{"id":2621,"date":"2025-02-07T12:26:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T17:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2621"},"modified":"2025-02-07T12:26:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T17:26:40","slug":"louise-and-elgins-sex-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/02\/07\/louise-and-elgins-sex-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise and Elgin’s Sex Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cElgin and Louise no longer made love. She took the spunk out of him now and again but she refused to have him inside her. Elgin accepted this was part of their deal and Louise knew he used prostitutes. His proclivities would have made that inevitable even in a more traditional marriage. His present hobby was to fly up to Scotland and be sunk in a bath of porridge while a couple of Celtic geishas rubber-gloved his prick\u201d (68).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winterson uses the terms \u201cmade love\u201d and \u201ctook the spunk out of him\u201d here instead of sex. The two phrases speak to the state of their marriage at this point in the book and have two very different connotations. Instead of \u201cmaking love,\u201d something that is viewed as very tender, something a husband and wife do or, at least, what two people who love each other do. However, she takes \u201cthe spunk out of him.\u201d This seems transactional and like Louise is sucking the soul out of Elgin. He can no longer be entirely himself, she brings him down. The phrasing makes it seem like Louise is taming Elgin, just giving in to complete a task because she has to because they are still technically married. Marriage, culturally, is understood to include sex and especially in the past, it is the wife\u2019s job to please her husband.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Like we talked about in class though, this sets up the idea that they already have a set \u201cdeal.\u201d The wording implies that they already have discussed sex outside of marriage so the same deal for Elgin would theoretically apply to Louise in the fact that she can also have sex outside of marriage. However, later on, we find out that Elgin is not as okay with this as he originally let on. The difference, however, between Elgin\u2019s use of prostitutes and Louise with our narrator seems to be the emotional aspect of the affair. Elgin won\u2019t even let the sex workers see him naked, but Louise is implying that Elgin is into \u201cuntraditional\u201d sex practices that she wouldn\u2019t want to perform so therefore it is necessary for him to be with a prostitute. I think it is this passage that sets up the irony of him being upset at Louise for having an affair, though the circumstances are slightly different, it applies nonetheless.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think the important part of this excerpt though, is the fact that she \u201crefused to have him inside her.\u201d Sex is defined culturally as penetrative sex, everything else is considered an \u2018other\u2019 form of sex, but true sex itself is penetrative (according to society and cultural expectations). I don\u2019t think this is the exact thing Winterson is trying to get at. I think she is still considering them having sex, however I think she is making a sexual hierarchy. Some acts are considered more intense\/personal than others, they are worth more in the long run. By not letting Elgin enter Louise, she is keeping their marriage at surface level and almost disassociating from the act and, maybe in her mind, they aren\u2019t actually having sex. Although it is a sexual act, society stereotypically only defines sex as the traditional way. Louise has set the boundary that once Elgin is \u201cinside her\u201d that is the ultimate form of sex, and right now, she is just getting by by performing sexual acts to complete her \u2018duties\u2019 as a wife. However, she is only fulfilling her \u2018duties\u2019 as a wife in the sense that she is giving her husband pleasure, not (in the very traditional sense) by making it possible to have a baby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The reader does not know what type of sex the narrator and Louise are having but it is set up to appear to be a much more intimate experience. Maybe Winterson might be trying to portray is that sex is \u2018worth\u2019 more when there is an emotional connection which was absent with Elgin. She is only performing sexual acts, not what society seems true sex, so that it isn\u2019t \u2018worth\u2019 as much, it doesn\u2019t matter as much.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cElgin and Louise no longer made love. She took the spunk out of him now and again but she refused to have him inside her. Elgin accepted this was part of their deal and Louise knew he used prostitutes. His proclivities would have made that inevitable even in a more traditional marriage. His present hobby … Continue reading Louise and Elgin’s Sex Life<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}