Pip Christmass
Anäis Nin's Erotica: Written for the Male Voyeur?
In the 1960s and 1970s an explosion of supposedly "feminist" erotica flooded the (American) literary marketplace. Texts such as Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Lisa Alther's Kinflicks were promoted as the first novels exploring the so-called "sexual revolution" from a female/feminist perspective. Although Anais Nin's erotica differs from the types of novels produced by Jong and Alther in a number of important ways, each were initially claimed as pioneering works emerging from the 1960s women's liberation movement. Recently, a number of critics have begun to assess the relevance of these texts for contemporary feminism (Wicker, 1994). How heavily do texts which proclaim to be feminist and erotic rely on male pornographic conventions, and to what extent do they give women a voice as well as a body in their erotic scenarios? The stories comprising Anais Nin's two volumes of erotica were compiled in the 1940s but not published until the late 1970s. The blurb for the Pocket Books edition of Delta of Venus (1977) announces that "[f]ifty years ago, Anais Nin created the female language for sexuality ... Delta of Venus reveals Anais Nin as a woman - and a writer - ahead of her time." Apart from making an essentialist link between writing and biology, this quote suggests that Anais Nin had virtually invented a new genre of women's erotica. The implication is that Nin's project should be admired by feminists everywhere for openly exploring women's sexuality. However, many feminists are extremely hostile to erotica, arguing that it represents the middle ground between two equally offensive genres: romance and pornography, both of which tend to construct female sexuality as inherently passive and submissive.
The line between romance and erotica, or erotica and pornography, is very often a thin one. To settle on an absolute definition of each is difficult, for the boundaries of each often overlap, and whether we perceive a work of art to be erotic or pornographic depends upon a number of factors, including prevailing cultural trends. Gloria Steinem's well-known essay, "A Clear and Present Difference," articulates what many of us might like to think are the fundamental differences between the two; but as it has often been pointed out, erotica is sometimes indistinguishable from pornography in that it is no less predictable, formulaic, or repetitive than its less culturally acceptable counterpart (1978). As many critics are beginning to suggest, the traditional cultural division between erotica (supposedly aimed at a primarily female market) and pornography(as a masturbatory aid for men) is somewhat simplified. Pornography is specifically about a particular style of narrative or the production of images which sexually objectify and commodify women's bodies. Pornography's particular way of stylising sex and the female body is what separates it from other sexually explicit visual and written texts.--Pip Christmass , http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/VOL2/Feature4.html, accessed March 2003
Bibliography
WORKS CITED
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Cixous, Helene. Quoted in Homosexualities and French Literature. Stambolian & Marks (eds). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979. p.79.
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Millett, Kate. "So What Is Erotica?" Ms, (November 1978), 80.
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Nin, Anais. "Eroticism in Women", In Favour of the Sensitive Man.. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1992. pp. 3-10.
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--Pip Christmass , http://www.chloe.uwa.edu.au/outskirts/archive/VOL2/Feature4.html, accessed March 2003
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