Silly observations

[PNOTESBD at cnsvax.uwec.edu]

When thinking about the "sex" (represented or strongly suggested) in *V.*, it
might help to consider at least three categories of activity:

1. Sex that is heterosexually "normal" (whatever that means) which is where I
think the Rachel/Benny relationship appears to be going until Stencil drags
him off to Malta and his meeting with Brenda Wigglesworth. [BTW: a summer
activity for P-listers: try your hand at putting Brenda's poem into a verse
structure; some students of mine tried it a few years ago and they came up
with some interesting versions.]

2. The largely empty sex of the Whole Sick Crew, with Mafia Winsome's
activity setting the paradigm, and one could add here the Kinky sex of
Foppl's siege party.

3. But the third category is the troublesome one, because the book contains
some rapes (Fina, Sarah), some near rapes, and the incestuous abuse of
Melanie.  

A question worth thinking about is how TRP might be using the wide variety of
sexual activities in his fiction as a metaphor for the social condition as a
whole.  For instance, the appropriation of Sarah's body by Firelilly's Rider
and her subsequent rape by his fellow German troopers is a horrifying
metaphor for the abuses of the colonialist project in Africa, and probably
more to the point that the atavistic romanticism of the native woman in
Conrad's *Heart of Darkness*.

As B/4

Duffy