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

emaciated Sophie, and offers her a seemingly better life, in which safety and security are the greatest values for her. Stingo is an autobiographical character, who is a promising twenty-two-year-old writer from the Protestant South, starting his career in New York. He unintentionally intrudes and witnesses Sophie and Nathan's selfdestructive relationship ending in suicide. By telling the story of her life, Sophie immerses Stingo in the horrors of the concentration camps, but, unlike the two other characters, Stingo is reborn from the vortex of "monstrous mechanisms" {SC 625). At the beginning of the novel the themes of sexuality and creative power are interwoven with each other. Stingo works for McGraw-Hill publishing house and as a young man hoping to become a great writer he longs for experiencing sexuality and lust on the one hand and for reaching the height of his creative power on the other. When tracing the most memorable events of his sex life, he remembers that up until the age of 13 he visualized sexuality "as a brutish act committed in secrecy upon dyed blondes by huge drunken unshaven ex-convicts with their shoes on" {SC 379). Then he has postadolescent fantasies about the girls around him. but he does not go beyond autoeroticism, which he does not regard as being unhealthy, and he shares the accepted opinion saying that "It was an old wives' tale... in which it was imputed to masturbation such scourges as acne, or warts, or madness" {SC 65-66). The need to leave autoeroticism and to fulfil his sexual desires parallels with the urge to achieve success in his writing career, and he nourishes ambiguous feelings in connection with both. Ambiguity characterizes Stingo's consciousness when he tries to align his views on sexuality with the accepted moral code in the South. He is aware of the fact that he himself violates accepted norms , but he also feels the weight of his Southern background. For example. Stingo usually sticks to a modern idea compared to the old dogmas on masturbation, but later on in the novel there are other situations in which he argues by considering an old-fashioned moral code. He proposes marriage to Sophie at the end of the novel, and says that it is impossible to live down in the South and not to get married. Stingo justifies his incompleteness in the past by ignoring the same 40