Lessing is the only female author of these three novels. This can be seen in a comparison between The Grass is Singing, Death in Venice, and Love of Cholera, and Memories Of My Melancholy Whores. The reader’s analytical lens is applied differently for an abuser than the victim. Pedophilic behaviors are created by both female and male authors. And social norms can be reflected in literature. Plasticity and social flexibility by females gives males the edge for getting their way when and if sex occurs. So, it is safely assumed that the male sex drive is consistent and the female sex drive varies due to circumstance. Roy Baumeister’s journal article, Gender Difference in Erotic Plasticity: The female Sex Drive as Socially Flexible and Responsive state, “women are more flexible due to: difference in power (physical, sociopolitical, and economic), females refuse most sexual advances (the negative response is the default response), and lastly there is a difference in sexual drive” (349). Obviously women do accept and participate in intercourse, or the human race would be extinct. Most societies consist of women that refuse sex more often while men are pursuing it. Thus, this can be read and analyzed in literature. And the early twentieth century brought the rise of feminism where females began to freely express their views in literature.Īdditionally, erotic plasticity plays a role in how women behave sexually. Modern Literature uses behaviors as “cues” that provide desires and anxieties. The Body Criticism-Body of Writing: Figuring Desire in Spanish American Literature explains “the body is on the rise due to feminism and the study of human behavior” (Tierney-Tello 139-141). Intentional molding of specific characters by an author leads the reader to perceive sexual mannerisms and behaviors as pedophilic in nature. Thomas Mann’s Aschenbach and the unknown narrator from Márquez’s Memories Of My Melancholy Whores wrestle with their morality in a similar way. This is seen in Love in the Time of Cholera when Florentino realizes he may die before he reunites with Fermina. Pursuing and intercourse by a pedophile can be related to a fear of death. In “The Exile of Adulthood: Pedophilia in the Midlife Novel” written by Margret Gullette, states that pedophilia in literature is a powerful way to deal with the anxiety that comes from aging in human development (Gullette, 215). As English evolves, do we now take on the new definition of pedophilia? Or, does this leave room for exploration of how these different definitions fit into novels that are shaped in a unique way.įlorentino has expectations of América’s behavior, “She behaved like what she was, a girl ready to learn about life under the guidance of a venerable old man who was not shocked by anything, and chose to behave like what he had most feared being in his life: a senile lover” (Márquez 272). Automatically, the two opposing definitions give way to much further criticism.
![the grass is singing script the grass is singing script](https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358325519l/130115.jpg)
It is also defined as a friendly love or affection (Riegel 90). And, the origin of the word is from the Greek and it is not gender specific, nor does it specify between child and youth. The reader assumes the ‘person’ is an adult. A pedophile is defined as, “a person who has sexual interests in children” (). “She was still a child in every sense of the word, with braces on her teeth and scrapes of elementary school on her knees, but he saw right away the kind of woman she was soon going to be, and he cultivated her during a slow year of Saturdays at the circus, Sundays in the park with ice cream, childish late afternoons, and he won her confidence, he won her affection, he led her by the hand, with gentle astuteness of a kind grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse” (Márquez 272). Florentino is trusted with a child, América that is a blood relative while she attends school. Modern writers include pedophilia in novels to promote exploration by the reader in regards to the relationship between a pedophile and their under-age counterpart.Márquez creates the character Florentino who has documented six hundred twenty- two sexual relationships as a pedophile in Love in the Time of Cholera.