Perversion the Social Relation

"As If Set Free into Another Land" 185JIbid., 150.Styron, Confessions, 208.Many critics read Nat's abandonment of sexual contact in the name of God in variouslymoral terms that devalue the importance of the scene in relation to the restof the novel. Daniel W. Ross argues that Nat's "fear of women" has created in hima sexual "confusion" that "leads him to various compensations, including homosexuality,"as though Nat's pleasure in the scene were somehow false and the wholeencounter were simply a temporary deviation from both the narrative and his truesexuality (Ross, " 'Things I Don't Want to Find Out About': The Primal Scene inThe Confessions of Nat Turner,** Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and CriticalJournal 39.1 [1993]: 86). Vincent Harding takes a more accusatory position andargues that "it is obviously his sense of guilt over the act which drives Nat into theriver for Baptism" just after his climax with Willis (Harding, "You've Taken My Natand Gone," in William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, ed. John HenrikClarke [Boston: Beacon Press, 1968], 26-27). And David Hadaller claims thatNat's encounter with Willis is a convenient sin that shows Nat his need to repentand study religion: "After he has enjoyed mutual masturbation with Willis, [Nat]immediately baptizes the young man and then himself, promising to sin no more"(Hadaller, Gynicide: Women in the Novels of William Styron [Madison, Wis.: FairleighDickinson University Press, 1996], 118).For example, he believes that his master's wife, Miss Sarah Travis, treats him withgenerosity and kindness because she recognizes his basic humanity. Yet despite hispersonal affection for her, he decides not to save her. Indeed, his remarks on MissSarah are full of guilt and regret that he would have to kill her even though he thinksthat killing her would be wrong (273, 369). This same guilt is even more prominentin his misgivings about Margaret Whitehead, the only person Nat kills with his ownhands. As Daniel W. Ross notes, "Margaret had come closer than any other whiteperson to accepting Nat for what he was, often seeking his friendship and spiritualguidance ... [even though she] had failed to see Nat in his most elemental form—as a fully sexual man" (Ross, "Things," 94). By killing her, he violently severs theclosest thing to a community that he ever truly had with a white person. Yet Natalso hates Margaret for "flaunting her sexuality" in front of him as though he reallywere the asexual being that slavery defines him as (94). Thus, in addition to needingto prove his leadership abilities to the other slaves, he decides to kill her in order toreassert his humanity and masculinity. Instead of sparing her because they both genuinelylike each other, his resentment of the racialized difference between their genderidentities makes him regard this gender difference as an insurmountable barrier thatno revolution could equalize.The only other person in the novel that Nat decides to save is Judge Jeremiah Cobb.When Cobb meets Nat before Nat starts the insurrection, he offhandedly tells Nathow much he despises the entire institution of slavery because of the dehumanizingeffects it has both on the land and on every person living within its influence, whetherslave or free. At the same time, he refuses to express any sympathy or pity for slaves