Check and Mate

Chess. It's not the sexiest thing in the world. OR IS IT? Lately I've been noticing chess is used as a metaphor for sex in a lot of books. In Arnold Haultain's Hints for Lovers (link), he writes,

In the chess-like game of love-making, no woman plays for check-mate: the game interests her too much to bring it to a finish. What pleases her most is stale-mate, where, though the King cannot be captured, the captress can maneuver without end.

Coincidentally, after randomly coming across this quote, I started noticing chess really is a metaphor for sex in a lot of books. Take Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson (review here), for instance--the hero and heroine spend a good portion of the book playing chess in the library, and when the heroine finally accepts Phillip's proposal he's like, "Hey girl, let's go to the library to play chess." There are also chess scenes in Scandal of the Year by Laura Lee Guhrke, Breaking Dawn (the movie--I'm not sure that was in the book), and Harry Potter.

Makes you wonder what they were playing for with giant game of wizard's chess, doesn't it?



Do you think chess is the Game of Love, or is it more like Parcheesi?

For the Love of Severus Snape

Note: In this post, I discuss events that occur in the last three Harry Potter books.  I'm going to assume that you've read them, so there are spoilers.

As I argued in Harry Potter and the Book of Double Entendres, Harry Potter is filled with sexual symbolism.  What I left out of that discussion was Severus Snape. Since the last three books are so central to understanding his character, I thought it would be more appropriate to consider Snape on his own in the context of those three books.

Like any teenager, Harry must face anxiety about his sexuality and what kind of person he is through his physical and emotional relationships. But who is the focal point of this anxiety? For whom does he have the greatest unfulfilled desire for connection? Not Ginny, certainly; Harry's biggest worry with her is whether or not Ron will punch him in the face for liking his sister.  Cho Chang was definitely the early focus of Harry's attraction, but he abruptly lost interest in her in the fifth book--where, I would argue, his anxiety over rejection became embodied by none other than Severus Snape.



Snape is most certainly the sexiest character in Harry Potter, but why? He's repeatedly described as being physically unattractive and unpleasant.  And, just as with all the other teachers in Hogwarts, we know nothing of his personal relationships and assume he doesn't have any. However, he is interesting, and we're fascinated by him--because Harry is. This comes to a head in Order of the Phoenix, where they forcibly and repeatedly penetrate one another in an attempt to teach Harry occlumency. The sexual overtones are underlined by small, unconscious actions such as Snape "tracing his mouth with one long, thin finger" whenever he looks at Harry. 

It's no wonder Harry hates his occlumency lessons, as Snape recurrently violates Harry's mind, then berates him for being weak. But what frightens and infuriates Snape more than anything is when Harry reciprocates this insertion, catching a glimpse of Snape's own memories, making him vulnerable and inspiring a feeling of sympathy and camaraderie in Harry that Snape summarily rejects. This isn't the first or last time Harry recognizes a connection to Snape, only to have it turn into a feeling of abhorrence when Snape pushes him away.

For example, in The Half-Blood Prince, further parallels are drawn between Harry and Snape. After a lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Harry fumes about Snape's passion for dark magic until Hermione points out that he sounds exactly like Harry. Meanwhile, unknown to either us or the book's characters, Harry is developing a man-crush on Snape's young alter ego, the Half-Blood Prince. The Prince is helpful, absolutely brilliant, funny, and the best teacher Harry's ever had. The depth of his attachment to the Prince is apparent in his hope that his father is really the Prince, even though logically he knows this can't be the case.

The point in all this is to say that Harry and Snape are not anathema to each other; quite the opposite. They're very similar and instinctively attracted to one another. In The Sorcerer's Stone, Harry is excited about potions until Snape makes it clear the first day of class that Harry's on his shit list. This pattern of constant attraction and rejection is what fosters in Harry his loathing of Snape--other teachers are hard on him and he dislikes many classes, but it is failure in Snape's class and his criticisms that really sting, because Snape is who he intuitively connects to.

But why does Snape repeatedly reject Harry? By the time we get to The Deathly Hallows, Harry burns with hatred for Snape, and with good reason: as far as he knows, Snape has betrayed the trust of Dumbledore and murdered him in cold blood. But like all passionate emotions, Harry's feelings for Snape aren't that far away from their opposite, in this case love. What Harry sees in Snape's dying memories appeases the negativity of the characters' interactions by once again reaffirming their connection and giving Harry the reason behind Snape's rejections.

Snape's objection to Harry is always that he's exactly like his father, James, a man Snape hated. But as Dumbledore points out, Harry is also very similar to Lily, the woman Snape loved. Therefor, to Snape, Harry is the embodiment of the pain and attraction he experienced as a youth, especially as he's the child Lily had with another man, and a living witness to her murder that Snape was indirectly responsible for. Snape is, perhaps, as attracted to Harry as Harry is to him; but he's also repulsed--by himself, his past, and his actions, all of which Harry is a breathing reminder. One might ask why Snape didn't simply choose to ignore this and instead focus on the positives and the connection he might have built with Harry, but his final memories show why he did not. Snape is completely unfamiliar with how to connect with people; not only that, but how to forgive others and himself. So he fell back on something he was more than practiced in, pushing the person he was most attracted to away.

Nevertheless, Snape recognizes that Harry is the only person at Hogwarts who can truly see him. That's why he demands Harry look at him as he takes his final breath. And would Harry take time out from defeating Voldemort to go wandering around the memories of a man he truly hated, or cared nothing for? Would he name his own child after someone he could never understand, call him the bravest man he ever knew (and that's saying something)? No. Harry never hated Snape, even at his angriest moments. Snape's rejection hurt him, and thus Snape became a symbol of Harry's sublimated desire for a connection with an older male figure. The sexual connotations that occasionally appeared with Snape in the context of that desire are, I think, not a sign that their attraction was sexual in nature, but merely one of the many reasons why it was destined not to go anywhere.

The Glove

Valentine Hugo, Objet

Have you ever noticed how gloves play a role in romance novels?  I was reading The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook the other day, and there's a great scene with the hero and heroine involving her glove (to hear me read the whole passage, click here):

Satin slid in a warm caress over her elbow, her forearm....  His expression changed as he continued to pull.  First registering surprise, as if he hadn't realized the glove extended past her wrist.  Then an emotion hard and sharp as the long glove slowly gave way.  It's white length finally dangled from his fingers, and to Mina seemed as intimate as if he held her stocking.... she felt exposed.  Stripped.

There are also memorable scenes involving gloves in Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase, and (if I remember correctly) The Age of Innocence.  In Little Women, one of the signs Laurie's tutor is in love with Meg is that he keeps her glove.  So why are gloves charged with this sexual connotation?  It's not just because it's a piece of clothing and removing reveals a slice of skin--there's nothing inherently erotic about hands.  Gloves, however, do have a certain sexual symbolism. 

The surrealists believed an empty glove was an uncanny object because it had no life or anima where one expected to find it; it was like an empty piece of skin, without any soul.  A worn glove, however, is just the opposite:  the wearer gives it life, fills it with their own essence simply by slipping their hand inside.  It's a metaphor for the alchemical combination of male and female, and for the sexual act of creation.

A glove being worn also has a symbiotic relationship to the wearer.  In The Iron Duke, Trahaearn, the hero, is surprised by the nature of Mina's glove, just as he is surprised by her nature as well.  This is why taking off a glove is symbolically more sexual than putting it on--by taking off the heroine's glove, the hero inserts himself into her defenses.  In order to regain the power to animate, the heroine now needs the hero.  As Freud psychoanalyzed in one dream, the glove is basically analogous to the person who wears it, and the hero has taken possession of it.  That's not to say possession of a glove equates to possession of the heroine; but rather, the hero taking possession of the glove is a symbol of his desire (or vice-versa, although it doesn't usually work that way).

A visual demonstration of this idea is found in Objet by Valentine Hugo.  Valentine was the granddaughter of Victor Hugo, and had a huge crush on "the pope of surrealism," André Breton.  In Objet, she tried to attract his notice by engaging two gloves in a game of chance--i.e., love.  A love poem to Breton also accompanied the piece.  The tension in the piece comes from a central question--would the "male" glove (which looks remarkably similar to the description of Trahaearn's glove in The Iron Duke) succeed in breaching the female's defenses?  The answer was no--Breton was just not that into her.

With the main characters of these romance novels, however, the answer is a never-surprising yes.  Can you think of any other scenes where gloves play a symbolic role in novels or art?

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Disgust & Desire, Pride & Prejudice

A few days ago, Jessica from Read React Review had a great post on the philosophy of sexual desire.  In one part of the post, she talks about how sexual desire is dependent upon revulsion and disgust.  To share a quote Jessica had in her post:

[S]exual desire depends on the idea of a prohibited domain of the disgusting. A person’s tongue in your mouth could be experienced as a pleasure or as a most repulsive and nauseating intrusion depending on the state of relations that exist or are being negotiated between you and the person. But someone else’s tongue in your mouth can be a sign of intimacy because it can also be a disgusting assault.¹

As Jessica pointed out, you see this played out metaphorically a lot in romance novels.  But I would say it's really exemplified best in Pride & Prejudice, which is arguably the source for at least half of the romantic fiction plots ever written.  I'm not referring only to Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy--their initial dislike for one another that eventually turns into admiration and (spoiler alert! Seriously, will you read the book already?) love has become a trope of literary romances--that's obvious.  But take, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett.  Mr. Bennett supposedly can't stand his wife, yet he somehow managed to father five children with her?  HMM.  Or Charlotte and Mr. Collins, who seem to develop a relationship of mutual disgust fairly quickly.  Or do they?  Certainly Charlotte is attracted to Collins for the freedom from her parents he represents, if nothing else.  Happiness in marriage may be entirely a matter of chance, as Charlotte proclaimed, but the major sexual relationships in the book appear to rely on a balance of attraction and repulsion, both on the part of the characters and the reader's impression of them.

Interestingly, I don't believe this dichotomy is present in Austen's other novels, definitely not to the degree of Pride & Prejudice.  Marianne may eventually become disgusted with Willoughby, but they don't wind up together.  Neither Elinor from Sense and Sensibility, or Anne from Persuasion, or Emma Woodhouse ever seem to work up more than annoyance for their various romantic other halfs.

Is the push-and-pull of revulsion and attraction what makes Pride & Prejudice Austen's most famous novel?  I do think that it helps make the relationships seem more "real" to the reader.  It's really surprising to me (though I don't know why) that Austen was able to intuit that dynamic and integrate it so seamlessly into the plot of her novel.

Can you think of any other Austen relationships that have a digust/desire component?  Are there any writers who can beat Austen at her own game?

¹William Ian Miller, An Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p.137.