Not Just A River In Egypt

[poliphilo]

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.

Comments

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the generations that spanned the 40s and 50s were strongly influenced by the huge massacre of 14-18. In previous generations, the importance of giving birth was inheritance. During those years, it wasn't so much about inheritance, but about restoring some kind of norm. So people didn't examine the nature of their sexuality, but they did have a sense of duty about giving birth.
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?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a interesting idea- and quite new to me; I'll have to mull it over.

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.