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| On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan (2007) |
On Chesil Beach is a 2007 novella by Ian McEwan. The book explores male sexual entitlement through an intimate narrative of the wedding night or Florence Ponting and Edward Mayhew. Ponting describes feeling revulsion towards the idea of sexual contact and there is an implication that this is caused by her father, Geoffrey, sexually abusing her as a child. She describes a feeling of obligation towards the men in her life whether it be to her father, or to a boy who showed her his television when they were young. This feeling extends to Mayhew, for whom she is determined to overcome her disgust at the idea of sex in order to please him.
In total contrast, Mayhew's life experiences are inextricably linked to his sexual desires. He describes a lack of control, when aroused, that is synonymous with the lack of control that causes him to be violent when he is angry; he describes how his sexual attraction to Ponting was inseparable from his enjoyment of her family's wealth; even as he looks out of the hotel room window he see's a "way lined by weeds of extravagant size - giant rhubarb and cabbages they looked like, with swollen stalks more than six feet tall, bending under the weight of dark, thick-veined leaves" before sexual contact, and "the wind-shrunken trees" post-ejaculation. The inevitable end to their love story is preordained, just as they suspected their first meeting was; everything you need to anticipate the tragedy is spelled out in the first sentence of the book: "They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible."
Youth
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Guilt and Obligation
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Attitudes to Sex
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"They
were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they
lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly
impossible."
"The
lashes were thick and dark, like a child's, and there was something childlike
too in the solemnity of her face at rest."
"being
childlike was not yet honourable or in fashion."
"Again,
the sad sound of mattress springs or bed frame, like the bleat of a spring
lamb."
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"She
could not bear to let Edward down. And she was convinced she was completely
in the wrong."
"Florence
found it harder to contradict Geoffrey. She could never shake off a sense of
awkward obligation to him."
"but
forever after this boy - John? David? Michael? - seemed to believe she owed
him her friendship."
"But
her immediate preoccupation - an improvement on revulsion or fear - was to
keep up appearances, not to let him down or humiliate herself..."
"she
knew very well there was nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. It was her
and only her."
"I'm not going to be bullied by you...
There's always something more you want out of me. This endless
wheedling."
"With my body I thee worship! That's what
you promised today... Actually, you're a fraud. And I know exactly what else
you are... You're frigid, that's what."
"his
shameful secret, that she married him then denied him, monstrous..."
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"If
only eating that sticky cherry was all that was required."
"She
was no lamb to be uncomplainingly knifed. Or penetrated."
"But
it was better to talk of being scared than to admit to disgust or
shame."
"here
was a boundless sensual freedom, theirs for the taking, even blessed by a
vicar - with my body I thee worship
- a dirty, joyous, bare-limbed freedom..."
"comedy
was an erotic poison."
"He
was nauseous with desire and indecision."
"She
was unsensual, utterly without desire... She did not love him, she could not
love in the way that men and women loved"
"he
often thought of her strange proposal, and it no longer seemed quite so ridiculous,
certainly not disgusting or insulting. In new circumstances of the day, it
appeared liberated..."
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Critical Responses
- "McEwan's subject has often been the way in which innocence goes bad; here, the serpent in the garden is the time-honoured one - desire and its discontents." - The Guardian: On Chesil Beach By Ian McEwan - Review (Tim Adams)
- "There is a fairy-tale quality to the book, in that everything that follows seems inevitable." - The Guardian: On Chesil Beach By Ian McEwan - Review (Tim Adams)
- "On Chesil Beach takes the question of time and timing very literally, concretizing that concern in the novel’s very structure as well as central action. Indeed, what is arguably the novel’s “climax” -- the male protagonist’s ejaculatio praecox on his wedding night—can be read as an example of bad timing in its most corporeal form.... But the “precocious” climax in On Chesil Beach occurs midway in the novel, leaving a psychic remainder that unwinds in an extended denouement. Indeed, the narrative structure seems itself to mime the corporeal trajectory of premature ejaculation and detumescence," - Bad Timing: The Problematics of Intimacy in On Chesil Beach (Claire Kahane)
- "Embarrassment is the death of possibility." - New York Times: Edward's End (Jonathan Letham)
