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  • Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex, and the Novel Form by Claire Jarvis
  • Melissa J. Ganz (bio)
Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex, and the Novel Form, by Claire Jarvis; pp. xv + 201. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016, $49.95.

In Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex, and the Novel Form, Claire Jarvis examines changing depictions of sex in the English novel from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) to D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). Before modernism made sex explicit, Jarvis argues, respectable novelists relied upon what she calls "the exquisitely masochistic scene"—a decadent, descriptive scene of sexual refusal featuring dominant women and submissive men—to suggest sexual impropriety, perversion, and danger (vii). In these highly charged scenes, "plot and character drop out, description thickens, and a glance, gesture, or object takes on heightened relational significance" (viii). Through subtle analyses of such scenes in novels by Brontë, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Hardy, Jarvis shows the ways in which writers evoke sex's dislocating and thrilling effects while avoiding explicit accounts of sexual connection. At the same time, the book argues for a critical method—what Jarvis terms "perverse formalism"—that emphasizes "close readings and interpretation over breadth and explanation" (163, 18). Exquisite Masochism offers a fresh [End Page 108] approach to the Victorian marriage plot and provocative, new readings of familiar texts. Jarvis's unwillingness to engage with historical context, though, limits her claims about the nature and role of sex in nineteenth-century fiction.

The first chapter sets out the theoretical and critical foundations of the study. Here, Jarvis offers an overview of masochism as she uses the term. In emphasizing the "frozen, suspended qualities of this sexuality," Jarvis draws upon Gilles Deleuze's work rather than Sigmund Freud's or Michel Foucault's (11). In particular, she looks to Deleuze's reading of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's 1870 novel, Venus in Furs. Following Deleuze, Jarvis views sadism and masochism as entirely separate; while "the sadist abuses others from an institutional distance," Jarvis explains, "the masochist abuses himself within a carefully constructed contract" (15). Her account, however, departs from Deleuze's in an important way: where Deleuze's masochistic dyads are ordered and controlled by the submissive male partner, the dyads Jarvis describes all feature more equitable partnerships. The scenes of erotic suspension in Victorian novels, as in Sacher-Masoch's text, are "constructed by active collaboration between both partners" (56). In Jarvis's view, "hierarchy's upheaval—even if temporary—is the aim of the masochistic scene" (16).

The next three chapters develop these claims through close readings of canonical Victorian texts. In each chapter, Jarvis emphasizes masochism's potential as well as its limits; each chapter also suggests ways in which masochistic sexuality shapes and challenges the marriage plot. In Wuthering Heights, Jarvis argues, Brontë juxtaposes a sadistic model of legal marriage with "the frozen, positively valued masochistic dyad of Catherine and Heathcliff at the novel's center" (25). The long sequence of masochistic tableaux begins when Heathcliff sneaks into the Grange to see Catherine while Edgar is at church. These scenes, while in some ways anticipating Deleuze's account, offer a crucial qualification. In Brontë's novel, masochism's frozen aspect overtakes its limitless potential; the only way for Catherine and Heathcliff to reach consummation is to die. Brontë, however, does not imagine this process as completely destructive: "By suturing death to frozenness, Brontë imagines a possible future for the masochistic dyad even when she also relegates the two partners to the grave" (27). Trollope's Can You Forgive Her? (1864–65) and The Way We Live Now (1874–75) also demonstrate the power of masochistic feminine agency. Although The Way We Live Now celebrates traditional gentlemanly paragons, Jarvis shows, the novel's energy is reserved for disreputable and sexually aggressive women like Mrs. Winifred Hurtle and Marie Melmotte, who get pushed to the margins of the text. Masochistic sexuality figures even more centrally in Can You Forgive Her? than in Trollope's later novel. In this text, Trollope links suspense to one of his most powerful characters, Lady Glencora Palliser. Lady Glencora's ability "simultaneously [to] occupy stable marriage and never-ending...

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