Sungazing (With Reference to the Case of Juliet, the Lawrentian Sun-Woman)

Sungazing (SA/2022)

 

"And as she lay, she looked up through her fingers at the central sun

whose outer edges streamed brilliance." 

 

I. 

 

Juliet, the protagonist at the centre of D. H. Lawrence's solar-erotic tale entitled 'Sun', is an embryonic Lady Chatterley; rich, bored, and sexually frustrated. However, instead of taking a conventional lover, she establishes a perverse relationship with the sun, that strangest of strange attractors. 

 

One morning, as Juliet lay masturbating in her bed and gazing intently as the sun "lifted himself molten and sparkling, naked over the sea's rim" [1], she realised that her body belonged to the star around which the earth and all the other planets revolve and that her relationship with the sun mattered far more to her than being a wife and mother [2].

 

Of course, such a relationship - as a form of edgeplay [3] - is dangerous as well as pleasurable. For whilst the sun may kiss us into life, it cares nothing for the personal, the egoic, or the human. In fact, as Juliet discovers, it incinerates these things and if the sun helps her overcome her depression, so also does it burn out her pale-faced American idealism and threaten her status as a modern independent woman.

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Juliet is not the first person to gaze lovingly at the sun and lie naked before him.

 

Indeed, some proponents of New Age philosophies - apparently drawing upon ancient esoteric teachings - explicitly advocate staring at the rising or setting sun for unusually prolonged periods, in order to gain physical and spiritual well-being. 

 

The fact that looking directly at the sun, even for a short time, can cause solar retinopathy and lead to permanent damage or blindness, is not something that seems to cause adherents of sungazing any real concern. They don’t deny such risks, but they do play them down and many assert that, if done with due diligence, sun-gazing can actually improve eyesight [4]. 

 

Indeed, some sun-gazers claim that not only does the practice make you feel happier and healthier, but it can directly increase your energy levels and thus radically reduce the need for food: that one can, as it were, meet one's nutritional requirements directly from sunlight, just like a plant. 

 

Again, the fact that people don't possess chlorophyll and so cannot photosynthesise is discreetly overlooked and, as with other forms of inedia, there is no credible scientific evidence to support this amusingly bonkers claim [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 20. 

 

[2] Cf. Lawrence's poem 'Sun-women' where he writes of women who belong neither to men nor their children - nor even to themselves - but to the sun. The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 456. 

      Admittedly, Lawrence doesn't  explicitly say tha Juliet is masturbating in bed before the sun. However, the following lines undeniably suggest a state of heightened sexual arousal:

      

"It was as if she had never seen the sun rise before. She had never seen the naked sun stand up pure upon the sea-line, shaking the night off himself, like wetness. And he was full and naked. And she wanted to come to him. 

      So the desire sprang secretly in her, to be naked to the sun. She chesished her desire like a secret. She wanted to come together with the sun." 

 

[3] Edgeplay is a term derived from the kinky world of BDSM and refers to any form of sexual activity that involves the risk of physical harm to participants. Sun-fucking, at the very least, might result in a bad case of sunburn (which in turn could lead to skin cancer) and sungazing very obviously risks blindness, although, for Juliet, her (temporary) sun-blindness is like a richness to her.   

 

[4] I’m thinking here of the so-called Bates Method, a form of alternative eye-care developed by William Bates (1860-1931), who counted the visually-impaired Aldous Huxley amongst his famous followers.

[5] As the editors of the page devoted to sungazing on RationalWiki point out, the best that the sun can do when it comes to providing nourishment is stimulate production of vitamin D. However, as this happens in the skin - the sun's ultraviolet rays interacting with a protein known as 7-DHC - you still don't need to purposely stare at the sun.  

 

 

This post is a revised extract from an essay entitled 'Sun-Fucked: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence' (2012), which was published as 'Sun-Struck' on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage blog in January 2019: click here. 

Readers can find another extract from the above essay posted on Torpedo the Ark by clicking here. 

Case Studies from The White Stocking 3: Ted Whiston (An Abusive Husband with a Cuckold Fetish)

Anne Van Der Linden: Le bas blanc (2013)

annevanderlinden.net

I.

We have already discussed how Elsie is a prick tease in pearl earrings; and how her illicit lover and dance partner, Sam Adams, is a stocking fetishist who likes to make love to music, happy to humiliate the husbands and boyfriends of the young girls he preys upon.

But, let's be clear from the outset: Ted Whiston is no angel, or a man deserving of our pity. He's an abusive husband with - I would suggest - a cuckold fetish and a taste for sexual violence. Thus it is that, after Elsie receives a pair of pearl earrings as a Valentine's gift from Sam Adams, Whiston leaves for work brooding, but secretly excited by the idea of his wife being fucked by the older man.

And this is why he behaved as he did at the Christmas party two years earlier, when Adams publicly ravished his fiancée upon the dance floor and then pocketed one of her stockings that she had mistakenly carried with her instead of a handkerchief and then accidentally dropped in front of him. Whiston was angry that she let Adams not only pick up the item in question, but keep it too. However, although he would occasionally speak of the matter afterwards, it was one that he tellingly allowed to go unresolved.


II.

When Whiston gets home from work on Valentine's evening, he's tired and depressed, but ready to engage in a little sadomasochistic sex play with Elsie, who, it seems, is an eager and consensual participant in such. Lawrence writes:

"All day the male in him had been uneasy, and this had fatigued him. She was curiously against him, inclined, as she sometimes was nowadays, to make mock of him and jeer at him and cut him off. He did not understand this, and it angered him deeply. She was uneasy before him.

      She knew he was in a state of suppressed irritation. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands, his brow was drawn stiffly. Yet she could not help goading him."

Almost immediately, he asks her about the white stocking, with vicious resentment in his voice. This is the fetish object that excites and unites him, her, and Adams in a perverse relationship. She leaves the room and when she returns she is wearing the white stockings - most likely stained with Sam Adams's semen - and starts to parade around in front of him, admiring her own pretty legs and lifting up her skirt so that he might better see them and get a flash also of her frilly knickers. 

Whiston tells her to stop making a spectacle of herself. But Elsie continues to dance round the room, kicking up her legs and singing as she did so, seemingly indifferent to how this might make him feel. They are, of course, deliberately inciting violent feelings of sexual jealousy and humiliation, as they delve into dark corners of the pornographic imagination. He calls her a whore and tells her to stop acting so shamelessly and yet he clearly delights in her behaviour, just as his abuse excites her: 

"She was rousing all his uncontrollable anger. He sat glowering. Every one of her sentences stirred him up like a red-hot iron. Soon it would be too much." But still she doesn't stop - not until he suddenly - though inevitably - explodes into violence:

"He seemed to thrust his face and his eyes forward at her, as he rose slowly and came to her. She watched transfixed in terror. Her throat made a small sound, as she tried to scream.

      Then, quick as lightning, the back of his hand struck her with a crash across the mouth, and she was flung back blinded against the wall. The shock shook a queer sound out of her. And then she saw him still coming on, his eyes holding her, his fist drawn back, advancing slowly. At any instant the blow might crash into her.

      Mad with terror, she raised her hands with a queer clawing movement to cover her eyes and her temples, opening her mouth in a dumb shriek. There was no sound. But the sight of her slowly arrested him. He hung before her, looking at her fixedly, as she stood crouched against the wall with open, bleeding mouth, and wide-staring eyes, and two hands clawing over her temples. And his lust to see her bleed, to break her and destroy her, rose from an old source against her. It carried him. He wanted satisfaction."

This is the brutal counterpoint of the ecstatic dance scene from earlier in the story, between Elsie and Adams (see part two of this post). Lawrence - supremely skilled at writing scenes of sexual violence in which the erotic aspect of the latter and the obscene cruelty of the former become blurred and indistinguishable - brings things to a disturbing climax:

"He had seen her standing there, a piteous, horrified thing, and he turned his face aside in shame and nausea. He went and sat heavily in his chair, and a curious ease, almost like sleep, came over his brain.

      She walked away from the wall towards the fire, dizzy, white to the lips, mechanically wiping her small, bleeding mouth. He sat motionless. Then, gradually, her breath began to hiss, she shook, and was sobbing silently, in grief for herself. Without looking, he saw. It made his mad desire to destroy her come back.
      She felt that now nothing would prevent him if he rose to kill her. She could not prevent him any more. She was yielded up to him. They both trembled in the balance, unconscious."

After a few moments, Elsie lifts her "tear-stained, swollen face" and looks at her husband with forlorn eyes that cause a "great flash of anguish" to pass over his body. He takes her in his arms and holds her with great tenderness, whilst telling her over and over that he loves her. 

III.

Why does Elsie stay with a man who is willing and able to abuse her in this manner? Is she frightened to leave, or is she only too aware of the practical and financial difficulties of leaving? Does she have a support network of friends and family that might enable her to do so?

I don't know and the story doesn't really tell us. I'm somewhat reluctant to suggest that, maybe, she enjoys the violence - just as she seems to enjoy sexual teasing and manipulation. But we need to recall that Elsie is a consenting adult and it's clearly ridiculous to suggest that women can't enjoy the darker aspects of edgeplay (smacking, punching, strangulation, erotic asphyxiation, etc.).

By her own admission, Elsie is bored by her husband and used to his ways. Maybe she needs the physical stimulation that results from such activities and that violence and fear ultimately result in heightened pleasure or jouissance. Besides, as Sylvia would say, every woman adores a fascist - it just becomes a question of who's the Daddy; Ted Whiston or Sam Adams. 

IV.

As for Ted Whiston, what's his story? Why does he need to imagine his wife involved with Sam Adams and to abuse her before he can find his own sexual satisfaction? In order to answer this, we need to understand something of the appeal of cuckold fetish ...

Traditionally, a cuckold was unaware of what was going on behind his back. But in the world of modern fetish, the cuckold is fully complicit in his wife's sexual infidelity and often in control of the affair, deriving pleasure both from his humiliation and the perverse exertion of power. I think a strong argument can be made to suggest that Ted Whiston belongs to this modern school of cuckoldry. Who knows, maybe he was even the one who suggested she carry a white stocking instead of a handkerchief to the dance and ensnare Sam Adams with it ...?      

Interestingly, it's been suggested that there is a solid biological basis for cuckold fetish; that a man who believes his mate to have been getting jiggy with another male will want to copulate more frequently with her in order to compete with his rival. And copulate more vigorously too; thrusting more deeply, ejaculating with more force, and producing more sperm (suggesting that female infidelity is good for him and good for her).

I suspect that Whiston could hardly even get it up without the thought of Elsie in the arms of Adams. Or, indeed, enjoying the attentions of a black-skinned lover who has bought her affections with a bar of chocolate (the ultimate erotico-racist fantasy of a man like Whiston). 

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64.

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking'). 

For the first of the White Stocking case studies - on Elsie Whiston as a prick tease in pearl earrings - click here.

For the second of the White Stocking case studies - on Sam Adams as a Lothario who makes love to music - click here. 

Case Studies from The White Stocking 1: Elsie Whiston (A Prick Tease with Pearl Earrings)

The desire of the man is for the woman. 

But the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.

I.

As mentioned before on this blog, D. H. Lawrence was an ardent stocking fetishist - even though he outrageously branded other men who found women's undergarments sexually exciting as savages. No surprise to discover, therefore, that one of his earliest (and kinkiest) short stories was entitled 'The White Stocking'.

First published in 1914, it's a queer tale about which I'd like to offer an extensive series of remarks, beginning with this post on the central female character, Elsie, a prick tease with pearl earrings. Following, in part two, I'll discuss the character of Sam Adams, a Lothario who likes to make love to music and sexually exploit his young female employees; whilst in part three, I'll talk about the husband, Ted Whiston, and explore his liking for sexual violence and fetishistically playing the role of a cuckold.       

II.

Ted and Elsie are a young married couple. She was a pretty little thing with tousled short black hair and "small, delightful limbs". He very much enjoyed watching her get dressed in the morning, throwing her clothes on with insouciance: "Her slovenliness and untidiness did not trouble him." And when she "picked up the edge of her petticoat, ripped off a torn string of white lace, and flung it on the dressing-table, her careless abandon made his spirit glow" and his cock stiffen. 

She was, he knew, a bit of a minx. But every man loves a tease, flashing cleavage beneath a loosely pinned (i.e. strategically unfastened) black silk dressing-jacket. Having said that, sometimes the sight of her exposed soft flesh disconcerted and even pained him a little. The ruddy-faced postman doesn't seem to mind, however, when Elsie opens the door to him with her tits half-hanging out. He smiles knowingly as he hands over the mail. But she didn't give a fuck about him and "closed the door in his face" as if he didn't exist.

It's Valentine's Day and Elsie is eager to discover what she's been sent from secret admirers. The hideous comic card is quickly dropped on the floor. And the white silk handkerchief, embroidered with her initial, doesn't much impress either: "She smiled pleasantly, and gently put the box aside." The third envelope, however, did contain something that piqued her interest; a long white stocking containing a small box in the toe, which, in turn, contained a pair of pearl earrings:     

"With a little flash of triumph, she lifted ... [the] earrings from the small box, and she went to the mirror. There, earnestly, she began to hook them through her ears, looking at herself sideways in the glass. Curiously concentrated and intent she seemed as she fingered the lobes of her ears, her head bent on one side.

      Then the pearl earrings dangled under her rosy, small ears. She shook her head sharply, to see the swing of the drops. They went chill against her neck, in little, sharp touches. Then she stood still to look at herself, bridling her head in the dignified fashion. Then she simpered at herself. Catching her own eye, she could not help winking at herself and laughing."

The earrings, obviously a gift from a man friend of some description, even come with a little verse:

Pearls may be fair, but thou art fairer.
Wear these for me, and I’ll love the wearer.

Little wonder, then, that her husband Ted is so often racked with jealousy. And no wonder she conceals the truth - and the earrings - from him; showing him the card and the hanky, but pretending that the stocking is simply a free sample sent in the post. Later, however, over breakfast, Elsie teases him with the truth and shows him the verse. Indeed, she even reveals the name of the person whom she knows to have sent these provocative items - her ex-boss, Sam Adams; a forty-year old bachelor well known to have an eye for the ladies.

Ted Whiston becomes sullen. And when his wife admits that she's been for a drink with Adams, he turns nasty (and racist): "'You’d go off with a nigger for a packet of chocolate,' he said, in anger and contempt, and some bitterness." She bit her lip, flushed, and allowed tears to come to her eyes. He was hurt and she was aggrieved, writes Lawrence. But both, I think, are playing a slightly edgy sexual game with one another and the genuineness of their emotions and reactions might be questioned.

After her husband leaves for work, Elsie immediately returned to her pearl earrings:

"Sweet they looked nestling in the little drawer - sweet! She examined them with voluptuous pleasure, she threaded them in her ears, she looked at herself, she posed and postured and smiled, and looked sad and tragic and winning and appealing, all in turn before the mirror. And she was happy, and very pretty."

One suspects that Elsie knew very well that a pearl is not just a beautiful, iridescent object in its own right; nor merely a metaphor for something that is rare and fine. It's also laden with sexual symbolism; seminal fluid, for example, is sometimes referred to as pearl jam due to its translucent whitish colour and the fact that it's prone to coagulate into small globules or pearl-like droplets. Thus it is that, when a man ejaculates on to the neck and breasts of a lover, he is said to have provided her with a pearl necklace.

Elsie wore her earrings all day about the house and flirted with the tradesmen who came to her door, never once thinking of her husband, but remembering with illicit pleasure the time one Christmas when she danced with her boss and allowed him to effectively ravish her in public (see part two of this post), much to Ted's apparent chagrin - but, perhaps also, I'm suggesting, his secret delight (see part three of this post).

Elsie loved her husband. But, unfortunately, she had grown used to him. And she thrilled to the idea that Sam Adams found her attractive: "So that, when, after some months, she met Sam Adams, she was not quite as unkind to him as she might have been." And, little prick tease that she was, she couldn't help playing upon his desire and exploiting his generosity, even though she didn't care one jot for him:

"When Valentine’s day came, which was near the first anniversary of her wedding day, there arrived a white stocking with a little amethyst brooch. Luckily Whiston did not see it, so she said nothing of it to him. She had not the faintest intention of having anything to do with Sam Adams, but once a little brooch was in her possession, it was hers, and she did not trouble her head for a moment how she had come by it.
      Now she had the pearl earrings. They were a more valuable and a more conspicuous present. She would have to ask her mother to give them to her, to explain their presence. She made a little plan in her head. And she was extraordinarily pleased. As for Sam Adams, even if he saw her wearing them, he would not give her away. What fun, if he saw her wearing his earrings! [...] She laughed to herself as she went down town in the afternoon, the pretty drops dangling in front of her curls."

If this doesn't make her the most honest or ethical character in Lawrence's fiction, Elsie remains nevertheless one of the most fascinating. But then, as I said earlier, every man adores a prick tease ...

Certainly I can't help admiring the 64% of heterosexual women who admitted within a recent academic study that they regularly exploited their charms and played games of seduction based upon sexual insincerity in order to make themselves feel not only desirable, but powerful. And - if lucky - receive precious gifts into the bargain.

Notes 

D. H. Lawrence, 'The White Stocking', in The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 143-64.

The University of Adelaide have made The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914) freely available as an ebook: click here (or here if you want to go straight to 'The White Stocking').

For the second of the White Stocking case studies - on Sam Adams as a Lothario who makes love to music - click here. 

For the third of the White Stocking case studies - on Ted Whiston as an abusive husband with a cuckold fetish - click here.