The amount of books being published every year is amazing and practically always on the increase (unfortunately, the number of readers does not increase in the same proportion). We can barely have an overview of all the books available, and a harder task than knowing what is out there is separating the good from the bad. Nevertheless, for those who want to read, a choice must be made, regardless of the effort. Actually, even not wanting to read implies that we must choose not to do it. We are not free not to choose (Sartre).
We can find nowadays on the web tools that help us choose a good book, for instance looking for awarded books or for book reviews in respected newspapers. Or, if you are lucky, your mother-in-law might recommend you one. Luck has played its role for my choice, but it was me who finally chose to read Disgrace. Not at all a bad choice.
John M. Coetzee is a South African writer born on February 9th, 1940, in Cape Town. He is the awarded author of the outstanding Disgrace. Written in 1999, my book of choice has won the Booker Prize in that year, when the awardee deliberately chose not to go to London to receive it, although (or maybe exactly because of that) he would probably be very celebrated, since he was the first author to win this Prize twice (on the first time, he was awarded for his book The Life and Times of Michael K, in 1983). Among other awards throughout his career, Coetzee’s writing masteries were highly accredited with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
Disgrace. Outstanding not only for the writing, but particularly for the deepness of the topics it deals with, the novel is about a middle-aged professor of romantic poetry, David, whose only pleasure in life seems to be his meetings with prostitutes. After the last one drops him, he begins a relationship with one of his students, Melanie. When this relationship goes public, he falls in disgrace and from there on disgrace does not want to leave him. Refusing to compromise with the university, he pleads guilty of all charges and gets himself fired. It is then that he seems to remember that he has a daughter living on a farm in Eastern Cape, Lucy, and moves there to supposedly finally begin to work on an old project on Byron’s last years. When it seems that he is getting used to the rural “rather simple and boring” life, they are surprised by an attack, in which he is injured and his daughter raped.
The story with all its implications goes further revealing Disgrace as a very intense book to read and although it is “only” a story of an middle-aged man, it brilliantly deals with several complicated issues, such as animal euthanasia, relationship between black and white communities after the end of the apartheid, hate, sexual harassment, rape, abortion, trust and betrayal, dignity, anarchy, power, and among other issues, choices. Picking one issue to discuss is not easy, but it must be done in order to avoid superficiality. As David chose not to fight for his job and Lucy chose to stay on the farm after the rape, though disgrace surrounded her: “Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept”, she told her father, “To start at ground level. …With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity. ... Like a dog”, we must also choose.
The relationship between David and his student Melanie began when he invited her for a drink at his apartment, and she said yes. They do not only drink but also eat (he cooks for her) and talk. She, curious. He, avid. As he makes clear to her what he wants, by the way, asking directly if she wants to spend the night with him, she hesitates and says no. They say good-bye to each other. He embraces her passionately; she passively waits. He asks her if he should bring her home; she says no and leaves.
After this first encounter (could we call it a date?), David is enraptured, magnetized with Melanie’s beauty and youth. Later, he will say to his judges at the university, on his feelings towards Melanie: “I was no longer a fifty-year-old divorcée at a loose end. I became a servant of Eros.”
He can not let it go. He calls her; she answers. He invites her to eat something; she agrees. He picks her up; she is hungry. They go to a restaurant and eat. He asks her to go to his apartment; she says yes. They sleep with each other on his carpet.
Their third meeting is questionable, to say the least. He goes uninvited to her flat; she is surprised. He wants to come in; she is afraid her cousin would arrive at any moment. He desires her; she does not want it now and says it. He thrusts upon her; she lets it be. Later on, he convinces himself that it was “not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core”. The question is: what was it?
No matter what definition we prefer to choose, rape presupposes a non-will of the victim. Moreover, it presupposes clearness, meaning that this non-will must be absolutely clear to the other. But it also presupposes violence. It is the (ab)use of force towards the other, submitting the person who can not defend herself (or himself) to sexual intercourse. Indeed, sometimes the use of force is not to be understood literally. You can rape someone by threatening to kill one’s parents. The person would thus “agree” to have sex, and this would still be rape.
Therefore, it seems that what characterizes rape best is the perpetration of a sexual act with someone, who was freely capable to express its will at the time of the act and has explicitly rejected it, being psychically and/or physically forced to do it or someone who was not capable of expressing a will at all.
This rather spontaneous definition of rape does not match the Melanie-David case under appreciation. She has indeed said no, but as he insisted, she lets it happen. The clue is in letting it happen. Could she really have not avoided having sex with him? This is not the impression the book gives. She was rather willing to make him leave as fast as possible and has agreed to have sex with him so that he would be out before her cousin arrived. She did not want to have sex with him, but she let it happen. Undesired but allowed (not rejected). Is it rape?
This position is not at all uncontroversial, for instance for Andrew O’Hehir, who wrote: “Readers may well be repelled by David's arrogance, and his conduct with Melanie has fallen only a little short of rape”. But, if she was so unwilling, why had she not even tried to ask him a second time to leave? Following his latest behavior towards her (see first meeting), he would probably have left without forcing her to have sex. It seems more that after a “no” came a “whatever” - a very indifferent yes. This reminds me of some wives who have sex with their husbands so that they will not “bother” them anymore. They could think at this moment: “Ok, I will do it, because I cannot stand you anymore beside me, insisting all the time”. Is this rape?
Indeed the whole event is misbegotten. No matter how we judge Melanie’s choices, his attitude towards her is disrespectful, egoistic and inexcusable, but not rape.
What about their relationship? He seduced her in the first place. But did he do it cruelly as The New Yorker published? Is it a crime or even immoral in our days to seduce a woman who is more than 18 years old? Was it sexual harassment?
Once again it is essential to analyze the meaning of the word. One dictionary gave me the following definition of sexual harassment: “The making of unwanted and offensive sexual advances or of sexually offensive remarks or acts, especially by one in a superior or supervisory position or when acquiescence to such behavior is a condition of continued employment, promotion, or satisfactory evaluation”. Once again the remarkable characteristic lays in “unwanted”. Besides, relevant is also the position of power one may have towards the other in order to submit the person to one’s will against their own.
These points being made, the most important question to be raised is: was she free to choose to go into this “relationship” with him? He is white, she, black; he is the professor, she, the student; he is old, she, young. All this in the historical context in which the story happens suggests the relationship between a wolf and a lamb. However, being an old white professor does not necessarily make him a wolf. Not if he does not somehow use these characteristics to force her to do something she does not want to. And how did this old white professor force her to enter into his car, eat in a restaurant, go to his apartment, undress alone and have sex with him on his carpet? He did not.
Melanie had a choice. She freely went into this relationship. She could have put an end to it at anytime. But for reasons the book does not really reveal, she chose not to put an end to it but to denunciate her professor on accounts of sexual harassment.
While guessing how controversial this article will become, one question still remains on my mind: should we choose to be blindly feminist and always defend women, even if it is not just anymore?
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