-Chapter-
Strict meaning gets blurred in art and history as it does in life. In
Victorian times, in England and on the continent, it was not unheard of
for a wife, especially a younger "trophy" wife to have secret liaisons
with friends of her husband who she met in the marital home, and with
the servants. It was aristocratic privilege.
In Eyes Wide Shut a debonair man hits on...I forget her name, some famous, gorgeous actress, saying,
“You
know why women used to get married. It was the only way they could lose
their virginity and be free to do what they wanted with other men. The
ones they really wanted.”
That's like the only thing I remember
from that movie. But that's aristocratic privilege. It was an invitation
to cuckoldry but the woman declined.
In somewhat earlier
times Winston Churchill's wife had a "fling" on a trip abroad. Also
privileged behavior of the elite class. Was Churchill a cuckold or a
wittol? Since his wife admitted it (I don't know if at the time), he was
accepting of it as s.o.p. Aristocratic privilege.
There is a much
older painting, I forget who the artist was, or the title, that depicts
the ambiguity between cuckold and wittol.
Detail. Enhanced.
She is handing her older “eyes wide shut” husband, I presume, his eyeglasses so that he can observe her nude with a dashing young lover. She is taunting him. His body language gives it away. It's not the modern practice of "watching the wife" have sex with another man. The old man is a grudgingly accepting wittol, the same as may be in the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.
This theme, and to be precise, the theme here is the husband who has no
choice but to accept and who is taunted by his wife, is also present in
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Margot Macomber has had lots
of affairs, is on a safari with her husband Francis, and has an affair
with their white hunter guide. "You promised there'd be none of that if
we went on this trip," Francis whines. "Well, there is now", Margot
breezily and cruelly answers. "You think I'll put up with anything.",
Francis rejoins with heat. "I know that you will, sweets."
One of
Hemingway's closest associates, maybe an editor, said that Margot was
meant to symbolize the "bitch American wife" and the story was
metaphorically about "Man free of women." (?) How could that be? The
story ends with Francis' death; Margot killed him, it is ambiguous
whether accidentally or deliberately. I had always interpreted the story
as Hemingway asserting the ultimate triumph of woman over man.
"Clytemnestra after the Murder" (1882)
Another artist's depiction.
Detail from Collier.
A bitch Margot Macomber was, a cuckolding bitch, a wife she was, and an American she was. Was Margot Macomber a type?
In
The Pioneers, for the record, the first American novel written by an
American about American life, James Fenimore Cooper has the heroine, nee
Elizabeth Temple, say to her husband,
"You know, Effingham, that
my father has told you that I ruled him and that I should rule you. I am
now about to exert my power."
Power. Power and Liberty were the
themes, the obsession of the American Revolution. John Adams wrote, "In
Europe power grants charters of liberty; in America liberty grants
charters of power." The sexual imagery in the pamphlets of the American
Revolution is impossible to miss and was acknowledged by Bernard Bailyn,
the preeminent authority on that literature. Liberty was "hunted",
"violated", "pure". Power was a man to the Founding Fathers; Liberty was
a woman. They would reverse the relationship and put the woman on top.
Liberty.
Chaucer, a man, wrote The Canterbury Tales for a nobleman patron.
Alison, the narrator of The Tale of the Wife of Bath ("Tale" is pun on
"Tail" I am convinced) has become an instantiation of female power and
liberty. Alison states to her husband, who she has cuckolded and who
complains,
Have thou ynogh, what thar thee recche or care
How myrily that othere folkes fare?
For certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve,
Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve.
He is to greet a nygard, that wolde werne
340 A man to lighte his candle at his lanterne;
He shal have never the lasse light, pardee,
Have thou ynogh, thee thar nat pleyne thee.
You get all the cunt you want. What do you care if I get pleasure and give pleasure to other men? Don't be a niggard with cunt.
...
What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone?
450 Is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone?
Wy, taak it al! lo, have it every deel!
Peter! I shrewe yow, but ye love it weel;
For if I wolde selle my bele chose,
I koude walke as fressh as is a rose
You
want my cunt all to yourself? Well, take it! But satisfy it, Peter, or
I'll sell it to someone who will. Alison was married five times.
The root of libertinism, "disregard of authority or convention in sexual or religious matters" is liberty.
It
is important to note that not all cuckolding wives in the arts are
portrayed as "Bitch wives". Alison is a charming, funny, heroine, "rare
as a unicorn" (see immediately below). Even in the paintings, where the
husband is the "victim" the treatment of the wife is often humorous, not
condemning.
We Americans are sons and daughters of Mother
England. We killed our mother. Five hundred and eighty years, a change
in gender of authors and a change in religious influence from
Protestantism to Judaism, and here came Erica Jong:
"I was not
against marriage. I believed in it in fact. ...But what about all those
other longings which after a while marriage did nothing much to appease?
The restlessness, the hunger, the thump in the gut, the thump in the
cunt..."
...
"Even if you loved your husband, there came
that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta
cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the tastebuds, no
bittersweet edge, no danger."
…
"...my fantasy of the Zipless
Fuck. The zipless fuck was more than a fuck. It was a platonic ideal.
Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like rose
petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues
intertwined...The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of
ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not ‘taking’ and
the woman is not ‘giving.’ No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or
humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out
of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is
rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one."
Ho-ho-ho. That is a fantasy! “Oh excuse me ma'am, I just ran into your cunt with my dick.” It’s also a "power game." Jong's "fantasy" is
one where women are not accountable and not responsible for anything;
where they have no power, not the willpower to exercise physical power,
where sex “just happens”, there's no agency, it's nobody's fault, "I
didn't intend to cuckold!", there's no shame or guilt, I didn't even get
undressed! my underwear just "blew off". "I got drunk and it...I don't
know what...just happened." No giving, no taking: What does Jong
mean by that? That there was no rape. There’s no consent either. “It
just happened.” That’s a juvenile fantasy. Jong has been married four
times.
Danger. It is a turn-on. The fear of getting caught. It is essential to the psychology of cuckolding. The woman has to get away with it but...the
closer to danger she comes, the greater the thrill, the more intense
the orgasm with the other. My ex-girlfriend Mindy once told me that at a
boozy party that she attended with her husband some guy grabbed her
ass. A short-time later she grabbed another guy's ass. She was with her husband at this party.
A childhood friend of my (second ex) wife did some modeling (fashion
not nude) when she was younger, still married. That led to an affair
with the photog. The affair was of some duration when Beth invited the
photog to her house with her husband present. Giving the photog a tour
of the house Beth took him upstairs and began groping him and spreading
on the marital bed.
In Breaking Bad, the husband and wife
have sex in the car outside a school. "Why was that so good?," the wife
asks after. "Because it's illegal," the husband answers. Yes, danger is
a turn-on. For the cuckolding wife, it's not as thrilling if the
husband goes along with it, as Churchill apparently did. If the husband
doesn't care, he devalues the wife, she's not worth it, she's not worth
killing or beating or divorcing. Or even revenge cheating on. "You're
not worth it." Talk about deflating! Definitely not what the wife
expected--or wanted--no psychological out-witting. "I don't even get any
jealousy? Not even a leetle?" "No, you're not desirable enough." OWIE!
Couldn't have an O with her boy toy after that one. (p.s. Nancy Pelosi
said she didn't want to go ahead with Trumpie's first impeachment, "He's
not worth it." It hurt Trumpie's feelings.)
Hemingway's
friend said that Margot Macomber had no respect for Francis, that what
she wanted was for him to be man enough to stop her cuckolding. How, by
beating her? Killing her? I don't know about that but that's what the
man said. The idea would be, if that was Hemingway's intent, that the
cuckolding wife doesn't want to cuckold her husband again, but that she
was powerless to stop herself. Again, I don't know about that but that
is not true cuckolding. I do however find experiential support in the
notion from Mindy.
Not only did Mindy
successfully cuckold (i.e. secretly) her husband but she also withheld
sex from him. She told me that when they would get into bed together she
would say, "There's an imaginary line down the center of the bed. Do
not cross it!" I know that that story is true because she said the same thing to me!
Did she want her husband, or me, or both, to "be man enough" to force her, to rape
her? Which is exactly the question Louis CK asks himself when a woman
he did not consummate, “I was hoping you’d just take it."
I
didn't ask myself Louis CK's question of Mindy at the time, I just took
it. But in the few years after I broke up with her I did. I did not
force her, I have never forced a woman, I would never force a woman, I
broke up with Mindy--but months or a year later, not then--with the
line, "This is the happiest day in my life, when you're out of it
completely." But at the time, I took it. Did Mindy lose respect for me or Mark for taking it and not “just taking it”? I have never understood rape. I
could not get an erection if a woman didn’t want to have sex with me. In
after-thought I played it out, "Oh that's good, Mindy! The same thing you said to Mark! Now, I could rape you but...you're
not worth it." I didn't say that, I have never said that, and I never
would say that; I never have had the thought of using the word rape even
as a dismissed possibility.
I read Mindy at
the time as not remembering that she had told me that she had used that
line on Mark--and Mark never forced her either—and, playing it out still
further, I thought years after that if either Mark or I had forced her
that she would have Bobbitted us in our sleep, or Macombered us.
But I did wonder in after-thought what her reaction to being forced would have been. What if Mark had forced her and she had enjoyed
it, "Oh yes, beat me, whip me, I've been a bad girl." Since Mark never forced her, Mark had never forced a woman, and would never force a woman,
or even insultingly joke about it, it's one step beyond reality
to say what Mark would have done if she had responded with ecstasies to
being forced. Would she have wanted him to incorporate it into their sex
lives? It is literally inconceivable to me personally.But. there. is. something.
to. it. Did you know that some young people role-play "the rape game"?
Do you know what FMLYHM stands for?
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