From: lewis@linac.fnal.gov (June Cummins Lewis)
Subject: Re: Sex and Death
Organization: Fermilab, Batavia, IL
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 05:03:05 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.013619.3464@news.acns.nwu.edu> velour@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Michelle Wiener) writes:
>As I slap my PretentiousEnglishMajorGoddess mask on, here's a completely
>bizarre, yet possibly relevent idea I thought of while I should have been
>studying for the GRE (11 days --AAAAAAAAAAUUUUGHHHHH!):
>
>I'm currently taking a class on the novels of Virginia Woolf (not very
>pertinent), with a feminist theory slant (note: feminist theory does not mean
>interpreting the text to show that all men are horrible beings.. *grin*).  A
>few days ago we were discussing the fact that in many novels written by women,
>the female protagonist dies shortly after marriage or other form of sexual
>initiation (The woolf novel is _The Voyage Out_... I highly recommend it!). 
>Other than Woolf's novel, there's Catherine Linton from _Wuthering Heights_,
>Maggie Tulliver in _Mill on the Floss_... Hetty Sorrel in _Adam Bede_...
>anyway.  I won't go into the psychoanalytical reasons behind this, other than
>the loss of virginity is seen as a highly traumatic event for a young woman
>(in victorian society)... and after marriage, a young woman can go no further;
>as a wife and mother she has fulfilled her destiny, and there's nothing left
>for her to do BUT die.  These are not necessarily my beliefs, just some of the
>theories involved in interpreting women's novels...

Just thought you guys might like to know that this is exactly the
starting point of my dissertation, the topic of which is female
coming-of-age in the modern English novel (Woolf, Lawrence, etc).

>
>It suddenly struck me that in Maggie's love life, the genders are
>reversed:  the MEN die after sleeping with Maggie.  I'm not sure what this
>might mean, and I doubt that it's even intended to be an inversion of this

This is very interesting!  If Maggie were the heroine of a modern
British novel, she'd certainly be worthy of a chapter in my
dissertation! ;)

>Victorian theme... although I'm convinced that at least one of the writers for
>this show was an English major. :)  One line of thought that may follow is
>that, while Victorian women couldn't survive in a masculine society where
>their ambitions and desires are suppressed and restricted to being a wife and
>mother, the men in Maggie's life couldn't survive in Maggie's world, where she
>does what she wants and fulfills her own desires, while they take second
>place.  Maybe, maybe not.. I'm just rambling and letting my mind wander.

Or maybe their deaths are Maggie's projection of what she fears will
happen to herself if she marries.  Since she knows that women's
"stories" end when they marry, these men must die so that her story
doesn't have to end.  

A variation on the theme of death after marriage that you mention is
the "marriage or death" plot.  In almost all Victorian novels
concering women, the heroine dies or marries at the end of the story
(or both as you mentioned).  Rachel Blau DuPlessis has written a book
called _Writing Beyond the Ending_ which addresses how modern writers
(including Woolf) tried to surpass that common ending.  

>and if this gets flamed, then you're taking me WAY too seriously.

I have to take this seriously--it's my life's (so far) work!

And I'd be shocked if anyone else was still reading this . . . . 

Good Luck on the GRE (subject or general?)!

June
-- 
"Saying that men talk about baseball in	order to avoid talking about their
feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order
to avoid talking about baseball."
			--Deborah Tannen, author of _You Just Don't Understand_