Urth Net
PEACE: adultress Olivia
↰ answers David DiGiacomo
· by quotation
3 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
David DiGiacomo quoted and wrote:
(B) And then there's the question of Olivia's infidelities. How could Weer, a boy, be aware that she was having sex with both Peacock and Macafee, and Julius not be? When Weer wrote that "--when she was Mrs. Smart--repent three or four times a year of her casual connection with Professor Peacock and her occasional nights with Mr. Macafee", did he mean that he was present when she confessed to Julius?
This is saying that the repentance took place after her marriage, not the sex. I don't see any evidence of infidelity in the passage.
The more graphic passage in the "Gold" section (or p. 180 in the old Berkley edition), begins with describing how Olivia ballooned in size during the first years of marriage, and then Weer wonders if Macafee wondered why she had been so chaste with him while she was single, yet so unchaste while she was married. And whether Macafee ever connected it with her tremendous weight-gain.
We also learn elsewhere that she was making whoopie with Peacock on those artifact expeditions.
The fact that she is walking from Macafee's to Dubarry's would be rather suggestive, but in the context of the text it seems starkly clear that she was run down on the street immediately after an "afternoon delight" session in view of the Chinese egg.
=mantis=
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