Belle De Jour - D.H. Lawrence, Sexual Epiphany, And Woman, Incomplete

D.H. Lawrence perhaps more than any other writer, understood the epiphanic possibilities of sex.  Of course Tantrism and mystical ying-yang Buddhism reflected the idea of spiritual epiphany, but Lawrence translated it into recognizable, natural desire. 

 

Connie Chatterley did not sleep with the gamekeeper Mellors with this in mind.  She only wanted release from the chattels of marriage to a physical cripple and emotional child; but found in the increasingly passionate adulterous affair a psychic release that went far beyond simple sexual satisfaction and touched the possibility of true spiritual satisfaction.  

It was the coming together, Lawrence's sine qua non, that escaped her at the beginning but when realized, turned a sexual coupling into something tremulous, exciting, and without parallel. 

It wasn't that Mellors was an ideal mate - the two lovers were from different worlds, of different composition, different zeitgeist, and different social expectations.  It was that there was an undefinable, illimited, sexual attraction that when realized and consummated produced an indescribable, insurmountable release and feeling of completion. 

Life of course is not the stuff of fiction, and such epiphanic sexual ecstasy will always be a matter of speculation and hope; but there are real Connie Chatterleys out there - women for whom sex is not only a matter of marital duty or even adulterous adventure, but something necessary, obligatory, and absolutely compelling. 

Barbery Byfield was such a woman. Married to a scion of Wall Street, direct descendant of colonial Anglo-American aristocracy, son of a first family of both Virginia and Massachusetts, she was secure enough in a prescribed alliance of the best and the brightest. 

 

For the first years of their marriage, she was contented with her profession, her social circle, her support of the arts, and her family; but as time went on she felt disquieted - not quite restive or unhappy, but feeling a twinge of regret at her choice of a settled life and a desire to at least stretch its perimeter. 

This was all window dressing for what she really wanted - a sexual life that went far beyond obligation and ventured into diversity, risk, and reward.  Her breeding and temperament were brakes on such bohemianism but her desires were female, primitive, and clawingly demanding. 

Her first lover was a cut not far from the base of her social tree - an attractive young man with turquoise belt buckles but with an old Pacific heritage.  Her second was a naval officer, Annapolis trained, battle-proven, a derring-do Navy Seal who had once infiltrated well beyond Iranian lines and taken out the high command.  Her third was simply a man who loved women, who reveled in their sex, rutted until the cows came home, passionate beyond belief, as insatiable as she, a real find. 

The marriage stayed put, a kind of Nicholson-Sackville West open affair.  Her husband had frequent, although desultory affairs of little consequence.  Neither he nor she had to bother with explanations or excuses.  Both were more than adult in their negotiated freedom, and both brought some of the spice of foreign lovers to bed with them; but both had desires well beyond the bed chamber. 

It was not long before Barbery's lovers became more than just afternoon diversions, but the most important part of her life; for it was at this time that she realized that her extramarital sexual escapades were not the usual break from routine and boredom, but essential. 

She became Catherine Deneuve in the movie Belle de Jour, the story of a well-to-do Parisian matron by day and an impossibly accommodating prostitute by night.  It was not love for money for both the Deneuve character and Barbery. The five hundred francs left on the dresser were insignificant, finalities of contractual obligations nothing more. The real episode was flesh and blood and the search for that special assignation that Lawrence had described. 

Could a woman find this mutuality with a random lover? Was there any chance of a Lawrentian epiphany with a john? Was Barbery simply stochastic - one in a hundred, but that one would be the one she was looking for?  Perhaps but there had to be something worthwhile in the ninety-nine, and as much as she claimed she was searching for the diamond in the rough, there was something about the seriality of the sex that was - in the best deconstructionist terms - signifying.  

 

In fact, this insatiability, this insistent sexual itch was defining.  She was becoming a woman of easy pleasure, a neighborhood courtesan, a prostitute however one might call it; and despite her pedigree, her stable and respected marriage, her affection for her husband, and her social currency she found nothing unseemly in what she did. 

Her husband, as progressive as he was, a partner in the open marriage he and Barbery had concluded, he was still a man, and as jealous as any.  The more he realized that her liaisons were not just occasional but compulsive and necessary, the more he was tempted to rein her in, to stop what had become infidelity. 

Infidelity is not restricted to the one-off affair or even philandering.  Anything outside the parameters set in a marriage is a breach of contract.  One lover or a hundred, no one is counting.  In Barbery's case the sheer voracity of her sexual desire defined her infidelity, and her husband was upset. 

'You might as well charge for it', he said. 'A little egg money'. 

Barbery was so far gone into her sexual hejira that nothing could lever her from the rails.  She had become not just a Biblical harlot or a Freudian hysteric, but a self-fulfilling prophecy.  She was goddess, Woman, satisfier, and what God had intended her to be; what she would be until she found out differently. 

A man with a hundred lovers would be called a Casanova, a Don Juan, a Lothario; but a woman with a hearty sexual appetite, a whore.  Why is that?  What social construct could be more oppressive and patriarchal?

Was there some number of lovers beyond which became prostitution even if money was not exchanged? Certainly a man could graze to his heart's content and even be in demand by women who wanted to know what he offered that could seduce so many women; but a woman?  Salacious, incontinent, immoral, and reprehensible. 

There was a bit of Freud in Barbery, some driven quality which bordered on the psychotic but never drifted fully into that category.  There was a drop of feminism to be sure, a businesslike approach to supply and demand; and there was uniqueness.  She had simply come out of the womb more sexually sentient than most other women. 

Whatever it was, Barbery persisted until she was let go by her husband and dunned mercilessly by her peers.  Whatever were the parameters of social propriety, she had overstepped them.  She was, as Father Brophy would have said, 'a fallen woman'. 

Time has a way of smoothing out irregularity, and Barbery ended up on a chaise lounge on a Miami beach just like the old Jews of her mother's generation, reflectors under the chin to get a nice tan. 

Why should this be a surprise? Nothing lasts forever, nor should it.  She had had her fling, or whatever anyone wanted to call it, and few of us ever get anywhere near that particular epiphany. 

An Atheist Runs For Office - An End Run Around God Has Many Takers, The Path To The White House Clear

Herbert Fitch grew up in a devoutly Catholic home, so his rejection of God and religion in later life was surprising to all but him.  As a young child, when taught to adore Christ, he couldn't look at the gory, bloody body hanging by nails on a floor-to-ceiling cross on the altar.  He heard the priest's homilies about how Jesus suffered to save the world from sin, but the story of the Crucifixion was more than he could take - whippings, stabbings, blood dripping down on his face and the near breathless, dying man in front of him.  

 

'Do we have to?', the young Herbert pleaded every Sunday morning, but his father was adamant. 'It's a mortal sin if we don't go', the father said, explaining that mortal sin meant eternal hellfire, the crackling, burning fire that tortured you forever. 

The boy, as young as he was, wondered at this.  For just missing Mass? The equivalent of murder, even mass murder? And so it was that the seeds of disbelief were sown. 

It should be remembered that the injunctions of the Church were taken quite seriously, and that adults like his mother and father never once wavered from doctrine.  Even when Father Brophy got on his high horse and lit into the congregation for their sinful ways. ' Adulterers, fornicators, liars, cheats, and ne'er-do-wells', he shouted, mopping his brow in the stifling summer heat of the church.  'Apostates, unbelievers, reprobates', he yelled, pointing at individuals in the congregation. 

The old priest was not supposed to reveal the secrets of the confessional, but he saw no danger in calling out the worst of the lot and watching them squirm. 

Sex was his thing, and every Sunday he sailed into this, the most offensive sin of all.  'Vile magazines', he smirked, 'the defilement of the Holy Mother of God, objects of prurience and Satanic lust...Infidelity, cheapening the sacrament of marriage for a few moments of bestial gratification...salacious, invidious thoughts every day, all day...', on and on the priest went until exhausted from the effort, spent, and empty, he made the sign of the cross and proceeded to the altar. 

Herbert like most boys his age could only think of sex, girls, and doing 'it', whatever 'it' was, and he was told again and again that he risked hellfire with these damnable thoughts.  Once again, niggling doubts crept into his head.  Imagining love with Mary Beth Kravitz would damn him to eternal hellfire?

And then as he grew older and began to think about the foundational premises of the Church - the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the Holy Trinity - he wondered if his parents had gotten off on the wrong foot.  Did they really believe all this? And worse, was there really a God who looked down upon his creation and saw horrendous acts of sadistic violence, horrific abuse of children, and barbarism from one end of the earth to the other without intervening?  

And he still had the malicious irony to offer phantoms to the faithful to deflect their doubts.  Thousands flocked Fatima and Lourdes waiting for a vision of Mary, smiling, arms outstretched in love and harmony to assure them of a celestial paradise. 

By the time he was in college, he had not only ceased to wonder, he ditched the whole kit-and-kaboodle. There was no Jesus, no Mary, and no God.  

Christopher Hitchens said it best

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs).

Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would like to think—though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one—that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.

 

'Once a Catholic, always a Catholic' had been the accepted wisdom of the day.  Catholic indoctrination, more canny, universal, psychologically astute, and profoundly penitential than the harshest Communist gulag was such that no one once trained could ever leave the Church.  Guilt, doubt, remorse, and fear would follow the apostate forever. 

Yet the few atheists on this crowded piazza of true believers are ones of a kind - they have with demanding logic, fearlessness, and unconcern with social mores, had said, 'Nonsense', and moved on. Even in the heady political environment of the university, the most radical of his classmates could never truly jettison the ideas of divinity so ingrained, so permanently fixed from an early age were they.  

Progressivism was based on secularism and the conviction that man, not God is responsible for the good and evil in the world.  It was easy to embark on the secular journey, not so easy to set aside the notion that God was watching, and many were uneasy with Herbert's uncompromising atheism. 

When pressed about his beliefs, Herbert did not hold back, and was at his most excoriating, dismissive, and ironic. His challenges, his blunt, uncompromising look at what he found so laughable and impossibly ignorant in the Bible made even the most anti-clerical of his progressive friends wince.  He had touched a chord.  He had posited the impossible.  He had spoken out as loudly and passionately as any Southern Baptist preacher, but in reverse. 

He had no truck with liberalism.  It was as canonical as the Catholic Church, complete with liturgy, doctrine, and doxology. Its faithful had more irrational, unfounded belief as religious fanatics.  They actually believed despite millennia of history that the world could be reformed and become a compassionate, considerate, tolerant, and loving place. A belief system even more fantastical and unbelievable than Christianity. 

Conservatives were far closer to atheism.  Their belief in the hardwired permanence of human nature, propelling Man to ever more expressions of aggression, territorialism, self-interest, and brutal defensiveness forced a nihilism that was close to a Godless universe.  

Of course most conservatives preached faith and prayed to a Christian God, but in private after leaving all the pomp, cant, and circumstance at the door, they were as atheistic as any. 

All of which encouraged Herbert to become a political conservative.  Why not make hay from one's convictions.  His message of atheism aligned seamlessly with Darwinian nihilism would be perfect for a religiously restive audience. 

Now, Herbert was not only smart, but savvy.  He knew that he would be swimming upstream.  Religion was big business in America and apostates were still burned at the stake.  But he was a gifted orator who could spin gold out of dross, make the most seditious arguments sound as innocent and acceptable as motherlove, and draw the most skeptical to his side. 

There is nothing threatening, new, or divisive about the Origin of Species, Darwin's masterpiece of scientific insight and logic.  We know that there is competition for the best place at the table, the best husband or wife, the most profitable and satisfying life; and we know that for millennia empires have vied for territory, resources, and influence.  We do not shirk from this essential, inescapable, but central principle of life. 

There is nothing in history but competition, the survival of the fittest, a process leading to the rise of the best and the brightest. We have never needed anything but our own, undivided, human nature to lead us.  No myths, no supernatural ethos, no divine inspiration.  We are architects of our own future.  

'A new voice on the conservative stage', wrote The Federalist, an opinion echoed by The National Review and social media gurus. Here was exactly what the conservative movement needed to moderate the MAGA excesses which were dividing the constituency - a sane voice of intelligent moderation, but one which never diverged from conservativism's central principles, in fact one which added to and consolidated them. 

Herbert never brought up God directly.  That wasn't necessary in his carefully embroidered speeches about competition, free enterprise, and the ordained individuality of Man.  Godlessness - atheism - was implicit, understood, but unspoken.  In time, he would be less circumspect, but for the time being he was content to weave his Darwinian nihilism into easily assimilable political ideas. 

'Now I understand', said one Iowan voter who explained that he had always wanted more of a foundation for his support of the Republican Party, and was getting concerned about Donald Trump's vaudevillian show.  'This Herbert Fitch makes sense'. 

And little by little, his message, at first thought too intellectual if not abstruse for the average voter, took hold. He never once had to explain himself, his atheism, his 'godlessness' because he was so deft and able in weaving it into every conservative speech he gave. 

We are an ordained people - not in any traditional, discredited way - but in a positive individualistic way.  The inspiration of the Founding Fathers breathes again.  We are masters of our own destiny, taking our naturally endowed talents, energies, and ambitions, testing them in the marketplace, and applying them with force and commitment. 

'Naturally endowed', Herbert was careful to say, not 'God-given', a nicely crafted interpretation of Jefferson's words which resonated with his audience.  There was no divine presence guiding or determining human actions, only the irrefutable laws of natural selection.  The conservative wing of the Party was the purest example of political naturalism ever seen and as such gained currency.  Even the Walmart greeter understood this simple message of existential competition. 

Journalists wanted to know more about Herbert Fitch, where he came from, who were his heroes, what made him who he was; but none of them suspected his atheism.  This well-dressed, well-groomed, substantially handsome man with a winning, gregarious way was 'one of us' certainly; and so it was that his ascent to national office was virtually assured. 

Christopher Hitchens made a big deal of his atheism and made a lot of money from his public lectures, media appearances, and books; but Herbert Fitch was content to fly under the radar and accomplish far more than Hitchens ever could.  An atheist in the Oval Office? Why not? 

A Woman's Place Is In The Kitchen, Unless She Can't Cook - The Saga Of A Restive Housewife

Candi Barker was a happy , tucked nicely into her suburban split-level, adoring husband and two lovely children. Her husband gave her one of those frilly cocktail aprons he thought she would look cute in when she served canapes to their guests, and how proud he would be to show off his pert wife to his friends. 

 

Although she felt on the cusp of something big, she smiled and gave him a hug.  There had to be something beyond all this - the women's auxiliaries, the tea parties, the bridge nights, and the endless meatloaf- but she didn't know what; and worst of all, the more she tried to live up to her husband's ideals, she bungled everything.  She couldn't cook worth a darn or balance a checkbook, never managed a hospital corner in her life, scorched her girls' jumpers, dinged the car, let the aphids and Japanese beetles take over the rose garden, and could never finish anything on time. 

Now, if she was one of those dykey lawyers she read about in Ladies' Home Journal, a career woman, on her own in New York City making her way up the corporate ladder; but she didn't know the first thing about business, and was happy when the dinner party broke up into groups, the men to the den with cognac and cigars and the women to the living room to chat about children, fashion, and gossip. 

An article in the Journal summed up this betwixt period this way:

The career girl is one of a kind - determined, independent, canny, and resourceful - for she must be in a man's world.  She has to use every bit of her feminine charm, her sharp intelligence, and her well-honed practicality and no-nonsense assuredness to make her way.  She is at the avant-garde of her sex, a pioneer, an entrepreneur, a doer; and once the wind fills her sails, there will be no stopping her. 

  

The article went on to praise the housewife, for without her hearth and home would be a vacant, airless, dry and sterile place.  There was room for both, but the new winds that blew were to change womanhood forever. 

'What's for dinner, dear', said Candy's husband, seeing the usual disorder in the kitchen - hamburger blood dripping in the sink, potatoes unpeeled in the strainer, and nothing resembling dinner in sight. 

As much as Candi tried to organize her thoughts - first this, then that - the kitchen seemed to have its own life, a kind of mesmerizing stupor which clouded her thoughts and made planning impossible. Yes, she remembered to defrost the meat, but when exactly she had forgotten.  Perhaps when she woke up, that wouldn't be good with all the salmonella around; and the oven had to be fired up well before dinner to be sure the casserole was done in time, but that too was a mystery. 

'Take one of these at around four o'clock', said her neighbor, Jane, referring to one of the new sedatives freely prescribed to women with nervous disorders.  'Mother's little helpers' they were called in the lexicon of the day, phials of little blue pills in the medicine cabinet there if the day got too stressful. 'With a martini would be best', her friend went on; but after that combo she found herself in the chaise lounge in the garden watching sparrows in the birdbath, the cirrus clouds in the sky, and as happy as can be doing absolutely nothing. 

As pleasant as that was, it was no anodyne to her growing restiveness, a feeling of desperate futility and a growing anger at everything.  She hated the kitchen and all its maniacal powers over her. She hated the disgustingly patronizing cocktail dress, and she hated the fucking cat. 

The Sixties were still a few years off, so other than the desultory article or two about career women, there was no apertura, not even a glimpse of what might be other than Kinder, Kuche, Kirke the endless round of homemaking, childcare, and social obligation. 

'What's wrong, darling', her husband said to her as she moped more than usual over the sink; but men couldn't possibly understand the angst, the anomie that women felt.  They were as dumb as rocks when it came to women.  A peck on the cheek, a 'roll over honey' in bed, and a wave goodbye as they rolled down the driveway to work.  Why had she so willingly let herself be trapped in this inescapable prison? Not only was the routine deadening and brutally dull, it signified something.  Women were around just to tune things up, supernumerary otherwise, empty shells, clothes to be hung on a rack. 

Once again, the days of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll were still years in the future, but their forbears were alive and quite well.  There was the neighbor's Librium and Beefeater's, Rosemary Clooney and the Big Bands, and love affairs. 

 

'I would never try that', said Candi, but what else was there?  She couldn't just moon around the garden, all doped up and loopy, and the music was sappy and ordinary.  Sex on the other hand was well within her reach, forbidden fruit, and at the very least an hour or so of 'elevation'. 

'Within reach' meant the milkman, the mailman, the roofer, the plumber, and the electrician, men she ordinarily wouldn't have given a second thought to, but what could be more convenient and discreet?  An affair with Harlan Powers, Senior Vice President of the New Brighton Bank & Trust might be more socially suitable, but the whole schmear of trysts, meeting places, stolen kisses and all the rest was off-putting and dangerous.  She wasn't in the business of destroying her marriage after all, just reconfiguring it more to her liking and satisfaction. 

It should be said that for all of Candi's devotion to husband and family, as random and ill-timed as it could be, she was no prude.  In fact she rated herself 'Extremely High' on the Freudian scale of female sexual desire explained in another article in the Journal. She might have little experience with sexual pleasure, but that did not mean diffidence or lack of interest.  On the contrary she delighted at the thought of any one of these tradesmen inside her, pleasuring her. 

And so it was that she invited Elmer Swensen, the Fresh Farms milkman into her bed, then Cabot Ilkins the gutter man, and Shohei Yukimura, the Japanese gardener.  Yukimura showed her Edo prints of the sexual escapades of shoguns and told her he would show her how it was done, and for an hour every other Thursday afternoon, they coupled in the most exotic way. 

No matter how recondite and careful lovers in a small town might be, word leaks out, morphs into gossip and before long she was The Harlot of Lincoln Street. 

The economic principle of sunken costs has its social application, and Davies Barker, Candi's husband after so many years of marriage, two children, and a hefty mortgage was not about to lose his investment. He would not divorce her if she shaped up in the kitchen, flew right as a mother, and welcomed him more than casually. 

In so doing, he ignored the first principle of marriage - if your wife is fucking someone else, dump her - but to his credit he was an openminded, surprisingly tolerant and forgiving man. The gossip eventually stopped and he was no longer the butt of jokes down at the gas station; but Candi knew she had him trussed, bagged, and secure, and after a cooling-off period, made her elision into the Sixties where it was she who whooped and hollered from the window of a hippy van pulling out of the driveway headed for parts unknown.