Word: isadora
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...Baskervilles; he ad elucidated The Adventure of the Second Stain for the Prime Minister. We had also known curious cases. There was, for example, the puzzle of the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant, referred to in The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger; and the singularity of Isadora Persano, the journalist and duelist who was found stark mad with a matchbox in front of him that contained a remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science (The Problem of Thor Bridge). But never had there been a case as complex and fraught with such grave worldly consequences...
...bottom Isadora is a scared feminist, and what troubles her most is what she learned about herself in psychoanalysis. There, she found out about her Oedipal desires, about her masochistic need to be dominated and about her narcisstic need to be admired like the sexy Cover girl--all for love, of course. And she found out how the biggest need always boiled down to pleasing men, a need so embedded in her personality that she had spent a life smoothing over the sticky edges of her personality that didn't fit what men liked. She was afraid to grow...
...Isadora is no model of the liberation. But she could be, given a bit of self-discipline. She talks, after all, a fair feminist game. Men's minds are befuddled, their ideas are impossible, women frighten them--but then they have those "silky penises." The real sexual inequity is not that men have this great added marvel, a penis, but that "the female has an all-weather cunt. No wonder men invented the myth of female inadequacy." Women's only problem is jiving the need for sex with feminism. Sock it to 'em, Erica, baby. Show 'em what it feels...
...Isadora, or Erica, was left rather in a lurch. Feminism said to her, men are pigs, Liberons-nous, and she agreed. Analysis said, the language of the male world, the language by which you have defined yourself, is stuck in orbit in your head, and she agreed. Feminism said, you mean stuck like an enemy outpost, dig it out or shoot it down. Analysis said, not so easy, remember how guilty you tend to get, you'll punish yourself, you know--and how she knew. So she dilly-dallies. She draws a bead on the old need, she stiffens...
...clear through the issues involved. So, you didn't tell us anything new, though you gave us a lot of good juice and pillow talk, which was nice. You didn't write the book we need which would show us a woman etching out a serious liberation. Your Isadora, though, survives through her work, and for handles to hold on to that's an awfully solid start. Perhaps the only sure place to start...