In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

MALE = FEMALE (GENDER TROUBLE) 397
unconsciously claimed a right in them and tormented their bellies with
strange longings. Our privations and dangers fanned this virile heat, in
a climate as racking as can be conceived. We had no shut places to be
alone in, no thick clothes to hide our nature. Man in all things lives
candidly with man ... Later, some ... swore that friends quivering
together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace,
found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the
mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming
effort." (3 0)
In addition to what is overtly expressed in these sentences, it is the
narrator's effort to distance himself from their content which gives the
text a strong sexual tension. This distance finds its complement and
confirmation in his inability to engage in what he sees as the "absolutism"
and "superficiality" of bodily contacts (an inability that does not
characterize male bodies): "To put my hand on a living thing was defilement;
and it made me tremble if they touched me or took too quick an
interest in me. This was an atomic repulsion, like the intact course of a
snowflake. The opposite would have been my choice if my head had not
been tyrannous. I had a longing for the absolutism of women and
animals, and lamented myself most when I saw a soldier with a girl, or
a man fondling a dog, because my wish was to be as superficial, as
perfected" (563). Whatever the cause of this inhibition, it generates a
longing for certainty and security: "There was my craving to be likedso
strong and nervous that never could I open myself friendly to another.
The terror of failure in an effort so important made me shrink from
trying; besides, there was the standard; for intimacy indeed seemed
shameful unless the other could make the perfect reply, in the same
language, after the same method, for the same reason" (563). All that
remains is an overly sophisticated passion that intensifies, rather than
satisfies, desire: it is the pleasure which the narrator takes in seeing
himself reflected in another mind whose curiosity has not yet been awakened.
"There was a special attraction in beginnings, which drove me into
everlasting endeavour to free my personality from accretions and project
it on a fresh medium, that my curiosity to see its naked shadow might
be fed. The invisible self appeared to be reflected clearest in the still water
of another man's yet incurious mind" (566).
In contrast to such psychological and discursive complexities, female