![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321A short, hard-hitting (yes, a boxing pun, groan) novella about a young couple in love, written in 1913 by the author whom I only knew via Call of the Wild, a tale of wolves read out aloud to us by my fourth-grade teacher. On the eve of their wedding day, the young man decides to enter his last boxing match; he has promised his fiancée to stop boxing after this final round.
I have a low-level interest in boxing due to my interest in Dudley Dursley, and the boxing jargon and description of the match are good. The suspense and excitement is conveyed rather vividly as is the general atmosphere among the audience.
However, this book revolves around the kind of heteronormative masculinity that I find hard to stomach. It is salutary to read things like this now and again, to remember how all-prevalent, suffocatingly so, this ideology, discourse and institutionalised system and set of behaviours was, to some extent still is, and I certainly remember reading other books like this and not yet having the vocabulary and mindset to resist them. The couple in this novella is set up in a polar binary: feminine vs masculine, soft and weak versus hard and strong. Plus, the woman is so glaringly obviously a wish-fulfilment fantasy, the 1913 version of manic pixie dreamgirl, that she is stripped of all individuality.
"His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to see out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his strength." (p.4)
Not only is she of a weakly leaning disposition because she is "a female" but she also contrives to be at the same time innocent and pure, ignorant even of what it means to be looked at by men, but also somehow voluptuous, sensual and maternal, and aware of what women's glances at her man mean even while he has no clue of such matters. Hence: she is innocent and knows nothing about sexuality, but is also sexually desirable and deeply knowledgeable about matters sexual. Only in the Mary Stu brain of a fevered masculinist can such contradictions co-exist.
"The pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on. The mothers of all the past were whispering through her..." (p.23).
Because a woman who is TOO innocent would, of course, not be all that desirable to a man; she has to be overcome by some sort of ur-passion for her Man. 'The mothers', I'm thinking, gestures towards the reproductive aspect of intercourse.
I read this for #the52bookclub challenge prompt 'the word "game" in the title'.
Crossposted to Goodreads.
I have a low-level interest in boxing due to my interest in Dudley Dursley, and the boxing jargon and description of the match are good. The suspense and excitement is conveyed rather vividly as is the general atmosphere among the audience.
However, this book revolves around the kind of heteronormative masculinity that I find hard to stomach. It is salutary to read things like this now and again, to remember how all-prevalent, suffocatingly so, this ideology, discourse and institutionalised system and set of behaviours was, to some extent still is, and I certainly remember reading other books like this and not yet having the vocabulary and mindset to resist them. The couple in this novella is set up in a polar binary: feminine vs masculine, soft and weak versus hard and strong. Plus, the woman is so glaringly obviously a wish-fulfilment fantasy, the 1913 version of manic pixie dreamgirl, that she is stripped of all individuality.
"His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to see out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his strength." (p.4)
Not only is she of a weakly leaning disposition because she is "a female" but she also contrives to be at the same time innocent and pure, ignorant even of what it means to be looked at by men, but also somehow voluptuous, sensual and maternal, and aware of what women's glances at her man mean even while he has no clue of such matters. Hence: she is innocent and knows nothing about sexuality, but is also sexually desirable and deeply knowledgeable about matters sexual. Only in the Mary Stu brain of a fevered masculinist can such contradictions co-exist.
"The pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on. The mothers of all the past were whispering through her..." (p.23).
Because a woman who is TOO innocent would, of course, not be all that desirable to a man; she has to be overcome by some sort of ur-passion for her Man. 'The mothers', I'm thinking, gestures towards the reproductive aspect of intercourse.
I read this for #the52bookclub challenge prompt 'the word "game" in the title'.
Crossposted to Goodreads.