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

Sophie is a character who takes liberties with sex. She does not have a good command of English, and it is a limitation in her understanding, in her vocabulary. At the same time it is a great advantage as well. Sophie uses the English words she knows more freely than other characters. It is because the emotive value of words is different to her than it is to native speakers of English. She is the innocent user of English. She says that, "'Dirty words in English or Yiddish sound better than they do in Polish'" (SC 233). At another chapter Sophie confesses that she is lost in the Englishspeaking world, because she cannot understand everything (SC 396). Is it important to understand everything? Not necessarily. In the happiest moment of their love-making Stingo and Sophie forget about what language they speak. It is such a freedom for them that they do not have to force their thoughts and feelings into meaningful linguistic units. Stingo admits that a "kind of furious obsessed wordlessness finally — no Polish, no English, no language, only breath" (SC 604). In Sophie's sexuality the versatility of language is also joyful. Whenever she is with Stingo she finds pleasure in seeking different words for the sex organs and for sexual activities. Quiescence and wordlessness recur at the very end of the novel when Sophie and Nathan lie dead in bed. Their entangled bodies rest in "total quiescence" (Brooks 110) after the last outburst of desire. The rhetoric of sexuality in the novel shows that sexuality can have lots of meanings. For example Stingo's efforts to meet the moral requirements of a given age and to live up to the moral standards of the 40s or 50s are vain attempts because it is impossible to define general norms or accepted behavior in sexuality. The novel does not reveal THE truth or THE meaning of sexuality. The reader has to accept the ambiguity of sexuality and meaning. The rhetoric of sexuality confirms this ambiguity and the possibility of several interpretations and the same idea is expressed in Shoshana Felman's article when she writes that it is not "rhetoric which disguises and hides sex; sexuality is rhetoric, since it essentially consists of ambiguity: it is the coexistence of dynamically antagonistic meanings. Sexuality is the division and divisiveness of meaning; it is meaning as division, meaning as conflict" (Felman 158). 55