Severian's sex Life

brunians at brunians.org · 25 Apr 2007, 20:43 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: brunians at brunians.org (brunians at brunians.org)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:43:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: (urth) Severian's sex Life
In-Reply-To: <392816.40198.qm at web38501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <392816.40198.qm at web38501.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3365.67.142.130.29.1177533821.squirrel at brunians.org>

According to Wolfe, Severian doesn't actually lie.


.
_


> I think it's also important to remember that Severian didn't necessarily
> have sex with all of these women, he only said that he had sex with them.
> Remember, this is a 21-year old male, and all young males have lied about
> our sex lives at some point in our lives.
>
>   Particularly note the way in which he describes the activities.
> Severian goes into extraordinary detail when he describes anything which
> happened to him, and this holds particularly true for his sexual
> encounters (i.e. with the young prostitute pretending to be Thecla, his
> first time with Dorcas, and even during the aforementioned boat
> incident).
>
>   However with the Chatelaine Thecla, he only briefly mentions that they
> slept together, and in an offhand manner.  This is not at all how you
> would expect Severian to describe an event as monumental as his first
> sexual encounter with his first love.  If anything, it sounds more like
> a fisherman exaggerating their catch, or a golfer skewing their score
> (or one of your buddies telling your other buddy that he slept with a
> girl that he met at the bar, when you know for a fact that he went home
> alone).  Just one more consideration to wrestle with.
>
>
>
>
> Michael Straight <mfstraight at gmail.com> wrote:
>   On 4/7/07, James B. Jordan wrote:
>
>> Additionally, Wolfe
>> knows enough about other cultures to know that the idea of male chastity
>> is
>> pretty much limited to Jewish and Christian societies, and really mostly
>> to
>> Protestant or Protestant-influenced Christian societies. Severian is not
>> living in such a society.
>
> Bingo. One of Wolfe's ongoing projects is to try to impress upon his
> readers how different other cultures are from ours.
>
> For most of human history in most cultures, Severian's behavior would
> not be remarkable. See also, treatment of women, slavery, etc.
> Fantasy and science fiction set in the past (or cultures that are
> supposed to resemble Earth's past) are constantly giving their
> protagonists anachronistic values.
>
> Your reaction to Severian (or Latro) says more about how much our
> culture has changed than it does about those particular characters.
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