Free Woman by Lara Feigel

Author:Lara Feigel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

I liked this description because it explained so powerfully why sex mattered; why it was more than an indulgent or recreational act, and why it might therefore be too important to be confined to monogamous marriage. It made a high claim for the profundity of the kind of intimacy that is involved in exposing yourself to another person in this way, and it suggested that it was possible to be both abandoned and free. It also offered an alternative to the inequalities of Lessing’s lovers, because here there was a sense of the lovers as equals, though they might sometimes experience sex differently. This was in itself freeing, because her lovers could claim responsibility for their own feelings and could trust each other as they risked journeying into the unknown together.

Beauvoir then addressed the crucial question of what kinds of relationships could incorporate sex of this kind. Here again she had more answers than Lessing, though they were not answers that were open to many of us. One option – the one favoured by Van de Velde – was the long, sexually fulfilled marriage. Lessing wrote amusedly about the limitations of marital sex to Smithie in 1947, though admittedly sex with Gottfried hadn’t been very exciting even before they were married.

What happens in marriage is that the man says ‘Feel like coming into my bed darling’. One climbs in. He having read dozens of books about the way women must be ‘prepared’ for the sex act, makes her feel like a recalcitrant car on a cold morning. In any case he is usually far too quick, but even if he isn’t, one is left feeling like a cup of tea that it is usual to drink before going to sleep… What I am saying in effect is that men should learn the art of ‘wooing’ their wives (hateful word) not only physically but emotionally and creating a mood. And it must be difficult to create a flirtatious mood with a woman who has just been darning your socks, putting the baby to bed and cold creaming her face.

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