Continuation, part 3, same deal as with the previous: This is primarily for myself, to put everything in a clear perspective. As such, this is an in-depth spoiler-filled exploration proceeding from, and coloured by, personal bias.
Intimacy
Now, before I kick off, I'm aware that my view on this particular story barely grazes the theme of authenticity (or self-actualization) that is commonly ascribed to it. Once it was pointed out to me, I found that yes I could indeed see it, but I ended up rejecting that exploration as ultimately pessimistic.Pessimistic because then the story's conclusion would mean that Lulu fails in her quest for authenticity and the failure of goals was already too present in the previous Erostratus short story so for the sake of variety I went and did my own thing. Hence, my view on Intimacy is that it's actually a story of self-acceptance and the throwing off of peer-pressure and conventionality leading to some sort of (unexplored and undescribed by Sartre, which means it's a rather hypothetical kind of) happiness. (It's a trick he uses; cutting away before the end, or giving an outsider's point of view on the 'resolution', which engenders cyclical and indefinite discussion. I should maybe loathe it, but as I'm stimulated enough to write about it, I'm just going to keep moving and refrain from casting judgement right now.)
Story number 4 is called "Intimacy" and it is about people struggling with various shades of it, primarily, it's about the struggles of Lulu, who, stirred up by her friend Rirette, and given impetus in a moment of pique, finally decides to leave her husband Henri to elope with her lover; Pierre.
We start the story in full rambling flow as Lulu's own stream of consciousness monologue blasts off the page as she lies in bed next to her husband.
Lulu abhors the physical sex act which makes her feel defiled, while here husband, for whatever reason, suffers from impotency. As Sartre doesn't explore Henri so much I'll forego commenting on him other than to say that, given how much is made of how Henri holds himself around other people, the cause for his impotency is likely a psychological one rather than a medical one, suggesting that he is so constrained and inhibited that he is unable to open himself up to others, leaving sexual intercourse as a virtual impossibility.Lulu's revulsion for sex and Henri's impotency lead to various benefits for Lulu, which makes her decide in the end to remain with her husband rather than elope with her lover.
Oops, did I give it away? I did say spoilers.
Anyway, the big thing here, the seemingly outright conflicting element that directly opposes my approach of the theme of acceptance of (the limitations of) the self is the existence of Lulu's lover.
The fact that there is a lover seems to point to Lulu's need for something else than what her husband gives her, and because the story primarily focuses on sex and how it makes Lulu feel, we are led astray in thinking that a feel-good kind of sex is what Lulu actually wants/needs.
But what Lulu really wants is love and intimacy, without the sex-act.
We don't see the initial meeting of Lulu with Pierre. He springs into the narrative, fully formed with an already established relationship built on physically romantic entanglements.
What is also immediately established is Lulu's intense dislike of those physical entanglements.
It makes her adultery with Pierre a rather baffling thing.
-----
(Is it in fact literally contrived? Lulu's views on physical intimacy are so out of what is the commonly accepted norm (the conventional) that it doesn't even make sense for her to go shopping for a different relationship, even if it is one in the hopes of love.)
-----
I guess, that in the hypothetical past, when the realization had set in that she did not love her husband anymore, she would then have naturally, but covertly, set out to seek greener pastures. She ostensibly finds those in Pierre, but then he turns out to be more of a regular dude with regular cravings kind of guy which leads to the state of affairs (haha) at the start of our narrative and Lulu's general unhappiness at all of it.
When Henri slaps Lulu's brother in the face she furiously grasps the moment as the perfect time to show her discontent with him, at how he has not given her what she needed and how he has made her feel (or not feel).
She takes control and locks him out on the terrace and taunts him. Because that's what she wants, she wants to dominate him, humiliate him, cause him anguish and pain as a kind of payback for the disappointment in her life with him. Just as she earlier grips his flaccid member, taking comfort in that act because it empowers her, while making Henri groan in embarrassment because it does nothing to him: by willfully causing him mental anguish she is dominating him.
Afterwards, and this is described as a regular thing, when Henri sleeps, she proceeds to pleasure herself to thoughts of purity, priests and women.
Though she states she doesn't like women, there sneak a few less than innocent observations in her musings, though she explains those away with "we all have thoughts like that...".
Is the implication here that she is a lesbian but unable and unwilling to admit and commit to that? So deeply repressed she can not even admit it to herself in her fantasies.
The most noteworthy of which is a fantasy she has of violating her female friend Rirette together with her lover Pierre. At a glance, this is just a violent little daydream, an internal thought-response to feeling wronged and an imaginary way of grasping back superiority and control. But, as in the fantasy she is the one who restrains Rirette, and holds her close, almost tenderly, without being the one who does the act, it suggests more. Also her musings on preferring to have a soft man's body against her, rather than a muscular one, as that makes her feel self-conscious, seem to work well with how she views Rirette's body, as soft and huge. Though Rirette herself tends to views herself as average, and sexy and good-looking while naked.
Either way. I blatantly disregard this line of reasoning as it would also have the story end in a negative way. (Lulu denying what she wants and regressing into her 'wife to a man' state.)
So then, after the scene where she locked her husband out on the terrace, she packs a suitcase, writes a note and leaves. But not before first making her husband a meal and putting the stove on. She then meets Rirette and relates the happenings that have led her there. When they subsequently take a stroll, Lulu engineers their walk so that the women meet with Henri as he comes out of his place of work and an emotionally charged confrontation ensues. I thought this little bit was really well done, where these people's anguish just pours off the page, with every nuance that a confrontation summons up.
The two women hurry off in a taxi to Pierre's hotel while a desolate Henri stays behind.
Pierre puts her up in a temporary apartment, has sex with her and then goes on his way, whistling merrily while he goes.
In the quiet, Lulu's frustration and resentment at Pierre's unloving attitude begins to seethe and the whole situation and the coming consequences begin to dawn on her, and she realizes that Pierre and his ways are not what she wants and then decides to returns to her husband for 'a last goodbye'. When she witnesses how distraught he is, she is heartened and takes pity on him but declares that she will take her leave of him nonetheless. They talk and Lulu draws out the conversation and her stay as long as she can. In the morning out on the landing, right out of their front door, she laments that Henri did not put up more of a struggle and she is then enveloped by a deep sense of loss.
Cue Sartre's trick; skip scene.
At the end of the day after, Pierre and Rirette sit together and read Lulu's earlier delivered letter to Pierre, wherein she omits her visit with her husband the night before while she tells outright lies and relates her decision to remain with Henri. The truth is buried in an unreliable second hand account.
It was my (stubborn) idea that, aware of her own likes and wants, (/her crippling inhibitions) she elects to remain with Henri, because his impotency enables her rejection of the physical act of love between a man and a woman. Henri, in turn, takes her confession of love-lost as the new standard and (hypothetically) accepts it just so he doesn't end up alone, maybe he even vows to do better.
-----
Again, this is all conjecture that'll suit my outcome.
If you take the text as Sartre designed it then yes of course, Lulu fails at becoming an 'authentic person'.
-----
In the end, neither takes the confrontation as an opportunity to go to a better, healthier place and they both stay landlocked in their mutually inhibition-enabling embrace.
Because inertia has its own momentum.
Ooh, ooh. Goddamn I'm good.
Oh no wait, shit. When did this become negative again?
OK, dialing it back to positive:
This all leads me to say:
Different strokes for different people, Lulu's found hers. and it's with her husband, who may need something else than what Lulu can give him but as this is not about him, that's neither here nor there.
-----
Positive huh?
It's a shame then that this is completely cancelled out by the fact that, despite of Lulu's remaining with her husband, she will continue to see her lover Pierre. Now I could again explain that away by argumenting that her statement in the letter to Pierre is a purely placatory one and that she has in fact no intentions of keeping up their affair. But I rather don't think that's true either. But hey. It's an argument that you can't actually prove wrong by just remaining within the confines of the story itself.
It's where Sartre's own tricks end up biting him in the ass.
So. Restating:
Lulu, in the end lies to herself and everyone else because what she loves is an intimacy without the grubby reality of love-making. Henri's sterility-- it's not sterility because she comments earlier that Henri isn't always clean; thus it's really the physical act of love-making that repulses her. Henri's impotency enables this and it's something that enables her to put her own body on a pedestal so that while masturbating it's as if she envisions herself as a white tower. Or inhabiting one. A pure creature, in a white tower, capable of fulfilling her own needs, wanting no-one to fulfill those needs for her. (An authentic person here?)
But she seeks it out nonetheless.
She knew what would happen if she went to Pierre but go she did. And when the expected act then happens, she dislikes it. It affirms for her that with Pierre, this is what it will always be, so when she throws off Rirette and Pierre's urgings, she's actually standing up for herself.
Caveat
If you've read this far you'll notice how this entire write-up is all over the place.
It's something I'm very much aware of.
It's happened before in previous write-ups, most notably the time when I tried to understand the mythological framework for Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I spent way less time on Intimacy so forgive the errors throughout.
In American Gods I got caught up and wrong footed by seeming inconsistenties in the narrative that looked like they contradicted each other without ever actually doing so. The reason for this in American Gods is that there isn't enough information in the story to actually give a definitive explanation for how the gods can exist in multiple incarnations (and some other stuff besides, forgive, I'm vague on this). Gaiman walks a narrow tightrope and manages to keep the magic in the writing by giving a bare minimum of information. I got the feeling that with more information, Gaiman's mythological system would end up either contradicting itself, OR it would lose its every man's appeal or something. I don't know, it would lose something at any rate.
In Intimacy, because Lulu's story's resolution is related to us through the medium of a letter, and because said letter is proven to be unreliable by the lies which we can pinpoint in that letter, the reader can twist the ending to suit the outcome of their choice (within certain parameters).
No comments:
Post a Comment