{"id":1966,"date":"2025-02-05T17:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T17:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=1966"},"modified":"2025-02-05T17:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T17:36:07","slug":"hartrights-desire-for-purity-and-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/02\/05\/hartrights-desire-for-purity-and-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Hartright’s Desire for Purity and Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hartright\u2019s narration between pages 64 and 65 of the growing attraction between him and Miss Fairlie demonstrates the pull between sexual desires and desires for female purity. Although Hartright repeats certain phrases to mirror his and Miss Fairlie\u2019s movements, moments of halfway connections also characterize the passage. Hartright says that his lover\u2019s charms \u201c…can purify and subdue the heart of man\u201d (Collins 64). He contextualizes her traits through the effect on <\/span>his <\/span><\/i>traits; he admires her for her ability to distract him from his character flaws. Instead of specifying that the \u201cman\u201d described him, Hartright broadens the scope to include any man. This enlarges her powers to “subdue the heart,\u201d making her the paragon of purity who can inherently \u201cfix\u201d any man.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Bearing the precedent of Hartright\u2019s vision of a pure Miss Fairlie, their subsequent moments of physical sexual yearning stall at several points. Hartright writes \u201cNot a day passed…in which my hand was not close to Miss Fairlie\u2019s; my cheek…almost touching hers\u201d (Collins 64). The pair purposefully do not contact skin to skin, but Hartright emphasizes the thrill he receives from the teasing closeness. Besides the references to his cheek, and he also notes \u201c…the perfume of her hair, and the warm fragrance of her breath\u201d (Collins 65). These references to hair, cheek, and breath all encircle a key feature on her face that Hartright fails to mention: her lips or mouth. Although Hartright arrives close to this feature when describing her breath, he refuses to focus on the most sensual part of a woman\u2019s body, a part that has been hallowed in countless romantic works of prose and poetry. Even in a scene rife with sensual details, the lack of references to lips or mouth stands as a gaping hole. Obviously, Hartright would have noticed her mouth, but then made the conscious choice not to write it. Hartright enjoys these moments of halfway connection because they preserve his vision of her purity; having sex, even kissing would break the imagined barrier that separates Miss Fairlie from other, more promiscuous women.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Miss Fairlie shares Hartirght\u2019s affection, and the pair demonstrate their affection by mirroring each other\u2019s actions. He describes the scene by writing \u201c…at one time bending over her…to feel her bending over me, bending so close to see what I was all about…\u201d (Collins 65). He uses the same word choice to describe the same movement, as if the two lovers had become intertwined into one. Repeating the same phrase three times causes a building sense of closeness, with every iteration increasing the number of times that they meet and even increasing how close together the bend brings the two. \u201c… to see what I was all about….\u201d presents a possible moment of innuendo. Its vagueness regarding what she looks at could point a look at his body.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hartright\u2019s narration between pages 64 and 65 of the growing attraction between him and Miss Fairlie demonstrates the pull between sexual desires and desires for female purity. Although Hartright repeats certain phrases to mirror his and Miss Fairlie\u2019s movements, moments of halfway connections also characterize the passage. Hartright says that his lover\u2019s charms \u201c…can purify … Continue reading Hartright’s Desire for Purity and Sex<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5591,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[1231,135988,135987,2819],"class_list":["post-1966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts","tag-gender","tag-purity","tag-sensuality","tag-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5591"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}