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Fwd: Re: sexual references in spades?
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----- Forwarded message from bunsan@direcway.com -----
Date: Mon, 05 Sep 2005 09:58:52 -0400
From: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
Reply-To: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
Subject: Re: sexual references in spades?
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Hi Carolyn-
Cecily: Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into
an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow
mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a
spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
An aspect of Victorian life was not calling a spade a spade.
Of course Gwendolen has seen a shovel, but brilliantly suggests that
young ladies of the refined classes might not admit to this. Nor to
their early sexual encounters. The mechanism by which such encounters
are disowned might be the trained volition - manners - which Wilde
mocks or, as Freud suggested more-or-less contemporaneously, a peculiar
and reversible ablation of memory which he termed "repression".
I understood Andrew to be considering the consequences of such events
and wished to note that he appeared to have opted for Freud's [not
Gwendolyn's] "explanation" of the mechanism. For me, Freud's
self-described "mythology" might be of some historical interest; while
the questions he raised about mental mechanisms are far from settled.
My comment, intended playfully, drifted off into obscurity. Sorry!
-Sandy
On Sunday, September 4, 2005, at 10:32 PM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:
>
>
> ----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
> Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 17:29:11 -0800
> From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> Subject: sexual references in spades?
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
>
> ......It wasn't until I was in my forties that I remembered at least
> three
> specific instances from childhood of this sort of thing happening to
> me....... Andrew Brown
>
> Hmmm........Very interesting but anti-intuitive.
>
> This phenomenon is still unexplained and worthy of investigation.
> Gwendolen's explanation - "I am glad to say that I have never seen a
> spade."
> - is not the last word on the subject, as she well knew.
>
> -Sandy Drescher
>
> Dear Sandy,
>
> As a devotée of the divine Earnest I caught your reference at one - -
> however I must admit that I don't get your point. Gwendoline was
> responding
> to Dear Cecilie's claim that when she saw a spade she called it a
> spade - -
> in other words Cecilie was explaining that she felt entitled to
> criticize
> Gwendoline, her guest.
>
> In what way is Gwendoline's clever riposte an "explanation"? an
> explanation
> of what? Could you spell it out for me? I don't know if I'm too stupid
> or
> too innocent to understand.
>
> Carolyn
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> ......It wasn't until I was in my forties that I remembered at least
> three specific instances from childhood of this sort of thing
> happening to me....... Andrew Brown
>
> Hmmm........Very interesting but anti-intuitive.
>
> This phenomenon is still unexplained and worthy of investigation.
> Gwendolen's explanation - "I am glad to say that I have never seen a
> spade." - is not the last word on the subject, as she well knew.
>
> -Sandy Drescher
>
> Dear Sandy,
>
> As a devotée of the divine Earnest I caught your reference at one - -
> however I must admit that I don't get your point. Gwendoline was
> responding to Dear Cecilie's claim that when she saw a spade she
> called it a spade - - in other words Cecilie was explaining that she
> felt entitled to criticize Gwendoline, her guest.
>
> In what way is Gwendoline's clever riposte an "explanation"? an
> explanation of what? Could you spell it out for me? I don't know if
> I'm too stupid or too innocent to understand.
>
> Carolyn
----- End forwarded message -----