Female Perversions - Hardcover

Kaplan, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385262337 ISBN 13: 9780385262330

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 1990

Synopsis

Interweaves case studies and references to Flaubert's Emma Bovary into an exploration of the power with which women endow men to dominate them, thus nurturing the war of the sexes

About this title

Reviews

Foot fetishist Gustave Flaubert preferred his mistress's slippers to her body. For the heroine of Madame Bovary , the sexually thwarted novelist created an adulterous provincial housewife who seems as burdened by gender conventions as Flaubert himself. Kaplan sees Emma Bovary as a woman enslaved by social stereotypes, her successive love relationships a series of dominance/submission games. A psychoanalyst and co-editor of the journal American Imago , the author of this hefty tome uses Flaubert's novel, the love lives of George Sand and Edith Wharton, and numerous clinical case studies to illustrate her thesis that perversions (sadomasochism, fetishism, cross-dressing, voyeurism, kleptomania, etc.) are gender-identity disorders. In Kaplan's view, women's perversions parody feminine gender ideals of innocence and submission, while men's perversions express forbidden and shameful feminine impulses. This masterful study breaks new ground in our understanding of sexuality, gender roles and the way modern society trivializes erotic expression.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New York psychoanalyst Kaplan mixes Freudian theories with gender stereotyping and comes up with perversions--aberrant human behaviors designed to deceive the conscious mind and subvert anxieties, feelings of shame, repressed aggression, and cross-gender ambitions. For proof, she relies on case studies and her analysis of major characters in Flaubert's Ma dame Bovary . Although she emphasizes "female" perversions--defined as kleptomania, anorexia, and "delicate self-cutting"--Kaplan also gives an overview of such "male" aberrations as exhibitionism and pedophilia, plus an analysis of four perverse male scenarios reported in the literature. A comprehensive and compelling academic work, well documented and replete with many literary references--not to mention jargon. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with large women's studies collections.
-Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Nan A. Talese
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385262337
• ISBN 13: 9780385262330
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 580