On Genetic Sexual Attraction (With Reference to the Case of Jinnie Blair)

Image: someecards.com

I.

The tale of Shelagh Money, the nineteen-year-old actress who goes by the stage-name of Jennifer Blair, is another of Daphne du Maurier's short stories that continues to intrigue long after it's been read.

Particularly as it anticipates the (pseudoscientfic) idea of genetic sexual attraction, a term coined in the late 1980s by Barbara Gonyo, an American woman forced to give up her baby son for adoption, but who developed amorous feelings for him when, twenty-five years later, she tracked him down.

Wishing to understand (and justify) her incestuous urges - that she describes as wonderful and frightening - Gonyo came up with the concept of GSA and even though there's very little hard evidence for this as an actual phenomenon, Greek myth, psychoanalysis, and pornography all attest to the fact that sexual attraction can (and does) occur between individuals who are related in some manner.

As does 'A Border-Line Case' ...


II.

Shortly before his death, Shelagh Money's father expresses a wish that he might see his estranged friend, Nicholas Barry, once more, in order to shake him by the hand and wish him luck in the future.

In order, also, that he might be forgiven for not recommending his pal for promotion when he had the opportunity to do so and thus inadvertently playing a part in Nick's decline in later years; years spent as a recluse living in Ireland and soured by disappointment.  

Despite having been told that Nick was "mad as a hatter" [108] and a border-line case, Shelagh decides to track him down in order to inform him of her father's death and of his regret that their friendship had ended in acrimony.

"Shelagh had acted on impulse. She knew she always would. It was part of her character, and had to be accepted by family and friends. It was not until she was on her way, though, driving north from Dublin in the hired car, that her journey, hastily improvised, took on its real meaning. She was here on a mission, a sacred trust. She was carrying a message from beyond the grave." [111]

When Shelagh finds herself at Nick's island home and is waiting in his study to meet him, she notices a photograph in a blue leather frame. It was a photograph of her mother on her wedding day:

"There was something wrong, though. The groom standing beside her was not Shelagh's father. It was Nick, the best man [...] She looked closer, baffled, and realised that the photograph had been cleverly faked. Nick's head and shoulders had been transposed on to her father's figure, while her father's head [...] had been shifted to the lanky figure behind, standing between the bridesmaids. It was only because she knew the original photograph on her father's desk at home [...] that she recognised the transposition instantly. A stranger would think the photograph genuine." [125]

Naturally, this is rather disconcerting to the young woman. Why - and who - was Nick hoping to deceive? If the answer was himself, then, thinks Shelagh, he must be at least a little crazy: "What was it her father had said? Nick had always been a border-line case ..." [125]

Shelagh feels a strange sense of revulsion and apprehension come over her: "The room that had seemed warm and familiar became kinky, queer. She wanted to get out." [125]

Unfortunately, before she can leave, in walks Nick - or the Commander, as his staff refer to him. When he asks her name she instinctively replies Jinnie, even though nobody except her father had ever called her that (presumably as a dimunitive of her stage-name, though one might have expected that to be Jennie, rather than Jinnie, which is usually short for Virginia): "It must have been nerves that made her blurt it out now." [127]

They talk - some might even describe their exchange as a flirtatious form of banter. She notices he has an attractive smile; not in the conventional sense, but in her sense, and she recalls her mother saying that Nick was always great fun at parties. He reminds her of someone: and she reminds him of someone.

The next day, she decides that Nick is very different from the resentful figure her father described. They have a little picnic together, sat side by side on his boat - hard-boiled eggs and chicken - and she's relaxed enough to discuss her sex life with him: "'I'm not really permissive. [...] I don't strip down at the flick of a hat. It has to be someone I like.'" [139]

Well, Shelagh must have really liked Nick, because shortly after this she finds herself with her shoes off and drinking whiskey with him in the back of a grocer's van, where they have a highly charged sexual encounter amongst the loaves of bread and tinned goods.

"It's body chemistry, she told herself, that's what does it. People's skins. They either blend or they don't. They either merge and melt into the same texture, dissolve and become renewed, or nothing happens, like faulty plugs, blown fuses, switchboard jams. When the thing goes right [...] then it's arrows splintering the sky, it's forest fires, it's Agincourt." [148]

Shelagh decides that she has, in fact, just experienced the fuck of her lifetime: "'I shall live till I'm ninety-five, marry some nice man, have fifteen children, win stage awards and Oscars, but never again will the world break into fragments, burn before my eyes [...]'" [148]

She only hopes that her father's ghost will forgive her for what she's done - and hopes to do again before the night is over: "'It was one way to settle your last request, though you wouldn't have approved of the method.'" [150]

Shelagh also realises that she's fallen hook, line and sinker for Nick. He sees their relationship, however, more in terms of love-hate: "'Attraction and antagonism mixed. Very peculiar.'" [152]

In fact, their relationship is more peculiar than either yet know: for it turns out that shortly after her parents were wed, Nick called one evening, unexpectedly. His friend was out, so he got his friend's wife - Shelagh's mother - drunk and "'had a rough-and-tumble with her on the sofa'" [153].

Being, perhaps, a bit naive or slow on the uptake, Shelagh still doesn't grasp what this might mean. Indeed, even though she describes this act of adultery as revolting, she still wants desperately to stay with Nick in Ireland: "'What I really want,' she said, 'deep down, is stillness, safety. The feeling you'd aways be there. I love you. I think I must have loved you without knowing it all my life.'" [154]

She says this, fearful that Nick will kick her out of the van and effectively abandon her by the roadside - which is pretty much what he does: "'I sacrifice the lamb that I do love to spite my own raven heart [...]'" [155]. Having made his poetic farewell, he does invite her to visit him again, any time she likes ...

Heartbroken back in London, she throws herself into rehearsals for a production of Twelfth Night. A package arrives from Ireland, containing an old photograph, of Nick, in costume as Cesario. An accompanying letter explains:

"'I have been burning some papers [...] and came across the enclosed photograph amongst a pile of junk in the bottom drawer of my desk. I thought it might amuse you.You may remember I told you that first evening you remided me of someone. I see now that it was myself!'" [161]

"She looked at the photograph again. Her nose, her chin, the cocky expression, head tip-tilted in the air. Even the stance, hand on hip. The thick cropped hair. Suddenly she was not standing in the dressing-room at all but in her father's bedroom [...] He was staring at her, an expression of horror and disbelief upon his face. It was not accusation she had read in his eyes [shortly before he died], but recognition. He had awakened from no nightmare, but from a dream that had lasted twenty years. Dying, he discovered truth." [161]

Now she had discovered it also: but she doesn't seem to find anything very wonderful or liberating in it. On the contrary, she stares at herself in the mirror with horror and rips the photograph apart, throwing the pieces into the waste-paper basket:

"And when she went back on to the stage it was not from the Duke's palace in Illyria that she saw herself moving henceforth [...] but out into a street [...] where there were windows to be smashed and houses to burn [...] where there were causes to despise and men to hate, for only by hating can you purge away love, only by sword, by fire." [162]

See: 

Daphne du Maurier, 'A Border-Line Case', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 101-162. All page references given in the text refer to this edition. 

For those who would like to read more on GSA, see Alix Kirsta's piece in The Guardian (17 May, 2003): click here. 

Ailurophilia: On Baudelaire's Erotic Fascination with Cats

Théophile Steinlen's 1896 design for the famous 
Parisian nightspot Le Chat Noir

Poets, like witches and philosophers, love cats and many have written odes to their mysterious companions, including Rilke, who imagines himself suspended like a prehistoric fly in the golden amber of his cat's eyeball.* However, it's Baudelaire who is perhaps most famous for his obsessive love of cats.**

And it's Baudelaire who best understands not only their Satanic-nocturnal nature, but also their undeniable eroticism, equating the feline with the feminine (and vice versa) until it becomes impossible to know at times if he's writing about his favourite pet or his favourite mistress.

Either way, both seem to promise those things he valued most: poetic truth and sensual pleasure; the former being something that develops out of the fleshy materiality of the latter, rather than pre-existing as some kind of disembodied ideal.      

Here's one of Baudelaire's cat poems that hopefully illustrates what I've been attempting to say, followed by my own attempt at a translation into English that invariably loses something in the process, but which, hopefully, adds something that isn't found in other translations ...

Le Chat

Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux;
Retiens les griffes de ta patte,
Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux,
Mêlés de métal et d'agate.

Lorsque mes doigts caressent à loisir
Ta tête et ton dos élastique,
Et que ma main s'enivre du plaisir
De palper ton corps électrique,

Je vois ma femme en esprit. Son regard,
Comme le tien, aimable bête
Profond et froid, coupe et fend comme un dard,

Et, des pieds jusques à la tête,
Un air subtil, un dangereux parfum
Nagent autour de son corps brun.


The Cat

Come not with claws, beautiful cat,
As you leap into my affection;
Allow me to plunge into your eyes
Of metallic crystal.

When my fingers gently stroke along
Your head and supple spine,
My hand thrills with the pleasure
Of touching your body electric.

I sense the same spirit as in Her: her gaze
Like yours, dear creature, is one of cold
Intensity, piercing like a banderilla.

And, from head to toe,
A subtle yet dangerous perfume,
Envelops her dark skin.


Notes

* See Rilke, 'Black Cat' in Duino Elegies (1923): click here to read online. 

** If memory serves me correctly, Baudelaire devoted no fewer than three poems to cats in Les Fleurs du mal (1857) and they make appearances in many of his other poems too. As might be expected, therefore, the theme of Baudelaire's cats has proved a popular - and fertile - one amongst literary critics and theorists (Roman Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss famously co-authoring a structuralist reading in 1960, for example).

To read an online edition of Les Fleurs du mal provided by Project Gutenberg, click here. 

Alternatively, visit fleursdumal.org - a site dedicated to Baudelaire and his work that not only contains every poem of each edition of Les Fleurs du mal, but a selection of English translations (for those, like me, whose French isn't very good). 

For another post on the love of cats, click here.  

Ailurophilia: The Case of Gary Seven and Isis

Robert Lansing as Gary Seven holding his familiar Isis the Cat

April Tatro as Isis in her human form

One of the strangest and most amusing episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, is 'Assignment Earth' - the 26th and final episode of season two.*

There are several reasons for its queer likeability; the fact that it's set on Earth in 1968; the performance of its two guest stars, Robert Lansing as the interstellar agent Gary Seven and the lovely Terri Garr as Roberta Lincoln; and that it features a black cat called Isis who works her feline charms even on Mr. Spock.**

Whilst appearing at first to be an ordinary cat, Isis is revealed not only to possess great intelligence, but the ability also to take on human form (and what a form it is, as played in the episode by the (uncredited) actress, dancer and contortionist April Tatro). She is Mr. Seven's constant companion and can communicate with him via a form of interspecies telepathy.

Whether he engages in sexual activity with Isis whilst she's in her human form isn't made clear, but it certainly seems likely and Miss Lincoln displays clear signs of sexual jealousy towards Isis (in her human form) at the end of the episode, even though at this point she has no real relationship of any description with Mr. Seven. 

Quite a lovely animal ...

I find myself strangely drawn to it. 

Notes

* 'Assignment Earth', written by Art Wallace (based on a story by Wallace and Gene Roddenberry) and directed by Marc Daniels, was first broadcast on 29 March, 1968. 

Further adding to its uniqueness as a Star Trek episode is the fact that it essentially functioned as a backdoor pilot for a projected new series starring Lansing and Garr as Mr. Seven and Miss Lincoln (a series that, alas, was never to be made).     

** As the following short scene from the above episode demonstrates: click here.

Readers who like this episode, might also find the seventh episode of season two of interest; entitled 'Catspaw', it was written by Robert Bloch (i.e, the writer of the novel Psycho (1959), upon which Hitchcock's 1960 film was based) and featured another shape-shifting alien woman (Sylvia, played by Antoinette Bower) with a fondness for taking the form of a black cat. Directed by Joseph Pevney, this episode was first broadcast on 27 October, 1967, in order to coincide with Halloween. 

For another post on the love of cats, click here.  

The Gods Have Become Our Diseases

Cover image - by the author's daughter, Flavia Tower - 
to the first UK edition (Victor Gollancz, 1971)

I.

"We think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such a pinnacle of clarity, imagining that we have left all these phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left behind are only verbal spectres, not the psychic facts that were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still as much possessed today by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth; in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases."  

- C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies (Collected Works, Vol. 13)

  

In this crucially insightful passage, Jung provides the key to understanding Daphne du Maurier's short story 'Not After Midnight' - a tragic tale of two ruined lives: by Silenian dipsomania in the case of a brutish American collector of antiquities, Mr. Stoll; and by pederastic satyrism in the case of the English schoolmaster and amateur painter Timothy Grey.

II.

Grey, who narrates the tale, begins by informing us that he has, in fact, recently resigned from his teaching post at a boy's prep school, "in order to forestall inevitable dismissal" [56].

The reason he gave for his resignation was ill health. But Grey doesn't specify what the nature of his sickness is, or why it should make his dismissal inevitable. He simply says that it was caused by a "wretched bug picked up on holiday in Crete" [56]. Clearly, however, it's more than a funny tummy ...

Has he, perhaps, caught some kind of sexually transmitted disease? Is that the universal complaint from which he suffers? A dose of the clap would seem to be a possibility, but Grey is keen for us to know that the bug he caught "was picked up in all innocence" and was not due to "excess of the good life" [56].     

It also seems possible that Grey is, in fact, referring indirectly to what some consider a perverse disorder; did he resign because repressed homosexual desire had manifested itself and become known to his fellow teachers and pupils? The following statement lends credence to this:

"My complaint is universal, and has been so through the ages, an excuse for jest and hilarious laughter from earliest times, until one of us oversteps the mark and becomes a menace to society." [56]

Actually, this explanation - although mistaken - is nearer the mark. But what Grey suffers from is not the flowering of an all too human sexual predisposition; his erotomania is the result, rather, of divine madness - or what Grey describes as a form of insidious evil.

In other words, he's in the process of becoming-satyr, rather than merely coming out - and that's a much more problematic proposition within modern European culture; for whilst homosexuality has been decriminalised (and is, in fact, now thought of as something to celebrate), paedophilia certainly hasn't (and isn't).

III.  

Grey's problems begin when he bumps into the physically intimidating and drunken figure of Stoll, who gives him a gift; a drinking vessel which, whilst empty of libation, was nevertheless still able to intoxicate:

"It was a small jug, reddish in colour, with a handle on either side for safe holding. [...] The body of the jug had been shaped cunningly and brilliantly into a man's face, with upstanding ears like scallop-shells, while protruding eyes and bulbous nose stood out above the leering, open mouth, the moustache drooping to the rounded beard that formed the base. At the top, between the handles, were the upright figures of three strutting men, their faces similar to that upon the jug, but here human resemblance ended, for they had neither hands nor feet but hooves, and from each of their hairy rumps extended a horse's tail." [88]

That night, Grey has queer dreams from which he struggles to awaken; dreams that "belonged to some other unknown world horribly intermingled with [his] own" [89]:

"Term had started, but the school in which I taught was on a mountain top hemmed in by forest [...] My boys, all of them familiar faces, lads I knew, wore vine-leaves in their hair, and had a strange, unearthly beauty both endearing and corrupt. They ran towards me, smiling, and I put my arms about them, and the pleasure they gave me was insidious and sweet, never before experienced, never before imagined, the man who pranced in their midst and played with them was not myself, not the self I knew, but a demon shadow emerging from a jug [...]" [89]

Grey decides the rhyton is a source of magical malevolence and that the terrible dreams which it induced were utterly foreign to his nature - but one can't help wondering about this; perhaps it simply enables one to become who one is ...

Later in the tale, we discover that Stoll has also left Grey a bottle of home-brewed drink, which, surprisingly, he agrees to try:

"It was like the barley-water my mother used to make when I was a child. And equally tasteless. And yet ... it left a sort of aftermath on the palate and the tongue. Not as sweet as honey nor as sharp as grapes, but pleasant, like the smell of raisins under the sun, curiously blended with the ears of ripening corn." [91]

He even drinks the stuff for a second time; from the demonic jug, which, on reflection - and under the influence of Stoll's home-brew -, now appeared rather beautiful:

"I don't know how it was, but somehow the leering face no longer seemed so lewd. It had a certain dignity that had escaped me before. [...] I wondered whether Socrates had looked thus when he strolled in the Athenian agora with his pupils and discoursed on life. He could have done. And his pupils may not necessarily have been the young men whom Plato said they were, but of a tenderer age, like my lads at school, like those youngsters of eleven or twelve who had smiled upon me in my dreams [...]" [97]

Grey continues:

"I felt the scalloped ears, the rounded nose, the full soft lips of the tutor Silenos upon the jar, the eyes no longer protruding but questioning, appealing, and even the naked horsemen on the top had grown in grace. It seemed to me now they were not strutting in conceit but dancing with linked hands, filled with gay abandon, a pleasing, wanton joy." [97]

It is only upon discovering the body of Stoll beneath the waves - "grotesque, inhuman [... swaying] backwards and forwards at the bidding of the current" [99] - that Grey, with understandable panic, decides to fling the jug into the sea:

"Even as I did so, I knew the gesture was in vain. It did not sink immediately but remained bobbing on the surface, then slowly filled with that green translucent sea, pale as the barley liquid laced with spruce and ivy. Not innocuous but evil, stifling conscience, dulling intellect, the hell-brew of the smiling god Dionysus, which turned his followers into drunken sots, would claim another victim [...] The eyes in the swollen face stared up at me, and they were not only those of Silenos the satyr tutor, and of the drowned Stoll, but my own as well [...] They seemed to hold all knowledge in their depths, and all despair." [100]

IV.

The point of the tale is this: becoming-Greek in a Classical sense certainly opens up a whole new way of life and a whole new world of experience, but from the moral-legal standpoint of today it spells trouble, putting you at risk of a lengthy prison sentence and of having your name added to the sex offenders register.

Those who romanticise the pre-Christian past in all its pagan splendour and think the gods of Olympus were a splendid bunch, should maybe read a bit more history and acknowledge the tragic nature of Greek mythology in which incest, rape, murder, and sodomy (in its widest sense) were the norm.*

*Note: Some readers - with knowledge of my background in Dionysian philosophy and an openly pagan past - might be surprised (even disappointed) by this conclusion. But I would remind them that even a youthful Nietzsche, writing in The Birth of Tragedy, wasn't for frenzied excess and promiscuity overriding every form of law; he warns against the savage urges of lust and cruelty and advocates for their aesthetic sublimation.  
 

See: 

C. G. Jung, The Collected Works, Vol. 13: Alchemical Studies, ed. Gerhard Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull, (Princeton University Press, 1983), 'Commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower"', para. 54. 

Daphne du Maurier, 'Not After Midnight', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 56-100. All page references given in the text refer to this edition.

Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Shaun Whiteside, (Penguin Books, 1993).

This post is for Maria Thanassa.

Don't Look Now - Because This is the End

Adelina Poerio as the homocidal dwarf in 
Don't Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

He felt himself held, unable to move, and an impending sense of doom, of tragedy, came upon him. His whole being sagged, as it were, in apathy, and he thought, 'This is the end, there is no escape, no future.'

- Daphne du Maurier, 'Don't Look Now'

 
I suppose we've all felt like that on occasion (if not daily). But from out of such despair great art - including great pop music - is born. Indeed, the last line seems to invoke the 1967 track by The Doors ...


Initially written about a failed romance and the pain of saying goodbye to a loved one, 'The End' evolved into something much more grandiose, to do with the loss of childhood innocence, death, and Oedipal fantasy.

Some critics have described it as Sophoclean. Others have said it's more Joycean in its lyrical playfulness and eclectic frame of reference; that Morrison demonstrates what happens when the stream of consciousness is tainted with acid.

For many people, me included, the song is forever linked with the movie Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), which brilliantly remixed the track from the original master tapes, bringing to the fore Morrison's astonishing vocals (including his liberal use of scat and expletives that are almost inaudible in the '67 recording).

In sum: great tale; great track; great movie. And one can't help wondering what (if anything) Miss du Maurier made of the latter works? I know she liked Nicolas Roeg's 1973 film Don't Look Now, based on her short story, but what of The Doors epic and Coppola's masterpiece? I think we should be told ...*

See: Daphne du Maurier, 'Don't Look Now', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 14.

It's interesting to note that the line quoted also uses the phrase no future, as if anticipating the punk nihilism of the Sex Pistols and not merely recalling the psychedelic nihilism of The Doors. 

Play: The Doors, 'The End', from the album The Doors (Elektra, 1967): click here. And to hear the remixed version used in Apocalypse Now, click here. 

*Although we can't be sure, I doubt that Miss du Maurier would've been a fan of Jim Morrison and The Doors, as a scene in 'Not After Midnight', possibly indicates. The narrator of the tale, Timothy Grey, who is on holiday in Crete, sits outside a café savouring what is known as local colour and amused by the passing crowd; "Greek families taking the air, pretty, self-conscious girls eyeing the youths [...] a bearded Orthodox priest who smoked incessantly at the table next to me [...] and of course the familiar bunch of hippies [...] considerably longer-haired than anybody else, dirtier, and making far more noise. When they switched on a transistor and squatted on the cobbled stones behind me, I felt it was time to move on." See Don't Look Now and Other Stories, p. 73.

Clothes Maketh the Woman (With Reference to the Queer Case of Nellie March)

Anne Heywood as Ellen (Nellie) March in The Fox (dir. Mark Rydell, 1967)

Image from Twenty Four Frames: Notes on Film by John Greco: click here

I.

Nellie March is an interesting character: I'm not sure it's accurate to describe her as a dyke, but she's definitely a bit more robust and mannish than her intimate friend Miss Banford, who was a "small, thin, delicate thing with spectacles" [7] and tiny iron breasts.  

Unsuprisingly, therefore, it's March who does most of the physical work on the small farm where she and Banford live. And when she hammered away at her carpenter's bench or was "out and about, in her puttees and breeches, her belted coat and her loose cap, she looked almost like some graceful, loose-balanced young man" [8].

It's interesting to consider this: that outward appearance plays such an important role in the construction of gender; that clothes maketh the man, even when that man happens to be a woman.


II.

For all his essentialism, Lawrence is acutely aware of this. Which helps explain why he frequently gives detailed descriptions of what his characters are wearing and seems to have an almost fetishistic fascination with both male and female fashion. In the Lawrentian universe, looks matter and the question of style is crucial.

It also explains why later in the story, when March has decided to affirm a heterosexual identity and give her hand in marriage to a foxy young Cornishman named Henry, she undergoes a radical change of image. All of a sudden the heavy work boots and trousers are off and she's slipping into something a little more comfortable, a little more feminine, and she literally lets down her thick, black hair.

Henry, who has been dreaming of her soft woman's breasts beneath her tunic and big-belted coat, is astonished by her transformation:

"To his amazement March was dressed in a dress of dull, green silk crape [...] He sat down [...] unable to take his eyes off her. Her dress was a perfectly simple slip of bluey-green crape, with a line of gold stitching round the top and round the sleeves, which came to the elbow. It was cut just plain, and round at the top, and showed her white soft throat. [...] But he looked her up and down, up and down." [48]       

By his own admission, he's never known anything make such a difference, and as March takes the teapot to the fire his erotic delight is taken to another level:

"As she crouched on the hearth with her green slip about her, the boy stared more wide-eyed than ever. Through the crape her woman's form seemed soft and womanly. And when she stood up and walked he saw her legs move soft within her moderately short skirt. She had on black silk stockings and small, patent shoes with little gold buckles.
      She was another being. She was something quite different. Seeing her always in the hard-cloth breeches, wide on the hips, buttoned on the knee, srong as armour, and in the brown puttees and thick boots, it had never occurred to him that she had a woman's legs and feet." [49]

Not only is March born as a woman thanks to putting on a pair of black silk stockings and a (moderately) short skirt, but Henry too feels himself reinforced in his phallic masculinity:

"Now it came upon him. She had a woman's soft, skirted legs, and she was accessible. He blushed to the roots of his hair [...] and strangely, suddenly felt a man, no longer a youth. He felt a man, with all a man's grave weight of responsibility. A curious quietness and gravity came over his soul. He felt a man, quiet, with a little heaviness of male destiny upon him." [49]

It's writing like this that sets Lawrence apart, I think; writing that will seem pervy and sexist to some, but full of queer insight to others. Writing that, in a sense, undermines his own essentialism by showing the importance of costume and perfomativity when it comes to gender roles, sexual identity, and sexual attraction.     

III.

And does it end well once they are married, Henry and Nellie? A 20-year old youth and a 30-year old woman used to living an independent life (and sharing a bed with another woman)? Not really: something was missing. 

The problem is, he wants her submission: "Then he would have all his own life as a young man and a male, and she would have all her own life as a woman and a female. [...] She would not be a man any more, an independent woman [...]" [70]

But March, of course, doesn't want to submit; she wants to stay awake, and to know, and decide, and remain an independent woman to the last.

So it's hard to believe they're going to find happiness. But then, as Lawrence writes:

"The more you reach after the fatal flower of happiness, which trembles so blue and lovely in a crevice just beyond your grasp, the more fearfully you become aware of the ghastly and awful gulf of the precipice below you, into which you will inevitably plunge, as into the bottomless pit [...]
      That is the whole history of the search for happiness, whether it be your own or somebody else's [...] It ends, and it always ends, in the ghastly sense of the bottomless nothingness into which you will inevitably fall [...]" [69]

And on that note, Happy New Year to all torpedophiles ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

In Memory of Those Who Gave Their Fictional Lives (Towards an A-Z of the Lawrentian Dead)

D. H. Lawrence's phoenix design as reimagined for the 

Cambridge University Press edition of his letters and works 

(1979- 2018)

Whilst figures such as Paul Morel, Ursula Brangwen, Lady Chatterley and her lover, Oliver Mellors, have attained a degree of literary immortality, there are other characters within the Lawrentian universe who died (or were killed) within the pages of his novels and are now mostly forgotten; remembered, if at all, only by scholars and the most devoted of readers. 

This post is for (some of) those who laid down their fictional lives ...

A is for ...

Annable; gloomy gamekeeper and devil of the woods. A man of only one idea: - "that all civilisation was the painted fungus of rottenness" - who is best known for his motto: "'Be a good animal, true to your animal instinct'". Death by misadventure (beneath a great pile of rocks at a stone quarry). Not a figure to be much mourned by the locals.

See: The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 146 and 147.

B is for ...

Banford, Jill; a "small, thin, delicate thing with spectacles" and tiny iron breasts. Intimate friends with the more robust Miss March. Physically afraid of many things (from dark nights to tramps); rightly afraid and suspicious of the young man Henry who, in his heart, determines her death by chopping down a tree that accidently on purpose hits her as it falls: "The back of the neck and head was a mass of blood, of horror." Verdict: manslaughter, as a result of malicious negligence.

See: 'The Fox', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 7 and 65. 
      

Beardsall, Frank; father to Cyril and Lettie, whom he abandoned when they were very young. Characterised by the son as a "frivolous, rather vulgar character, but plausible, having a good deal of charm". Death due to natural causes (kidney failure).

See: The White Peacock (CUP, 1983), p. 33.

C is for ...

Cooley, Benjamin; aka Kangaroo. A Jewish lawyer and head of an Australian paramilitary organisation (the Diggers); a fascist-idealist acting in the name of Love and Order. His face was "long and lean and pendulous, with eyes set close together [...] and his body was stout but firm". Death by gunshot, having taken a bullet in his marsupial pouch, fired by a political opponent. But blames Richard Somers for his death, due to the latter's refusal to pledge his love.

See: Kangaroo, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 107-108.      

Crich, Diana; daughter of Thomas; sister to Gerald. A good-looking girl, but not somebody for whom Rupert Birkin particularly cares: "'What does it matter if Diana Crich is alive or dead? [...] Better she were dead - she'll be much more real. She'll be positive in death. In life she was a fretting, negated thing.'" Death by drowning whilst fooling around on the water.

Crich, Gerald; son of Thomas. An accursed, Cain-like figure who, as a boy, accidently killed his brother. Gudrun's lover and Birkins' closest friend (and naked wrestling partner); a man of tremendous will but whose life seems suspended above an abyss of nihilism and nausea. Thus, in the end, he just has to let go of everything and lie down in the snow. Death due to something breaking in his soul (and hypothermia).

Crich, Thomas; father to Gerald and Diana (as well as other children). A dark and stooping figure and mine owner who cares about his employees; "in Christ he was one with his workmen"; his wife and eldest son rather despise his moral idealism. He dies slowly - terribly slowly - from old age and an incurable illness. Finally, finally, comes the "horrible choking rattle" from the old man's throat. Coroner's verdict: death by natural causes.

See: Women in Love ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 185, 215 and 333.  


H is for ...

Hepburn, Evangeline; wife of Capt. Alexander Hepburn. A middle-aged woman who likes to dress in a very distinctive manner; bright eyes and "pretty teeth when she laughed". Unlucky in love - her husband is cheating on her with a younger woman (Hannele) - and unlucky in life as well; fatally falling as she does out of her bedroom window, whilst staying on the third floor of a hotel. Verdict: accidental death, but her husband's confession to his mistress - "'I feel happy about it'" - raises one's suspicions.

See: 'The Captain's Doll', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird (CUP, 1992), p. 86 and 110.

M is for ...

Morel, Gertrude; a rather small woman of delicate mould but resolute bearing. A monster who feeds on the love of her sons and despises her husband. Cultured, but snobbish. Death by euthanasia; Paul and his sister Annie agree to administer an overdose of morphia to their mother who is dying of cancer; they may have "both laughed together like two conspiring children", but it was an act of mercy in the circumstances.

Morel, William; eldest son of Gertrude; brother of Paul. The real whizz-kid of the family and a favourite with the girls. A good student; hard-working; moves to London aged twenty to start a new life, but soon falls seriously ill and not even his mother can save him. Official cause of death: pneumonia and erysipelas (a highly infectious bacterial skin disease); unofficial cause of death: maternal vampirism.

See Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 437. 


S is for ... 

Saywell, Granny; aka The Mater. Mother to Arthur Saywell; grandmother to Yvette and Lucille. One of those "physically vulgar, clever old bodies" who exploited the weaknesses of others whilst pretending to be a warm and kindly soul. Half-blind, hard of hearing and often bed-ridden, she still loved a bit of pork and to sit "in her ancient obesity". Happily for all concerned, this toad-like old woman is killed in flood waters. Verdict: death by drowning.

See: 'The Virgin and the Gipsy', in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 6 and 14.

Siegmund; middle-aged musician; husband to Beatrice; lover to Helena. A man who feels trapped in a life of domestic misery; "like a dog that creeps round the house from which it [briefly] escaped with joy". A man for whom suicide is the only way out. Verdict: death by hanging (with his own belt).

See The Trespasser, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 174.

Judenstern (With Reference to the Case of Serge Gainsbourg)

I. 

Although now strongly associated in the popular imagination with Nazi Germany, the yellow badge that Jews were obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders), has a depressingly long history, albeit not one that I wish to examine in detail here.  

It's interesting to note, however, that the idea of making the patch in the shape of the six point Star of David first arose in Portugal, even though the hexagram has never been a uniquely Jewish symbol (in fact, Jewish Kabbalists probably borrowed it from the Arabs for use in the design of talismanic amulets known as segulot). 

It's also interesting to note that this Portuguese star was red, not yellow, even though within the medieval and early modern world the latter was the colour most often associated with Judas, religious heretics, and other persons thought cowardly and not to be trusted.   

The Nazis were therefore drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.

Intended to further division and hatred, the Judenstern ironically increased sympathy for the Jews amongst the wider population of the Reich. In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, for example, a ban had to be introduced on the polite doffing of hats towards Jews, after it became a popular form of protest against German occupation and Nazi brutality.   

II.  

Born in 1929, to Russian-Jewish parents who had fled to France following the 1917 Revolution, Serge Gainsbourg's childhood was profoundly affected by the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Fortunately, however, he was able to draw darkly comic inspiration from this tragic period in later years; such as in his controversial album Rock Around the Bunker (1975), which included the track 'Yellow Star'.

In this short song, Gainsbourg recalls how he'd felt as a young boy required to wear such in wartime Paris; an experience only made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded.      

Fans of the singer-songwriter - of which I'm one - might also recall that several years prior to this, Gainsbourg celebrated the huge international success of Je t'aime ... moi non plus by commissioning Cartier to design him a platinum Star of David medallion.

As one commentator notes, he had never forgotten the humiliation of his early years and this was an attempt to overcome feelings of shame and anger with humour.

For as they say in French: Rira bien qui rira le dernier ...

Notes

Play: Serge Gainsbourg, 'Yellow Star', from the album Rock Around the Bunker (Polygram International, 1975): click here. 

Note: Rock Around the Bunker is not merely an upbeat concept album about National Socialism and Gainsbourg's own experiences as a Jewish youth growing up in German-occupied Paris; it's also a subtle dig at those who bought into the Nazi chic of the 1970s - including performers such as David Bowie who should've known better.   

Ana: the Little Match Girl of Harold Hill

Were Hans Christian Andersen writing his tale of The Little Match Girl today, rather than in 1845, then I imagine she'd probably be hawking copies of The Big Issue and wearing a headscarf, rather than selling matches bareheaded and barefoot in the street.

Either way, it's a cold and depressing way to try and earn a living and I can't help feeling sorry for the young woman, called Ana, who stands - rain or shine - outside Boots every day with her magazines and, in the circumstances, a remarkably cheerful manner.

Despite Nietzsche's warnings against the dangers of pity, I often return her greeting or give her a smile. And, although I don't want what she's peddling, I have bought her a hot chocolate and even a tub of Aptamil baby formula, as requested.   

And I've done so fully aware that this horrifies many people. Editors at the Daily Mail, for example, seem convinced that The Big Issue is now merely a front for Eastern European criminals; that Britain's homeless and those in genuine need have been replaced by immigrants already in receipt of generous state benefits

Maybe that's true: I don't know ...

However, whilst no one wants to be thought of as a soft touch, i.e., open to easy manipulation and emotional blackmail by those who beg on street corners and spin tales of woe, I would hate to become one of those hard-hearted individuals, lacking in compassion or kindness.

So, push comes to shove, I'd rather hand over a fiver just to be on the safe side; even at the risk of being taken for a bit of a mug. In the end, that money secures your own spiritual well-being, rather than their material comfort.

And, in my case at least, it also got me an Xmas card from Ana, who said she will keep me in her prayers and, more importantly, signed herself as my fryend.    


Note on the images:

The first is taken from the Disney animated short film The Little Matchgirl (dir. Roger Allers, 2006). 

The second is from the inside of my card from Ana - which, although intended to be festive, was actually a card of condolence, expressing the sender's deepest sympathy. 

Punk Xmas

'Tis the season to be Johnny 

(Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la)

I.

For all its professed anarcho-nihilism and counter-cultural posturing, punk quickly revealed itself to be all too human when the festive season rolled round, with many bands embracing the cynical-sentimental showbiz tradition of releasing Christmas songs. 

Now, whilst punk intellectuals such as Craig O'Hara and Gerfried Ambrosch* might think it terribly subversive for Stiff Little Fingers to release a raucous live rendition of White Christmas, or that by performing Silent Night at a million miles an hour the Dickies caused Franz Gruber to start spinning in his grave, I do not.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how hard you pogo around the Christmas tree, you're not reclaiming the happy holiday as a pagan tradition or deconstructing moral idealism, you are - in the words of Paul McCartney - simply having a wonderful Christmastime (ding-dong, ding-dong, ding). 

That doesn't make you a collaborator, or a sell out.

But it does mean you perhaps have rather more in common with everyone else than you might otherwise wish to acknowledge and that your romantic rebellion - against cliché, dreary convention, and commercialism - is born of the fact that you care a great deal (punk indifference being merely another pose).**

II.

So what, then, are the best punk Xmas songs?

That's hard to say, as, to be honest, they're all pretty awful, with one or two exceptions, such as Fairytale of New York (1987), by the Pogues, ft. Kirsty MacColl, and Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight) (1987), by the Ramones - though I'm not overly keen on either.

I do quite like Siouxsie and the Banshees' version of the traditional French Christmas carol Il est né, le divin Enfant (1982), but, ultimately, my tastes take me back towards the two tunes previously mentioned, by SLF and the Dickies: White Christmas (1980) and Silent Night (1978).

And finally, let's not forget the Thin Lizzy/Sex Pistols collaboration (as the Greedies); A Merry Jingle (1979): click here to watch their performance on Top of the Pops (20-12-79), or here, as they close the New Year's edition of The Kenny Everett Television Show, in another time and in a different world ... 

Notes

* Craig O'Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, (AK Press, revised 2nd edition, 2000); Gerfried Ambrosch, The Poetry of Punk, (Routledge, 2018).
 
** Obviously, when I say punks care, I don't mean about the baby Jesus, but about the authenticity of experience; they so want things to be meaningful and honest and real - including the joy of Christmas. 

To relive Christmas '77 with the Sex Pistols, see the BBC Four documentary directed by Julien Temple, (2013): click here.