P. Stewart - Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Becketts Work

New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-first Century

Series Editor: Jennifer M. Jeffers

As the leading literary figure to emerge from postWorld War II Europe, Samuel Becketts texts and his literary and intellectual legacy have yet to be fully appreciated by critics and scholars. The goal of New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-first Century is to stimulate new approaches and develop fresh perspectives on Beckett, his texts, and his legacy. The series will provide a forum for original and interdisciplinary interpretations concerning any aspect of Becketts work or his influence upon subsequent writers, artists, and thinkers.

Jennifer M. Jeffers is Professor of English, Associate Dean, and Ombudsperson for the College of Graduate Studies at Cleveland State University. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power; Britain Colonized: Hollywoods Appropriation of British Literature; Uncharted Space: The End of Narrative; the editor of Samuel Beckett; and coeditor of Contextualizing Aesthetics: From Plato to Lyotard.

Also in the Series:

Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive
edited by Sen Kennedy and Katherine Weiss

Becketts Masculinity
by Jennifer M. Jeffers

Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Becketts Work
by Paul Stewart

Previous Publications

Zone of Evaporation: Samuel Becketts Disjunctions. 2006.

Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Becketts Work

Paul Stewart

SEX AND AESTHETICS IN SAMUEL BECKETTS WORK

Copyright Paul Stewart, 2011.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2011 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

in the United Statesa division of St. Martins Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

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ISBN: 9780230108813

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stewart, Paul, 1971

Sex and aesthetics in Samuel Becketts work / Paul Stewart.

p. cm.(New interpretations of Beckett in the twenty-first century)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 9780230108813

1. Beckett, Samuel, 19061989Criticism and interpretation. 2. Sex in literature. I. Title. II. Series.

PR6003.E282Z8354 2011

848.91409dc22

20115471

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: August 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the University of Nicosia for granting me a sabbatical and research time release, without which this book could not have been finished. My colleagues, Drs. Terzieva-Artemis, Kogetsidis, and Mackay, were very generous in covering for me during the sabbatical period. I would also like to thank Christina Papageorgiou of the University of Nicosia Library for her invaluable aid in overcoming the difficulties of conducting research in Cyprus. I would also like to thank Jill McDonald for her patient efforts at unpacking my prose and checking for howling errors.

I have enjoyed wonderful support from the wider Beckett community. I would like to thank Mark Nixon, Ronan McDonald, Matthew Feldman, Erik Tonning, John Pilling, and Sean Kennedy, in particular, for their assistance in accessing archive material, organizing conferences at which I was able to develop the arguments of this volume, and for their insightful and helpful suggestions. My thanks also go to Laura Salisbury, Ulrika Maude, and Elizabeth Barry.

Certain sections of this volume have appeared in different forms in journals and edited collections. I would like, therefore, to note with appreciation that a version of entitled The Art of Reproduction: Malone and Schopenhauer is a revised version of Sexual and Aesthetic Reproduction in Malone Dies, in Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd hui 22 (2010), edited by Erik Tonning, Matthew Feldman, Matthijs Engelberts, and Dirk van Hulle. Again, thanks to those editors.

I would also like to acknowledge the diligence and dedication of the Palgrave team, especially the series editor Jennifer M. Jeffers, my editor Brigitte Shull, and the editorial assistants Joanna Roberts and Lee Norton. They have guided me expertly through the whole process.

Finally, I am deeply indebted to the patience of Katy, Sam, and Joe Stewart, whose collective light darkened and deepened my understanding of Beckett.

Introduction

Sex, Procreation, and Suffering

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?

Vladimir: Hmm. It would give us an erection!

Estragon: [Highly excited.] An erection!

Vladimir: With all that follows.

V ladimir and Estragon are waiting for Godot, of course, as they briefly entertain the possibility of hanging themselves and arguably thereby taking control of their situation and ending the pause in which they seem to live. There are other benefits to hanging oneself, as Vladimir points out. This spilling of semen as one expires through asphyxiation might be taken as an ironic comment on the very sexlessness of these two old men; the only hope of erection and ejaculation for this jaded, beleaguered couple is in the act of suicide. Such an ironic reading, as shall be seen, would suit the more general treatment of sex and sexuality within Becketts works, which often views matters of sexuality as an early concern that is rigorously excised from the novels and plays as Beckett succeeds in focusing on the more universal, less temporal themes with which his work has become associated. Such a reading would ignore the highly excited reaction of Estragon at the mere possibility of an erection. Didi and Gogo are still excited by the prospect of physical sexual expression and not (as a thoroughly Cartesian reading might suggest) horrified by a body seemingly acting beyond the control of the mind. It is certainly true that the opportunities for sexual expression have dwindled to almost nothing for Didi and Gogo, but this does not mean that the possibility of sexual expression, nor the desire for it, has disappeared. Didis and Gogos excitement over an erection may be a ruined remnant of normal sexuality, but the fact that it is entertained at the point of death speaks to the tenacity of that remnant.

The matter, however, would not be closed with death and ejaculation. Vladimirs all that follows goes beyond the spilling of semen: Where it falls mandrakes grow. Thats why they shriek when you pull them up (18). The myth of the mandrake as a by-product of a suicides semen is an old and varied one. Beckett activates two key components of the myththat the mandrake is a human-vegetable (the Greeks referred to it as