major philosophical, sociological and historical works that contributed to the society‟s change and development in the field of marriage and sexuality. Historical realities and even personal experiences of the authors also play important roles in deciphering the meanings of the literature studied. Thus, the interdisciplinary attitude towards the topic of the thesis is maintained through constant 4 reference to the theoretical works. Michael Foucault‟s The History of Sexuality, especially volume 1, The Will to Knowledge, represents my major philosophical and sociological support for the whole thesis. The idea of sexuality‟s production and multiplication through its control and repression by regulatory state systems and sexuality‟s taking its beginning in the family and marriage through education, pedagogy, upbringing, hygiene, questions of parenthood, control and resistance between parents and children all inspire my following analyses. Bertrand Russell‟s Marriage and Morals serves as another major philosophical work, especially for its contribution to demystification of the ideals of romantic love, which are important for all three novels in the context of marriage, and to the ethical discourse of free love and sexual pleasure. Tony Tanner‟s wonderful theoretical work Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression has greatly impacted my analyses of extra-marital relations in the novels discussed, especially its focus on unfaithfulness in the relationship as part of the relationship and discussion of alternative spaces. Historical books Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America by John d‟Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman and A Cultural History of Sexuality by Gert Hekma are major support resources in connecting social history to the literary analysis. Sexological works, particularly, Havelock Ellis‟s Sex and Marriage: Eros in Contemporary Life and William H. Masters and Virginia E Johnson‟s The Pleasure Bond: A New Look at Sexuality and Commitment give more insight into the nature of marriage and marriage-like relationships and help to orientate each literary work in light of certain discoveries in the science of sexology, which, for the most part, focused on the maintenance of the married couple. Imelda Whelehan‟s The Feminist Bestseller and Germaine Greer‟s The Female Eunuch with their discussions on femininity and female autonomy, including sexual autonomy, are of great importance to the last chapter‟s view of alternative outlooks. In this connection, queer theory is slightly touched upon, and the work of Michael Warner The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, And Ethics of Queer Life contributes to the queer view of extra-marital relations of Erica Jong‟s novel. Intersections Between Feminist and Queer Theory by Diane Richardson and Janice McLaughlin point to my initial reason for choosing queer theory in the thesis‟ late discussions. While discussing Chopin‟s The Awakening the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, particularly his Self-Reliance, is applied, and for D.H. Lawrence‟s Lady Chatterley’s Lover I use D. H. Lawrence‟s personal opinions and his A Propos of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” in extensive analysis of Lawrence‟s view of impersonal relationships in the context of the problem of sex and marriage. 5 The structure of the thesis is quite simple, each chapter dedicated to one of the literary works analysed, while each chapter is divided into three sections. These sections vary slightly from chapter to chapter in their topics of discussion. Thus, the first section of my analysis of Kate Chopin‟s The Awakening, called “Marriage as Arrangement”, looks deeply into the way marriage is constructed for Edna. The ideals of true womanhood, motherhood, modesty, abstinence in sex, romantic spirituality of love, cult of duty and obligation, the separate sexual spheres are themes in this section. The myths of female passive maternity-oriented sexuality are represented by Adele Ratignolle. The stimulation of modesty and withdrawal in marital sexual relations by the propaganda of birth control is represented in cold and dry relations between Edna and Leonce, each living in his/her own homo-social worlds. This sterility of marriage is gradually realized by Edna‟s observations and experiences, mostly held in her head. Edna‟s confrontation with the system of arranged marriage takes place often in her own thoughts and in her gradual detachment from home and turn to the outside world. This detachment is socially very easy to her, as the member of the middle class she has no other function for the society but its decoration and entertainment. Edna‟s gradual realization that she needs to search her own identity, not constructed by the social roles, is welcomed but only outside home and family. The second section of The Awakening‟s analysis, “Freedom, Confinement and Desire at Home”, discusses the details of Edna‟s s marriage and its discontents. There I mention that marriage as well as life outside marriage can be both interpreted as illusion and reality. What is the reality, Edna‟s grim lonely marriage or her repetitive realizations of what life means to her feelings and sensations, remains the question, but my focus on this duality and ambiguity leads to the certain understanding that both are important for Edna‟s personal growth: living is learning through experience, which includes positive and negative experiences. Edna‟s constant escape from one stage of life into another represents her wave-like life movement, necessary for her development as autonomous personality. Indecisive ambiguity is the essence of her struggle between personal freedom and expression and her attempt to fulfil her social responsibilities. This section analyses Edna‟s numerous awakenings while she still lives with her husband, these awakenings serve her as outlets to potential self-expression and demystification of stereotypes.