Severian's sex Life

Jeff Wilson · 26 Apr 2007, 04:48 · from 2007-April.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 23:48:02 -0500
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: <46302F02.3000907 at io.com>

Joe Riley wrote:
> 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.

It may be that he only had "sexual play" with Thecla, as he says Dorcas 
and Jolenta did. Thecla would not be likely to risk pregnancy by a 
commoner as long as she had some hope of release, and as long as 
Severian had regular access to other sources of intercourse, he might be 
unlikely to press the issue.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

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