S&M and blackness as social metaphors
Yet another big social issue is conveyed in the same bitter vein of expression. This is the underground world of S & M dominatrix, where Leila is taken supposedly to be shown ‘the essence of our society’. Leila is taken to Madame Ada’s Psychodrama Institute by her fellow-artist Wayne who actually needs to share his cynicism and pain with Leila. This is a semi-secret place with respect to anonymity and darkness, a place ‘dedicated to the dark gods’. Its darkness could probably be interpreted as a prelude to a world in black through which this woman artist is trying to find her identity. The world in black is the consistent monochrome vision of Leila for the immediate inner/outer reality which is a perfect match for her artistic and social sensibility of a woman artist. Madame Ada opens the doors of her Institute as if ushering the artists in hell. The hellish imagery is extended further to children playing with power and pain, ‘in despair because their limited notion of sexual love had failed them...’ 281/XVIII. Even Leila is tempted by the cynical options, implied in this S & M metaphor. She is tempted to be like Ada ‘to be a bitch who could command men’. The twisted, negative connotation of bitch is brought to focus by the demolition power of the summoned dark gods:
I give myself to Kali - I who formerly loved Demeter and Persephone. Whoever is not a cynic at forty can never have loved mankind. 273/XVII
The eternal forces that are driving Leila’s creativity, that make her create and destroy at the same time, are all to be found in Kali, as well as in the mother/daughter mythological couple of Demeter/Persephone. Thus Leila is to face both the good and the bad girl in herself, even at an odd place like Madame Ada’s. One certainly needs to be a cynic to cope with the social pressure of an S & M dominatrix which is further reflected in the euphemism that stands for such a place - a Psychodrama Institute. Leila and Wayne certainly need to be artists to cope with it in their own artistic way. Wayne is anxious to liken himself to a real contemporary British artist of note, known for his apocalyptic visions - Francis Bacon. While Wayne wants to be the Francis Bacon of S & M since ‘it’s critical that someone finds a way to make it into art’, Leila knows that is not what she wants. Once back home, away from New York and its S & M, she wants to learn how to love - no matter how many times she fails, no matter how unworthy the objects, no matter what betrayals she experiences. Perhaps the S&M episode is just the pretext for her to come back home to her sane mind. It seems that all her adventures and mental trips tend to end up questioning her personal identity. This is the first time Leila needs to open her diary and to put down the first entries of stray thoughts ‘like threads snagged by a crochet hook in the little marbled notebook’. This is the notebook bought once in Italy by which the novel is closed. It also contains Leila’s significant drawing of the faun/fauness, the only one reproduced in the novel. Thus the exclusive notebook could be considered as a special key image that is likely to reveal and initiate us in the new periods of Leila’s life:
For nothing but love is worth the passage of life... Writing in this notebook is love, feeding my twins is love, nourishing my roses is love, painting is love... 281/XVIII
This new period of Leila is most definitely associated with something as bright as her crystal and maenads period (see later), which is the thorough contrast of the world in black. This is the positive personal alternative of woman artist to the inevitable negative connotations of black - dark, dim, dismal, dingy, evil. We can perhaps once again attribute modes of mythological thinking to Erica Jong. Jong’s social structure seems to be set in terms of binary oppositions, typical of the mythological thinking: black/white; male/female. Although such a structure is appealing and convenient to Erica Jong she is also busy with subverting it. For Leila black doesn’t necessarily stand for anything bad. Back at MA, in the early 1960s, she is ‘dressed all in black (stockings to stocking cap), squired by a black boyfriend’ (p.52/II) but she has also learned that ‘blacks had the secret key to America’s heart of darkness’.
Bessie Smith who ‘knew all there was to know about womanhood’ was also one of those blacks who held that key. Moreover Bessie Smith proves the most consistent role/soul model for Leila throughout the years. Further on Bessie Smith’s lyrics are given prominence in relation to Leila’s professional ID.
In Leila’s early picture of the world in black the rebels and the outcasts, i.e. the artists and blacks are of highest rank and value. The young girl is opposing and fighting the white boys off with her ‘wicked sarcasm and prodigious talent’ (p.53/II). If her reality turns not to be coloured in black the rebellious young artist is there to paint it black. So she painted the windows black of a mansion, set up by her first husband Thom, and ‘turned it into a slum - all in name of art and social revolution’ (p.55/II). Elmore Dworkin - an artist proper, Leila’s second husband, and father of the twins Mike and Ed - is another ‘dark-eyed anarchist who wore his dark hair long’ (p.58,9/II). A dark lady needs to fall in love with a proper dark lad. If by any chance Leila’s lovable boys and husbands turn to be white they are as if deliberately made to wear black. This is how the much anticipated Dart enters the story physically for the first time:
Arrives Dart, helmeted, wearing black leather jeans and black leather jacket and black ostrich-leather boots with needle toes. ..my warm body against the wind-chilled smoothness of his black leather. p.12/I
The haunting repetitive occurrence of black is somehow both a praise and a threat to the innermost aspirations of Leila. For Leila is at once aspiring to love Dart and to set herself free of the addiction to Dart in order to teach herself of self-love. Perhaps this controversial feeling could be detected in the metonymy of Dart’s black leather which obviously stands for his body. Body against leather is the first touch of Leila to Dart in the story. Warm Leila against wind-chilled Dart - and their love story rolls on to the point where Dart starts to wear white and turns into a disgusting view. This happens only once, in Leila’s dream. He is all in white silk - white silk jeans and white silk cowboy shirt as a doll man. Leila is quite appalled by her ‘disgusting dream’ as if realizing how crucial it becomes when a colour trades its place with another. In her dream however even Dart’s penis - another metonymy for him - trades its place with a ‘deep gash which is crawling with earthworms, slugs, snails, as a doll man’. Leila pushes the doll man aside and looks for the way out of ‘the Land of Fuck’.
There is no door. Just this cage high above the city - New York? New Heaven - where I am trapped for ever. 84/V
Suddenly the Land of Fuck is no longer worth visiting. The woman artist is trapped like a bird in a cage. She needs to find the way out of this world in white, or black, or of money; she needs to find her sane mind.
Copyright © : Iliyana Nedkova,1996-7
N.Paradoxa : Issue No.6, 1998