Intercourse, by: Andrea Dworkin - Feminish

tenderness, introduces physical intimacy, between him andthe woman: “ he joined the woman in helping to brush thesand from her body. She laughed in a husky voice. His handsbecame more and more insistent as they passed from herbreasts under her arms and from there around her loins. ” 20Sand is carnal; his memory of it is carnal; he remembers “ thesense of shame in scraping away, with a finger he had wet inhis mouth, the sand like burnt rubber that had gathered on thedark lips of her vulva ”21 And then, there is the final triumph,the final superiority, of the sand and the woman, a physical triumphover him, achieved when he tries to rape her in front ofthe villagers who have promised to let him go if he lets themwatch. She physically beats him and carries him inside, and herecognizes that there is an intrinsic rightness in her victory, hisfailure:But the man, beaten and covered with sand, vaguely thoughtthat everything, after all, had gone as it was written it should.T h e idea was in a corner o f his consciousness, like a soddenundergarm ent, where only the beating o f his heart waspainfully clear. T h e woman’s arms, hot as fire, were under hisarmpits, and the odor o f her body was a thorn piercing hisnose. He abandoned him self to her hands as if he were asmooth, flat stone in a river bed. It seemed that what remainedo f him had turned into a liquid and melted into her body. 22Sand is the element, the woman is the human being survivingin it; to him, they are dangerous, the hole, the trap; he is afraidof what it is to be sunk in them, without a consciousness in reserveto separate him and keep him afloat, above; they are life;and the woman is life’s logic and purpose—otherwise it has no