Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - László Dányi: Interpretations of Sexuality in William Styron's Sophie's Choice

appearance in Stingo's mind as one of the love-makers, makes him realize how beautiful she is. Sophie's body has two functions for him. On the one hand it stands for the aim of his desire, on the other hand it makes him realize her sufferings. "As she went slowly up the stairs 1 took a good look at her body in its clinging silk summer dress. While it was a beautiful body,... It possessed the sickish plasticity ... of one who has suffered severe emaciation" (SC 61). In the sequence of Stingo's sexual encounters Leslie Lapidus is the next character. Before trying to make love to her. Stingo recollects his sexual experiences. First he describes the "sexual moonscape of the 1940s" (SC 145). He describes the 40s as the era between the forefathers' puritanism and the arrival of public pornography. It was a transient period in which certain openness was accepted in sexual matters, but it was difficult to speak about it. Leslie Lapidus is a good example of the time. She could not speak about sex, and after her therapy she can, but she cannot do it. She is liberated to a certain extent, but not fully. Stingo expects a lot from his date with Leslie. So far he has had an affair with a prostitute, but he does not count it as a 'real' sexual intercourse, because it was a failure for him. With all the tension and frustration in him which he says is due to the semi-puritanical 40s. he expects the fulfillment of his physical desire for Leslie. His desire towards Leslie is different from that for Sophie. He has a buried and poetic passion towards Sophie, and he wants to satisfy his needs with Leslie, as he wanted to with the prostitute. He assumes that his "attraction to Leslie was largely primal in nature, lacking the poetic and idealistic dimension of my buried passion for Sophie" (SC 145). He expects that Leslie would allow him to taste all the varieties of bodily experience filled with lust and she would be able to liberate his desires and further extend his artistic dimensions. A liberating force is needed when something is repressed. In this respect Stingo is not different from Leslie because he also has his repressed sexual desires and not-yet-born and latent artistic talent which also needs stimuli. As I mentioned earlier in connection with the affair with autoeroticism and the moral code of the 40s, it is always necessary for Stingo to find justification for his sexual life. The keen striving for proving that what he does is right and accepted by even conservative 43