Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

nal monotony of passion that has always the same forms andthe same language. ”88Bored, he leaves her. She becomes sick,retreats again into a world of fantasy, wants to die, to go toheaven, be a saint, until Leon returns to Rouen and they havean affair there. The affair is extravagant and she takes manyrisks, including using her household money to finance a hotelroom and gifts for her lover. But he too eventually becomesbored with her: he “dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacieshe no longer noted. ”89And Emma “was as sick of him ashe was weary with her. Emma found again in adultery all theplatitudes of marriage. ”90Still, she wanted the sex even morethan she had before, the decadence of their mutual indifferenceincreasing, as Rodolphe’s indifference had, her need:T hen , though she might feel humiliated at the baseness o f suchenjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, andeach day she hungered [more]. . . 91She is in debt, she has borrowed money, pawned and sold herpossessions; she is threatened by creditors; she wants Leon toget her money and run away with her. Leon stands her up,abandoning her, and she is left in the middle of her own reallife: her husband destitute because of the money she has takenfrom him and borrowed from others. She tries to borrowmoney from her old lover, Rodolphe, but he refuses her. And,in the end, she kills herself. She is not repressed. Instead, she iscorrupt and impoverished and abandoned. She dies by herown hand, no fantasy left that is consoling. She has beenfucked, she has wanted it, felt it, craved it, lost everything for it;and from it she has nothing, she is empty. The first lover costsher her virginity; that is gone once she can feel and desire and