Signs of weakness?

Given the difficulty of articulating a single definition of feminism, it is simplistic to argue that The Comfort of Strangers threatens feminism as a whole. Its subject matter is on the surface quite controversial – a battered woman becomes complicit in her abuse by engaging in sadomasochistic sexual play, which leads ultimately to her transformation from victim to perpetrator when she orchestrates the ritual killing of a young man on holiday – but is it anti-feminist? I was intrigued by such accusations. I was unable to find specific objections to the text, but after a bit of reading about Second Wave feminism, I was able to glean what the critique might be.

McEwan presents complicated female subjects that repeatedly fail to comply with patriarchal norms. Through his portrayal of Caroline, McEwan defies typical representations of sexualized women as described in Gilbert and Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic. He highlights the notion that the ‘personal is political’ and complicates any attempt at an impersonal sexual politics. Finally, he links Colin and Mary’s failure to communicate (i.e. their silence) with their ultimate demise – exposing a larger question: “If silence is complicity, what form should speech take?” given the post-structuralist evaluation of language itself as patriarchal. It seems that even as McEwan identifies patriarchal norms, he subverts and/or problematizes them. Perhaps, then, rather than posing a threat to feminist ideology, The Comfort of Strangers is often damned because it exposes a weakness.

While part of McEwan’s literary genius is his ability to infiltrate the psyches of complex characters, he pushes the boundaries of politically correct male authorship by encroaching on the forbidden territory of women’s experiences. He, of course, doesn’t stop there. He universalizes sexual perversions, emphasizing sadomasochism, but including voyeurism, exhibitionism and scopophilia. While The Comfort of Strangers predates Judith Butler’s declaration of the performativity of gender, the rise of queer theory and politics necessitated a permissiveness of alternative/non-heteronormative sexualities. For obvious reasons, proponents of queer theory resist any inhibition of sexual freedom. They do so, often, by locating sexual desire within the domain of the inalterable - the “natural”. Therein lies the weakness and indeed the perceived threat to feminist ideology. If sadomasochism is a wide spread, if not universal, component of sexual desire, if it is natural, what does that imply about the patriarchal system of male dominance and female submission that the perversion replicates?