Above is Charles Ryder’s sketch of Sebastian Flyte being sick through the window of Charles’ first-floor rooms while being attended by angels, taken from the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited, which is now available on Netflix Instant, which means I’m going to have a devil of a time getting anything done for a while. How good is Brideshead? Even Christopher Hitchens liked it. I’m glad, really; it takes the sting out of Joe Eszterhas totally harshing my Surfing with Mel buzz. Hang it all anyway. I’m still going to finish my version, though. Fiction, after all, is news that stays, and I suspect that Mr. Eszterhas and I have different aims…
Brideshead is one of the best things I’ve seen on television. What needs to happen, though, is to have something akin to Brideshead on TV every night. Now Waugh was a master, and most of us are not, but it would be interesting to have 10,000 Catholic writers getting things produced (instead of 100 or so). Just to balance out the culture somewhat.
How about a Hee-Haw-type variety show with a Flannery O’Connor twist?
Good Country Misfits.
‘She would of been a good woman, if it had been Brideshead-quality programs by Catholic writers on TV every night of her life.’
Did Ezterhaus really dis it?
Nossir – he merely trumped it.
I suspect you began to be old at the age of twenty-six.
And liver damage accelerates the aging process.
[pedantry]
It was not the BBC, but Granada Television, that broadcast the Brideshead miniseries.
[/pedantry]
Thank you kindly, bastard.
Kindly bastards all.
Good to see you pressing ahead with this project, Mr Lickona. I can’t wait to see a photo of the look on Mr Gibson’s face when you track him down and present him with a copy.
As for divergences between Eszterhas’ Heaven and Mel and your Surfing with Mel: Maybe you could market yours as an alternate-history or divergent-multiverse
sci-fiscience-fictionspeculative-fiction tale, to draw in a different demographic.TAGGED WITH: DEMOGRAPHIC OF ONE
The ultimate snob appeal.
If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time: Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
Oh, I’m beaten.
Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.
I’m afraid I’m too tired to read the comments but remember a fellow student mentioning a few months back something about being sick out of a first floor window. I bet Brideshead Revisited is a great series. Actually I thought about someone vomiting this morning. You’re always one step ahead of me.
The character in Brideshead Revisited wasn’t sick out of a first-floor window; he was sick into one.
It is a good series, Churchill. You can almost smell the claret and taste the tweed.
I call foul. Eszterhas totally stole your idea, and you should sue.
We own that Brideshead series on DVD. Should we bring it to Wisconsin?
Mrs. Darwin,
I own it too. Also I Claudius. Also Dukes of Hazard seasons 1-3.
JOB
WAIT DOES THIS MEAN YOU ARE COMING TO GERASENE?
It is high on our list of summer considerations.
Splendid news!
Correction, JOB. We own seasons 1-6 of The Dukes Of Hazard.
Was there ever an episode where Bo and Luke race the General Lee against a mysterious preacher’s high, rat-colored car?
Actually, season one shares some DNA with early Faulkner. Uncle Jesse especially.
I think we’re meant to believe that he quite possibly could have messed around with Daisy.
But then the younger demographic reared its head and the writers went soft.
JOB
Speaking of the Catalogue of Grave Sins, does the Korrektive have a view on “The Story of O”? A friend of mine wants to know.
You can’t spell ‘kink’ without ‘k’.
Hmmm… but neither can you spell “Katholik”.
File under: “Less than honorable reasons.” I am happy to consider the viewpoint that sex without love tends toward violence. But this is written by a woman doing her best impression of De Sade, and so the claim seems to be that violence is the surest sign of love – that treating a woman in this manner is treating a woman the way she really wants to be treated, the way she was made to be treated. Woman as natural slave. One’s stomach is not always a sure judge of literary or moral worth, but this makes my stomach hurt.
I should perhaps note that it makes my stomach hurt in part because sex slaves are not merely literary fantasies. They exist, and their stories can be quite harrowing. I’m tempted to imagine a modern version of Hitchcock’s Rope.
The human soul finds her purpose, her joy, and (ultimately) her salvation, in willingly subjugating herself to God. It is what we were created for. In this present vail of tears, the soul finds her Lover often impossibly demanding, demanding of her perfection. And yet, when she dutifully complies with his commands, she is met mostly with little or the very faintest praise. More often, she faces stony silence, save for the command to comply yet more completely, and the crosses she bears in His service are multiplied. I call to the stand Bl. Teresa of Calcutta… and St. Paul, the bond-slave of Christ.
The feminine finds her fulfillment in service to a masterful lord, to subjugate her will completely to his. Eros seeks the perfection of its object.
In the story of O, we find out slowly (and briefly if you’re not paying attention) that she was wild, that she sexually teased, that she whored for attention. She needed to be tamed. Her consent was constantly necessary in every step of this taming process. Just like the servants of Christ.
Sex is a violence, which is to say that insofar it is a picture of Christ and His Church, it represents gender disparities written onto the very fabric of the Universe: between master and servant, pursuer and prey, between lover and beloved, creator and magnum opus, between plug and receptacle. If it isn’t at least a little bit violent, you might be doing it wrong.
De Sade, as far as I’ve read of him on Wikipedia, was transgressive for transgression’s sake alone, “the most impure tale” ever written. I do not see this at all from L’Histoire d’O. On the contrary, I see a deeply Catholic sensibility draped under a foreground of abuse, moral ambiguity, and grave sins. The soul of woman, the feminine, is only caricatured in O, essence distorted certainly specifically so the reader will notice.
My apologies for polluting this fine blog with vain (probably heretical) notions about obviously offensive stuff, but I think the literary worth of O is at least… troubling.
I do see what you’re saying, and there is of course this from the text:
“However offensive and insulting his conduct may have been, O’s love for René remained unchanged. She considered herself fortunate to count enough in his eyes for him to derive pleasure from offending her, as believers give thanks to God for humbling them.”
There are indeed many similarities that could be drawn to the total surrender to God that Paul and so many saints speak of. But the differences are telling, I think:
“For a long time he had wanted to prostitute her, and he was delighted to feel that the pleasure he was deriving was even greater than he had hoped, and that it bound him to her all the more, as it bound her to him, all the more so because, through it, she would be more humiliated and ravaged.”
I’m not sure God derives pleasure from our humiliation and ravaging qua humiliation and ravaging.
“Since she loved him, she could not help loving whatever derived from him. O listened and trembled with happiness, because he loved her, all acquiescent she trembled. He doubtless guessed it, for he went on: “It’s because it’s easy for you to consent that I want from you what it will be impossible for you to consent to, even if you agree ahead of time, even if you say yes now and imagine yourself
capable of submitting. You won’t be able not to revolt. Your submission will be obtained in spite of you, not only for the inimitable pleasure that I and others will derive from it, but also that you will be made aware of what has been done to you.”
It sounds rather like he wants to violate her will for violation’s sake. It’s not enough for her will to conform to his; he wants to do violence to her will – to force her to revolt and then still gain her submission. That doesn’t match my understanding of the relation between God’s will and our own.
I do think that takes it more toward De Sade territory.
For what it’s worth, from Wikipedia:
“Story of O (French: Histoire d’O, IPA: [istwaʁ do]) is an erotic novel published in 1954 about love, dominance and submission by French author Anne Desclos under the pen name Pauline Réage.
Desclos did not reveal herself as the author for forty years after the initial publication. Desclos claims she wrote the novel as a series of love letters to her lover Jean Paulhan,[1] who had admired the work of the Marquis de Sade…Jean Paulhan, who was the author’s lover and the person to whom she wrote Story of O in the form of love letters, wrote the preface, “Happiness in Slavery”. Paulhan admired the Marquis de Sade’s writing and told Desclos that a woman could not write in a similar fashion. Desclos interpreted this as a challenge and wrote the book.”
Granted, this does not prove that the author was attempting to ape De Sade’s “transgression for transgression’s sake.” But does the introduction of Natalie – almost sixteen and wanting nothing more than to be a slave like O – fit with your “O needed taming” thesis? Seems like the author is suggesting that pretty much all women need taming, that this is what they really want.
And on the question of her consent – I’m not really seeing the that “her consent was constantly necessary in every step of this taming process” in the following passage:
*****
“Kneel down and listen to me,” he said. “I’m afraid René’s training leave a great deal to be desired.”
“I always obey René,” she mumbled.
“You’re confusing love and obedience. You’ll obey me without loving me, and without my loving you.”
With that, she felt a strange inexplicable storm of revolt rising within her, silently denying in the depths of her being the words she was hearing, denying her promises of submission and slavery, denying her own agreement, her own desire, her nakedness, her sweat, her trembling limbs, the
circles under her eyes. She struggled and clenched her teeth with rage when, having made her bend over, with her elbows on the floor and her head between her arms, her buttocks raised, he forced her from behind, to rend her as René had said he would.
The first time she did not cry out. He went at it again, harder now, and she screamed. She screamed as much out of revolt as of pain, and he was fully aware of it. She also knew – which meant that in any event she was vanquished – that he was pleased to make her cry out…He reminded her that she had agreed to be René’s slave, and his too, but that it appeared unlikely that she was aware – consciously aware – of what she had consented to. By the time she had learned, it would be too late for her to escape.
*****
I rather think the line, “You’ll obey me without loving me, and without my loving you” separates O’s story from religious allegory. It’s also perhaps noteworthy that this passage comes after she has three times refused her consent to Sir Stephen’s requests.
p.s. You wrote:
“Sex is a violence, which is to say that insofar it is a picture of Christ and His Church, it represents gender disparities written onto the very fabric of the Universe: between master and servant, pursuer and prey, between lover and beloved, creator and magnum opus, between plug and receptacle. If it isn’t at least a little bit violent, you might be doing it wrong.”
I dunno. If the city gates are flung wide in welcome and the road strewn with flowers, it’s kind of hard to call your entrance into the city, however spectacular, an invasion.
@Lickona: Of course there are differences, i.e., between the Story of O and any saint’s Dark Night of the Soul. And of course the differences are telling. Ms. Reage (Anne Desclos) gets the men of the story utterly wrong. They are cardboard. She cannot imagine a why a man “desires” this anymore than can she imagine having a penis. It is O, the woman, that she gets so plausibly right. The analogy, to the extent that it exists at all, breaks down radically on the male side. God obviously takes no pleasure in our pain, but only in our growth in holiness. And to that end, there is no suffering he won’t willingly inflict upon us to complete it. Sometimes eros can only be rightly glimpsed from the other side.
Look, I don’t know how to put this delicately in polite company: women tend to like rough sex… a lot rougher than most of us nice guys were ever led to believe. Of course, not all women are like that, yada, yada, yada; and they like it rougher at some times more than others, yada, yada, yada. And no woman really want to have initials branded on her butt, yada yada yada. But why, in the teleogical sense of why, ought this be true? Well there’re probably lots of reasons, but a few come to mind: A woman likes a strong, purposeful, confident man, who knows what he wants, who is willing and able to impose his will on her.
If the city gates are flung wide in welcome and the road strewn with flowers, it’s kind of hard to call your entrance into the city, however spectacular, an invasion.
On the contrary, that’s the very best kind of invasion. The next day you may very find yourself making a whip of chords to clean up the temple.
Look, I don’t know how to put this delicately in polite society: you need to step out of the world of fantasy. In terms of sex, there is no vast general group of “women”. There is only your wife, who is a real person with a real name and real preferences, most of which probably do not involve pain, discomfort, or humiliation. But I’m sure that the nice guys here who have been married for more than a decade are more than competent to make their own decisions on what their wives prefer, so I won’t presume to speak for them.
The world of sexual fantasy is a deadening one because it desensitizes a person to the strange and awkward and wonderful process of building a flesh-and-blood relationship with a particular other person. Fiction is reality distilled; fantasy is reality warped by being shoved into a highly sexualized mold. The Story of O is radical, and Christianity is radical, sure, but in a wholly different way. Your description of a strong man as one who is “willing and able to impose his will” is greatly at odds with St. Paul (the bond-slave, remember) and exhortation: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Eph. 5:27). Christ doesn’t make the church worthy of him by dominating her and imposing his will on her; he instead takes on himself every punishment in her stead, cleansing and purifying her by his own blood.
You say: “And to that end (holiness), there is no suffering he won’t willingly inflict upon us to complete it”? Quite the opposite: “it was our infirmities he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed.” (Is. 53:4-5). That is reality, not fantasy. Our God took human form and endured real humiliation and degradation, not as a fetishization of violence, but because sin is ugly. Lust is ugly. Domination is ugly. We suffer and are purified by suffering, but only if it is united to his suffering. God is not aroused by our pain and our spiritual dryness. He is not capricious and cruel, like the pagan gods. He is Love itself, before whom all theoretical fantasy talk of “what women want” and “what men want” melt away in the light of his intimate knowledge of each of us as unique persons.
St. Paul would have women reverence (i.e., fear) their husbands. Sarah called Abraham her lord. If “domination is ugly”, what would you have a “lord” do? Lick his servants’ boots? Sure, he may wash our feet… only to have us crucified upside down. We all swim in equalitarian kool-aid, so it is not surprising that you, like all of us have swallowed some. But let us not pretend that it has anything to do with Christianity. The Universe is heirarchy, not turtles, all the way down.
@UUN: I dunno. I read this from the ending: “O stared at them with eyes that, beneath her plumage, were darkened with bister, eyes opened wide like the eyes of the nocturnal bird she was impersonating, and the illusion was so extraordinary that no one thought of questioning her, which would have been the most natural thing to do, as though she were a real owl, deaf to human language, and dumb…But even though they thus made use of O, and even though they used her in this way as a model, or the subject of a demonstration, not once did anyone ever speak to her directly. Was she then of stone or wax, or rather some creature from another world, and did they think it pointless to speak to her? Or didn’t they dare?”
And reading that, I am thinking that O’s individual humanity has been completely subsumed. The onlookers think of her as a beast – “a real owl” – bereft of language, the hallmark of reason. She exists, it seems to me, purely as an extension of Sir Stephen and his will. This put me in mind of Screwtape, when he speaks of God: “Merely to over-ride a human will would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve…We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons…Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”
Yes, yes, you have already granted that the book gets God wrong. But you have said that it gets O right. My question is, if God made O, can she possibly be happy with the kind of assimilation she has undergone? If she is made to be united and yet remain distinct, can her state at the end of the story really be what she is destined for? Because by that point, she doesn’t seem terribly distinct.
I hesitate to speak of what women like sexually; my experience here is limited. I do know that there is nothing “rough” in my image of the open city gates and flower-strewn road.
I had always thought that eros sought union with the beloved. What is achieved in O seems closer to the destruction of the beloved. What is left to love by the end?
Unpublishably Unique Name, insofar as gender differences follow from sex differences, I can see how the ‘plug and receptacle’ distinction might count as a ‘gender disparity written onto the very fabric of the Universe’, and one that reflects the relationship between God and the soul or Christ and His Bride.
But to describe the master-and-servant, pursuer-and-prey, lover-and-beloved, and creator-and-magnum-opus distinctions in terms of gender seems (to this chap) abstracted several clicks past reality. I think many people in many cultures have viewed those disparities in gendered terms, and/or gender in terms drawn from those disparities; you are in good company. Even so, it seems to me more ancient folly than ancient wisdom, a projection rather than a discovery. Call this a failure of perception, imagination, or reasoning on my part, but I don’t see that the discrepancies listed at the top of this paragraph are gendered. Is this a ‘you-see-it-or-you-don’t’, brute-fact sort of a deal? Or is it susceptible to proof?
When I speak of gender here, I am speaking of the deep cosmic gender, similar to that spoken of by S. Hutchen’s here. It is about the male priesthood, but also far more than that. Obviously, empiricism cannot tell us much about the epic narrative of which we all are part. It is obvious to me that the Author intended some deep analogies to descend from top to bottom. Among these, hierarchy is a natural ordering force that helps keeps us oriented toward what is good, true, and beautiful. It hardly seems foolish for ancients to simply notice what is always and everywhere seen, what creeped into their language without anyone even noticing it.
Moving out of the realm of fantasy into reality, let’s consider how Jesus, the only man who had any right to dominate another person, described his mastery: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and i will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt. 12;28-30)
Looking at how Jesus actually interacts with women who have sinned, we see that when a woman comes and washes his feet with her tears and precious ointment, and dries them with her hair, he praises her, lauds her publicly, gives her forgiveness, and tells her to go in peace (Lk 7:36-50). When the Pharisees insist that she should be called out as a sinner, Jesus insists that her love should be repaid in kind. She is treated with full dignity at every step. Jesus knows how to be generous and receptive — he does not require of us what he is unwilling to do himself, as evidenced by his humility in washing the feet of his disciples on the eve of his Passion.
When the woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus so that he can make a public example of her (Jn 8:1-11), it is her accusers that Jesus treats with stony indifference, not the woman herself. And he, who is the only one who has the right to “tame” her or discipline her, straightens up to stand at her level, asks who has condemned her, and then tells her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” Again, he treats her as full of dignity — “full of grace”, just like Mary.
Sex is a type of the soul’s interaction with her beloved, but it is only one type, and rather a lesser one at that, since in heaven there is no marriage and giving in marriage. The dominance/submission paradigm is giving sex more weight than it’s meant to bear. Remember that Adam is given domination over creation, but in regards to Eve, he is told “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Gen. 1:28) He declares her his equal: “This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23). Sex is not a teaching tool or a method of correction; its nature is fecund and unitive. To pretend otherwise is merely to seek a religious pretext for titillation.
Mrs. D – I hesitate to speak for UUN, but I’m not sure he was suggesting that sex was actually a teaching tool or method of correction, but rather, that the whole story was an allegory of the soul’s relation to God, as evidenced by his paragraph:
“The human soul finds her purpose, her joy, and (ultimately) her salvation, in willingly subjugating herself to God. It is what we were created for. In this present vail of tears, the soul finds her Lover often impossibly demanding, demanding of her perfection. And yet, when she dutifully complies with his commands, she is met mostly with little or the very faintest praise. More often, she faces stony silence, save for the command to comply yet more completely, and the crosses she bears in His service are multiplied. I call to the stand Bl. Teresa of Calcutta… and St. Paul, the bond-slave of Christ.”
I believe that Bl. Teresa and St. Paul both clung fast to the example of the original suffering servant, Christ himself, who cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in his moment of desolation. But the rest of the Psalm Christ was quoting, Ps. 22, goes on to give God worship, to proclaim his eternal faithfulness, and his saving love. God does not break our will because it gives him pleasure to see us broken and submissive. Rather, the process of dying to ourselves in order to better please him is often described as “purification”, which, if I may be so bold as to venture an opinion, is exactly opposite of the degradations to which O is submitted in your example above.
I think we are in agreement – this is what I was trying to get at above when I wrote, “I’m not sure God derives pleasure from our humiliation and ravaging qua humiliation and ravaging.”
Thank you, Your Honor!
I’m not sure God derives pleasure from our humiliation and ravaging qua humiliation and ravaging.
I’m certain he does not. But he derives great pleasure from our perfection, and to that end he, knowing means and ends, will not spare his blessed ones any amount of humiliation and ravaging.
So, the story of O mainly seems helpful as an example of the perversions of receptivity that many/most of our usual constructions of femininity entail.
I’m a bit late to the party, but for my own two sense, if you want to see how sex is used in a *proper* way regarding the relationship between God and man or God and his Church – I would like to bring as a witness for the defense, “The Song of Songs.”
“I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and hinds of the fields, not to stir my beloved or rouse her until she pleases” (Sg. 2:7).
And here is St. Bernard’s commentary, appropos to your discussion:
“Actually our race is not without someone who happily deserved to enjoy this gift, who experienced within herslef this sweetest mystery, unless we entirely disbelieve the passage of scripture we have at hand, where the heavenly bridegroom is plainly shown passionately defending the repose of his beloved, eager to embrace her within his arms as she sleeps, lest she be roused from her delicious slumber by annoyance or disquiet. I cannot restrain my joy that this majesty did not disain to bend down to our weakness in a companionship so familiar and sweet, that the supreme Godhead did not scorn to enter into wedlock with the soul in exile and to reveal to her with the most ardent love how affectionate was this bridegroom whom she had won. That in heaven it is like this, as I read on earht, I do not doubt, nor that the soul will experience for certain what this page suggest,s excpet that here she cannot fully express what she will there be capable of grasping, but cannot yet grasp. What do you think she will recieve there, when now she is favored with an intimacy so great as to feel herself embraced by the arms of God, cherished on the breast of God, guarded by the care and zeal of God lest she be roused from ehr sleep by anyone till she wakes of her own accord.”
I’ll let St. Bernard speak for himself – but only remark that there is your male confidence and female submission – but it is oddly juxtaposed, it seems – she is confident to sleep and he passionate to guard that sleep. I tend to think the sleep is a post-coital sleep – and for that reason all the more remarkable for our purposes here: as there is no question that Solomon is singing of the sex act without separating it from its proper context (marriage) – and showing the true beauty of its consummation.
JOB
p.s. This is hilarous by the way, UUN:
III
“R.E.M.! I’m with you in Rockville
where they’re cooler than I am
I’m with you in Rockville
where you must sell many disks
I’m with you in Rockville
where you imitate the sound of Roger McGuinn
I’m with you in Rockville
where your condition has become famous and is reported on the radio
I’m with you in Rockville
where fifty million dollars will never return Bill Berry to his drums again from his pilgrimage to live on a farm
I’m with you in Rockville
where there are twenty-five-billion Gen-Xers still unable to forget the chorus of “Manic Monday”
I’m with you in Rockville
where we wake up horrified out of our REM sleep by our own clock radios braying wretched Steve Winwood he’s come to play indelible cliches the clock face illuminates itself fists pound snooze buttons O luckless listeners run outside O sleepy screaming fans of alt-rock the eternal war is here O victory forget your earplugs we’re free
I’m with you in Rockville
in my dreams you play “Driver 8” all evening on the radios across America instead of that Cranberries song I hear every damn night – “Allen Ginsberg: Bangles Linger (III)”
Ah, The Tango. Took me a while.
Someone had to get Lickona to 40.
And I am JUST the man to do it.
JOB
My question is, if God made O, can she possibly be happy with the kind of assimilation she has undergone? If she is made to be united and yet remain distinct, can her state at the end of the story really be what she is destined for? Because by that point, she doesn’t seem terribly distinct.
Matthew, you are stretching the analogy far too far, and asking me to defend what I could not, would not defend. I will say, in this Present Vail of Tears, that the happiness of the servant is only to please her master. Yes, we will be ourselves in eternal beatitude with God. But one of the chiefest ways we accomplish this is by sublimating our identity in Our Lord during this life (and perhaps even moreso in purgatory, of which we know little).
Anyone who thinks, on the basis of a couple of carefully chosen Bible verses, that the path to Heaven is roses and affirmation, is not taking Scripture seriously nor taking the problem of human suffering seriously. The Lord who says his yoke is easy and burden light, is also the one who says take up your cross. You don’t get to truth without both sides of the apparent contradiction.
I hesitate to speak of what women like sexually; my experience here is limited.
It is not for nothing that the, by all accounts, rather shoddily constructed “50 Shades of Grey” is a #1 bestseller. Men have never been more feminized, never so socially conditioned to behave like women, never so marginalized from the type of life they are prepared by Nature to lead. (I could add that never have women been so poorly conditioned for the lives that Nature intended them to lead as well… but there is a difference in that women, in general, claim by this “liberation” to be winning.) Although most women are loathe to admit it, in fact literally cannot admit it, they find the status quo for which they have themselves agitated vociferously to be unfulfilling. Thus they turn to this sort of porn (by the millions apparently) as an unnatural substitute for what they should be, and save for a particular and virulent ideology, would getting at home.
I reject the notion, quite popular among women and men who think like them, that because there exists a range of preference, behavior, or aptitude in a population that therefore we cannot generalize. This leads quickly down the path that types do not exist. How dare you claim men are taller than women? I know several women who are taller than their husbands! This type of thinking completely degrades meaningful conversation. Facts become mere rubberized clubs to bop our opponents on the head to score points. When one’s purpose is to shut down conversation, this rhetorical device works quite well. And such, lo and behold, is the nature of conversation in the Mainstream Media and Educational Industrial Establishment.
Clare says:
So, the story of O mainly seems helpful as an example of the perversions of receptivity that many/most of our usual constructions of femininity entail.
Bingo… more or less. Yes, I think the story is precisely about the perversions of receptivity. Except that femininity is not, emphatically not, a human construction. Femininity is, cosmically, to be receptive, to be moulded. Masculinity is, cosmically, to be assertive, to mould. For those trying to keep score, that doesn’t mean that some women aren’t tall, or that some men aren’t short.
As to the general and most obvious complaint… it took me 20 years of marriage for both of us to find out my wife liked (at times) being bit; a couple more to find out that she liked being (at times) tied up, (at times) spanked, (at times) have hair pulled, (at times) be scratched, (at times) NSFW. One’s mileage may of course vary. But no, 10 years may not be enough; even a lifetime may not be enough to fully know ourselves. Even taking away the mild BSDM-ish stuff (sure! it’s not everyone’s “thing”), there remains an inherently violent aspect to the conjugal union and please don’t make me describe it. It is part of St. Paul great mystery, but he speaks of Christ as the head of the Church, his bride.
It is not for nothing that the, by all accounts, rather shoddily constructed “50 Shades of Grey” is a #1 bestseller.
This is an argument that goes nowhere. “50 Shades of Grey” has sold roughly 10 million copies world-wide. There are over 150 million women in the US. Even giving the US the lion’s share of the sales, that still puts the percentage of women who’ve seen a copy of Shades of Grey well under 10%.
Anyone who thinks, on the basis of a couple of carefully chosen Bible verses, that the path to Heaven is roses and affirmation, is not taking Scripture seriously nor taking the problem of human suffering seriously. The Lord who says his yoke is easy and burden light, is also the one who says take up your cross. You don’t get to truth without both sides of the apparent contradiction.
You also most certainly don’t get to truth by turning “take up your cross and follow me” into “make it your business to impose crosses on other people”. Indeed, if one makes it ones business to dehumanize and humiliate other people “for their good” because one imagines this somehow makes one like God, one will only end up with the others of God’s creatures who have attempted to make themselves into gods.
God is not a sadist. He does not make us suffer because “it’s good for us” or because “we want it” much less because “he wants it”. He enjoins us to strive for virtue even though in a fallen world it often results in suffering, and when we encounter suffering to accept it with our eyes on love and eternity rather than allowing ourselves to be overcome with despair, bitterness or hate.
I’m not sure how one states this subtly, so I’ll just state it plainly: The fact that you’ve, by your account, found marital satisfaction in a some degree of sexual deviance does not mean that therefore sexual deviance is necessarily a good thing. It may simply indicate that some of those taking part in those encounters are bent and broken in heart and desires. Your attempts to rationalize deviant behavior by claiming that it’s something that everyone wants or that it analogizes the soul’s relationship to God is roughly as convincing as a part time satanist arguing that the black mass has many parallels to the real thing.
“Except that femininity is not, emphatically not, a human construction. Femininity is, cosmically, to be receptive, to be moulded. ”
This, I think, is mainly bs. Where exactly are you getting this? And it’s awfully easy and cheap to assert that femininity is not a human construction, and then designate your construction as the transcendental and cosmic one.
I agree that femininity is not solely a human construction, but most of the ways we theorize about it and percieve it are.
Femininity is a name we give to a principle that appears to be inscribed on the Universe. It is a human construction in precisely the same way that the animals are human constructions because Adam gave names to them all.
But your description of what femininity is is, as Clare points out, a construction. That femininity itself exists by no means suggests that your description of it is correct.
UUN: Apologies. I was not trying to stretch your analogy.
Before 50 Shades was a bestseller, Twilight was a bestseller. And that was about precisely the opposite: a powerful guy so moony over his girl that he repressed all of his desires for her sake.
Further, doesn’t 50 Shades include the rather crucial plot point of Ana trying to lead Christian out of the BDSM life? Doesn’t she see it as problematic, and doesn’t he grant as much when he invokes his crack-whore mother? I’m not certain how things wind up – I haven’t spent much time on the matter.
If your point in mentioning The Story of O is simply to say that the happiness of the servant is to please her master, and that this notion has meaning for those of us who would be God’s servants – well, that’s the mindset we find O in at the story’s outset, isn’t it? What is the point of everything that follows?
Yes, there is a passage where she recalls being sexually cruel in days gone by, but by the time the story opens, she’s ready to obey Rene. It’s why she goes with him to the house in the first place, and follows his orders in the cab. What follows after is just what I mentioned earlier: the attempt to force her to revolt, and then make her submit anew in a way that is not in fact in accordance with her happiness. It is an exercise in cruelty, and it is the entire body of the book.
Right in the beginning, Rene tells the others, “”As a matter of fact,” the other voice went on, “if you do tie her up from time to time, or whip her just a little, and she begins to like it, that’s no good either. You have to get past the pleasure stage, until you reach the stage of tears.”
So already the analogy is stretched – by the text itself – as if God would say, “So, little soul, you say that suffering is sweet to you when done for my sake? That’s no good. I must make you suffer past the point where you can offer your suffering to me.”
I guess I don’t see the point. O at the beginning is already happy to please Rene. The servant’s will is already in conformity with the master’s. What further perfection is required?
I’m not trying to be obstinate, I promise.
What further perfection is required?
The testing phase, I guess.
BTW, I’m not trying to make you into the obstinant one. Clearly this was an uncomfortable discussion, even for this generally quite open-minded blog. It seems I have worn out my welcome with this particular heresy. To say nothing of getting off the very worthy topic of Brideshead.
I didn’t read the text as carefully as I might have, but I missed much sense of testing – in the sense of O being tempted to rebel, or trying to rebel, and then being brought back to happy submission. She is simply used and used and used. When she is finally brought to the point of rebellion, it is because she has been handed over to another master, one she does not love, and who does not love her, but merely wishes to break her. At Roissy, she submitted to everything for the sake of Rene. But she does not submit to Sir Stephen for the sake of Rene. She submits because she is broken.
I don’t know about worn-out welcome. Yes, the discussion is uncomfortable, but that’s because it is almost of necessity quite personal and intimate. Hence, people on both sides saying things about speaking in polite company.
Well, Rene fades. O does come to love Sir Stephen, whom she now knows is in every way superior to Rene. The book is not explicit (heh!) on the question, but there seems to be room to believe that Sir Stephen has also come to love her. The movie (NC17 in the extreme and not one I’ll admit to having watched) utterly ditches either of the two written endings and leaves the viewer quite convinced that Sir Stephen has come to love her as well. (Well intentioned vandalism perhaps?)
Michael, if you care, at least read what I wrote; not you what you think (or wish?) I wrote.
UNN,
Oh, I read what you wrote, and indicated by the fact that in my comment I responded to specific quotes of yours, while in yours you fall back on a generic “you don’t understand me”. I just recognize what for the morally diseased self justification that it is.
The problem here is that you’ve developed an understanding of suffering and God’s and our relation to it which is at odds which Christianity, in order to justify a taste which you have developed for ideas of dominance, humiliation and pain giving. You’ve justified this by a certain surface level similarity between the person on the receiving end of sexual/sadist humiliation and the willing acceptance of suffering discussed by the saints. But what you miss in all this, in an attempt to justify that which cannot be justified, is that what makes the sexual sadism exemplified by The Story of O evil is that it involves the intentional abuse of a human person by another human person. In such a situation, the abuser sins in abusing, and the abused sins to the extent that the abused engages in the disordered desire to be abused.
The overall attempt to analogize O’s relationship to her “masters” to that of the soul to God is no more helpful or true than an attempt to analogize the relationship of Mengele’s victim to Mengele to that of the soul and God. And the only thing that makes it even seem to work is the extent to which you’ve perverted the traditional Christian understanding of how God relates to our suffering by taking more poetic passages literally.
–CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain
Michael, I can only say that it seems you have missed the memo wherein it was announced that Freud is largely discredited. You cannot accuse me of the grossest and most absurd intentions and expect me to respond point by point, for to do so, would alone lend some modicum of credence to them.
UUM,
I recall St. Francis de Sales, I think it was, referring to consolation as a gift twice given – once for being an oasis in the prayer life and twice as evidence of God’s blessings on one’s path to holiness.
Are you saying that O is going through a dark night of the soul or that the dark night of the soul is the norm for sanctity?
JOB
I don’t know if we have a norm for sanctity, but the dark night of the soul is clearly one common path… and we have precious little info regarding what comes after death. I wouldn’t say that O is going thru such a journey. Indeed no such journey would be so well supplied from the Catalogue of Grave Sins. But, rather that in certain, well circumscribed, respects it is analogous to it. It is in that sense alone deeply Catholic, but all the while deeply transgressive in that it unites natural passions toward unnatural ends.
“Norm” was being lazy – I should have simply distinguished between O’s experience as a means or end in itself. Do I see what you’re saying now, though? That O goes through a – what? an inconsolable, seemingly endless dark night?
Do you say that O ever reaches a point where – I’m looking at or beyond the “Owl” scene – she finds consolation or even resolution? Where she says like the Bride in the Canticle of Canticles, “I to my beloved and his turning is toward me” (Song 7:10).
There were apparently two written endings. One where O, after learning of Sir Stephen leaving her (dunno why), asks permission of Sir Stephen to off herself (which is granted). I suppose that’s some consolation in an utterly nihilistic sorta way. In the other ending (apparently) she is “enjoyed” by the few party-goers who remained after dawn, “beyond possession”. The movie (again high end of NC17) has playfully burning an O onto Sir Stephen’s hand with his cigarillo, which purists denegrate as utterly ruining the story. (Perhaps, I don’t have a dog in the fight… but it is poetic and somewhat satisfying). Sir Stephen has, indeed, fallen in love with her.
In every case you could say, only from the point of view of the mind unregenerated by Christian revelation, that she “achieves” the “perfection” her master sought. There endeth the analogy… if it even somehow got that far.
Oh, and I must correct what I said, I think we DO have a norm for holiness in our Blessed Mother, but I think that our paths to her level of sanctity will be unique to each of us, even if united mystically to hers. Ultimately, we will be everything that God created us to be, or else utterly destroyed.