Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

Anne, who is, according to Pauline Reage, the other

half o f Claire, is sweet, modest, vulnerable, young,

demure (“Anne, for her part, had resumed the modest

demeanor of an object of lust” 4), and wanton. Claire

says that Anne creams at each new humiliation, at even

the thought o f being whipped. Anne appears to be Beth

from Little Women but is, in fact, a bitch in heat, her cunt

always wet—just like the rest of us, we are meant to

conclude. (Beth, remember, died young of goodness. )

Jean de Berg, representing the male sex, is—wouldn’t

you know it—intelligent, self-assured, quietly master-

Woman at Victim: The Image

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ful and self-contained when not actually in the act o f

ravaging, powerful and overwhelmingly virile when in

the act o f ravaging. One has no idea o f his physicality,

except to imagine that he is graying at the temples.

T h e relationships between the three characters are

structured simply and a bit repetitively: Claire, master —

Anne, slave; Jean de Berg, master —Anne, slave; which

resolves into the happy ending—Jean de Berg, master —

Claire, slave. T h e master-slave motif is content, structure, and moral o f the story. T he master role is always a male role, the slave role is always a female role. T h e

moral o f the story is that Claire, by virtue o f her gender,

can only find happiness in the female/slave role.

Here we are told what society would have us know

about lesbian relationships: a man is required for completion, consummation. Claire is miscast as master because o f her literal sex, her genitalia. Jean de Berg is her surrogate cock which she later forges into the instrument o f her own degradation. The Image paints women as real female eunuchs, mutilated in the first

instance, much as Freud suggested, by their lack o f

cock, incapable o f achieving whole, organic, satisfying

sexual union without the intrusion and participation

o f a male figure. That figure cannot only act out the

male role — that figure must possess biological cock and

balls. Claire and Anne as biological females enact a

comedy, grotesque in its slapstick caricature: Claire

as master, a freak by virtue o f the role she wills to play,

a role designed to suit the needs and capacities o f a

man; Claire as master, as comic as Chaplin doing the

king o f France, or Laurel and Hardy falling over each

other’s feet in another vain attempt to secure wealth

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Woman Hating

and success. After all, The Image forces us to conclude,

what can Claire stick up Anne’s cunt but her fingers —

hardly instruments of ravishment and ecstasy. Biology,

we are told, is role. Biology, we are told, is fate. The