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Not Just A River In Egypt
It's 1949. Enid is in Africa, visiting relations. She meets a young man called John who is a friend of her brother's. Enid is 61, John is 37.
There's an immediate connection. John makes sheep's eyes, Enid makes sheep's eyes back. She hints in her diary at a karmic connection,
Even through the medium of Enid's besotted prose John comes across as a creep. People warn her against him, they say he's a schizophrenic, that he has a "bit of a kink". To make matters worse he's in the middle of divorcing his wife. Then he snatches his kids from his wife's care and asks Enid and the people she's staying with to look after them for him
He tells Enid that his wife is a lesbian and has been sexually abusing the three little girls. Enid believes him. He goes on to say that his wife denied him "normal" sexual relations and the children were only conceived after he'd "forced" himself on her. A few lines further on Enid refers to the wife as a "sexual maniac".
Hang on a minute.
But now John is asking Enid if she has ever been in love. She says "Three times" and tells him about the men in her life. The men in her life? Yes, the men. Only the men. No mention of Smithie. No mention of Nina. No mention of Doro. Apparently they don't count. Or- at this moment- matter at all. And slowly it dawns on me that Enid- for all that she spends her life obsessing about women, for all that she sleeps with women- thinks of herself as totally straight.
There's an immediate connection. John makes sheep's eyes, Enid makes sheep's eyes back. She hints in her diary at a karmic connection,
Even through the medium of Enid's besotted prose John comes across as a creep. People warn her against him, they say he's a schizophrenic, that he has a "bit of a kink". To make matters worse he's in the middle of divorcing his wife. Then he snatches his kids from his wife's care and asks Enid and the people she's staying with to look after them for him
He tells Enid that his wife is a lesbian and has been sexually abusing the three little girls. Enid believes him. He goes on to say that his wife denied him "normal" sexual relations and the children were only conceived after he'd "forced" himself on her. A few lines further on Enid refers to the wife as a "sexual maniac".
Hang on a minute.
But now John is asking Enid if she has ever been in love. She says "Three times" and tells him about the men in her life. The men in her life? Yes, the men. Only the men. No mention of Smithie. No mention of Nina. No mention of Doro. Apparently they don't count. Or- at this moment- matter at all. And slowly it dawns on me that Enid- for all that she spends her life obsessing about women, for all that she sleeps with women- thinks of herself as totally straight.
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Also, I thought it was cow eyes.
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Re only mentioning the men, our ideas of sexual identity are not the same as those of the past. In fact the idea of having a fixed sexual identity such as straight, gay or bi would have been an alien concept. Also, would she not have been of the generation of women who lost boyfriends or fiancés or even the chance of finding an opposite sex partner due to the First World War?
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Otherwise, as you say, ideas of sexuality were different back then.
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And more confusing.
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Reminds me a little of how the letters of Virginia and Vita got more messy and confusing as time went by, and I just wanted to have more of the juicy earlier stuff.
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And why won't you consider writing about Enid's life yourself? You do write well...
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The more of her life I read the less I think I want to write about her. The older Enid was judgemental and unattractively pious.
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This was the times. What year was Oscar Wilde jailed?
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low
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Unfortunately there's nothing in her voluminous writings- at least nothing I've come across yet- that clarifies her attitude to sex. She contemplates becoming John's mistress than backs out pleading "high spiritual ideals". She takes women to bed but never tells us what happens when they get there. Certain throwaway phrases suggest something akin to homophobia. I find myself wondering whether she ever actually had sex- or anything more than kisses and cuddles- with anyone.
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Perhaps she sincerely saw no good could come from the fact that she kept falling in love with women, and did her best to make it not a reality.
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Looking back, it was much better for me to be able to pretend to myself I was straight, so I didn't have to stress about it until I was in a safer environment. Sort of like Stockholm Syndrome. Her life was probably happier with self-deception if she wouldn't have been safely able to acknowledge herself.
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I might be talking utter nonsense, but I don't think so, and perhaps this explains why a man might think it normal to "force himself" and then Enid might think in terms of the wife as a "sexual maniac"; not necessarily as a lesbian nymphomaniac (although her opinion might include that) but as a person with disordered sexuality, in the sense that she hasn't recognized her duty to reproduce. I wonder if she believed the accusation about the children?
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Yes, Enid believed the children had been abused. She wrote a deposition (of which I have a copy) in which she describes the oldest girl's sexualized behaviour. It didn't occur to her that the supposed abuser might have been the father.