I first came across this passage in MR James’ ‘Mr. Humphries’ Inheritance’, which is about how people around 1900, with Queen Victoria’s rosy glow all around, could cope with the more perverse inheritance of the more reckless 1700s. My first reaction was to think that the glittering, sinister woman sounded rather a fun person. That seems to me to be the real oppositional reading of this passage. Professor Scholz seems to be doing everything possible not to oppose the real point of the story, that sexual experimentation is the way to the inner places of death. The highly assertive, completely uncritical voice of instruction is validated by making - strongly suggesting that it is - it one of maternal
concern and there is no question but that this concern is always genuinely protective, not smothering or neurotic. The woman who likes sex with young male strangers and uses her husband’s luxurious home as a honey trap - and has the money to pay for a sacrifice - becomes a neglected wife ‘made to do it’ so she can pay for the groceries. This doesn’t seem to be reading in an oppositional spirit but reading under tight ideological control.
It should be noted that the woman is an immigrant and that the idea that immigrants pose a serious sexual danger has modern counterparts we may not wish to encourage.
The sexual danger from immigrants is a metaphor for foreign ideas. I think that the ideology of inclusiveness, which I share in many ways, has its own way of insisting on some ideas and excluding others. There are dangers here.
I first came across this passage in MR James’ ‘Mr. Humphries’ Inheritance’, which is about how people around 1900, with Queen Victoria’s rosy glow all around, could cope with the more perverse inheritance of the more reckless 1700s. My first reaction was to think that the glittering, sinister woman sounded rather a fun person. That seems to me to be the real oppositional reading of this passage. Professor Scholz seems to be doing everything possible not to oppose the real point of the story, that sexual experimentation is the way to the inner places of death. The highly assertive, completely uncritical voice of instruction is validated by making - strongly suggesting that it is - it one of maternal
concern and there is no question but that this concern is always genuinely protective, not smothering or neurotic. The woman who likes sex with young male strangers and uses her husband’s luxurious home as a honey trap - and has the money to pay for a sacrifice - becomes a neglected wife ‘made to do it’ so she can pay for the groceries. This doesn’t seem to be reading in an oppositional spirit but reading under tight ideological control.
It should be noted that the woman is an immigrant and that the idea that immigrants pose a serious sexual danger has modern counterparts we may not wish to encourage.
The sexual danger from immigrants is a metaphor for foreign ideas. I think that the ideology of inclusiveness, which I share in many ways, has its own way of insisting on some ideas and excluding others. There are dangers here.