Sex was, and sometimes still is, often depicted as something that needs to be hidden, covered up. Sex was dirty and vulgar, something no decent human being should ever talk about, especially not in public. Sex should be done behind closed doors and those doors should never be open. Yet it is the beginning of life, the reason we all live. Sex is more important than the act itself. Sex is everywhere, even when it seems like it's not, mostly when it seems like it's not. The more conservative the era the more sexual frustration seems to furtively ooze out of the art, the stories, from that time. With this need to hide all hints of sex came this symbolic revolution, this poetry that was most times more profound and intense and vulnerable than naked body parts could ever hope to be. Sex was now more than organs and acts, it was anything, it was everything, it was a part of life just as it had always been.
Freud smoking a phallic symbol
Good ole Freud helped us uncover all the sex. He told the world how to find it and he helped the writers weave it into their work until the sex wasn't as easily seen in their masterpieces. Sex was all around but not shocking, it was now this really interesting art form. The innocent were protected, and everyone else was in on the joke, or the metaphor, or whatever. As the years have gone on, I feel as though the sex has been harder to decode but not because it's less there, but because it is more present than it has ever been. Sex is literally everywhere now, it isn't hidden, it is presented without shame for everyone to see. It's hard to uncover the sex symbols and the deeper sexual meaning that is needed to fully understand the author or one of the characters in a novel, because we are no longer really looking. No one has had to look for sex because it is shockingly there. No more poetry of trains going into tunnels, rocking horses, or breaking waves. Only body parts and organs and acts. Now sex sells, not sex symbols (unless they are painfully obvious). You don’t have to look for sex because there is uncovering that needs to be done.
Chapter 16: It's All About Sex of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster has reminded me that in real literature the poetry is still there. The sex still needs to be uncovered. It is still important and tells you about people, not just used as comedic fodder in movies (which is truthfully funny but not the poetry that could be and used to be). I can still find the sex without actually seeing the sex. The waves are still breaking. Curtains are still flowing in the morning light. The rocking horse is still frantically and rhythmically rocking. Obsessions with bowls still tell us the inner workings of a women's psyche and the train is still going in the tunnel.
