Sexual Dominance And Submission - Strindberg, Lawrence, And The Incidental Folly Of Gender Issues Today

Authors since Aeschylus have been fascinated by sexual dynamics - the expression will, dominance, and submission in sexual relationships.  Clytemnestra was a willful, dominant, irrepressibly aggressive and ambitious woman whose combination of resentment, jealousy, and spite was powerful and unstoppable. 

Agamemnon had killed their daughter in sacrifice to the gods to assure victory in a questionable war against Troy; he had brought home a concubine; he intended to rule as always despite his long absence and the apt and strong rule of Clytemnestra and was dismissive of his responsibility for killing Iphigenia and indifferent to his wife 

 

Clytemnestra has taken a lover and both ruled Thebes together, and now that the despised husband has returned, they plot to kill him.  

Orestes, her son, outraged at the murder but desperately tied to his mother and completely submissive to her will and authority, hesitates to kill her; and only through the blandishments of his dominant sister, and despite Clytemnestra's shamelessly manipulative pleas, does he finally act. 

Although many if not most of Shakespeare's plays explored, like the Greeks, the socio-political aspects of sexual dominance and submission, only The Taming of the Shrew got to the heart of the matter.  

Kate, a willful, determined, angry, and outspoken women is not a shrew by nature, but a product of her abusive father, his untoward attention to her sister, and her altogether diminished childhood; and Petruchio understands this, 'tames' her by encouraging all her natural sexual passions, feelings for a man, and enables love to emerge.  

In her final soliloquy, she admits her epiphany, her self-understanding, and gratitude for the one man who has taken her despite her obstreperousness and loved her. Feminists have interpreted these verses as a predictable, lamentable expression of Shakespeare's undeniable patriarchy and misogyny.  They take 'taming' at face value, but they misinterpret and vastly misunderstand the poet who is writing of sexual mutuality - the equilibrium of dominance and submission which is the key to sexual identity and fulfillment. 

Shakespeare anticipated the work of D.H. Lawrence who saw the sex act as primal and transformational.  When sexual equilibrium has been reached - dominance and submission completely balanced - the experience is epiphanic.  It goes beyond the normal, contractual agreements between husbands, wives, and lovers.  It is something beyond the society that confines, beyond pettiness, and above all other pedestrian concerns. 

Lady Chatterley's Lover is perhaps the best expression of this core Lawrentian idea.  Connie Chatterley and Mellors enter into a sexual relationship which because of the vast difference in social class, education, and upbringing, the essentiality of sexual identity and power can be defined.  Despite these profound differences, usually enough to keep men and women of different classes far apart, the two lovers experience passion, release, and finally mutual consummation. 

August Strindberg takes up this point of sexual will, dominance, and submission.  Laura, the main character in The Father through lies and subterfuge - seeding the doubt about the paternity of their daughter - consigns her husband to a mental institution and gains control of their daughter and the family finances.

So far so good - nothing particularly unusual or controversial about the war between the sexes.  Women for most of history have had to find ways around patriarchy and repressive social norms, and have resorted to any and all means possible to survive, benefit, and even profit. 

Strindberg in Miss Julie breaks new ground.  He was not content like his contemporary Ibsen to rest with female will and the socio-political battles between men and women.  He wanted to explore the very nature of sexuality.  Miss Julie is not just a strong, willful, and defiant woman.  She was brought up to think, act, and be like a man.  

Her mother, angered - incensed - by the coveted and irrational male dominance vows that her daughter will be brought up to be the intellectual and sexual equal of men, so much so that she will be half-woman, half-man. 

At the heart of this transformation, or this bi-sexual being is the question of dominance and submission.  All other considerations of femininity or masculinity - what men and women appear to be in comportment, demeanor, and behavior - it all comes down to control, authority, supremacy. 

Julie has been so deliberately trained to be dominant and sexually authoritative, but cannot ignore her innately feminine, submissive side, that her treatment of Jean is absurdly exaggerated.  She makes him literally jump through hoops and bark like a dog to not only dominate but to humiliate him.  

In the end it is her feminine side that dominates, she is taken by his sexual innateness, his male authority, and sleeps with him.  When she asks him to come away with her, he refuses, for he, despite his sense of male authority, bends to the overpowering nature of society.  He must remain faithful to his master.  He will always be a servant. 

Julie now is in complete confusion, half-man, half-woman, desirous of men but hating them, rejected, alone and now unsure of who or what she is, commits suicide. 

By comparison, today's focus on gender - gender fluidity, the gender spectrum, and transgenderism - are but incidental follies.  Show pieces for progressive notions of diversity and inclusivity - a musical comedy of cross-dressing antics, an applause for the most exaggeratedly absurd frolics of bathrooms, kindergarten story-tellers, fobs, swish, and powdered mustaches. 

Nothing in the progressive gender canon even hints at Lawrentian or Strindbergian insights.  Not one psycho-sexual intimation, just assumption, presumption, and a tossing aside of literature, history, and Biblical and Koranic instruction.  It is a superficial, inane vaudevillian act, a nothing, a charade. 

Most couples go about their sexual business routinely - sex on Saturday night, affairs, lurid fantasies, and predictable fidelity.  Marriage is a contract with codicils, caveats, and conditions, the crucible of maturity said Albee, without which we would never come to or find ourselves; but for most it is a comforting institution.  Few men and women either think of the profound nature of sex and sexuality suggested by Lawrence and Strindberg, and fewer still can make sense out of the balderdash passing as sexual diversity. 

Nevertheless, these authors have put into dramatic form what Freud and Jung expressed academically, perhaps even more so.  In Freud's own fertile imagination he was more concerned with repression and novel ideas about id, ego, and superego - all conflictual to be sure, but only with intimations of the central, epiphanic nature of sexual dynamics.