Sexuality and Contemporary Literature By Joel Gwynne and Angeli ...

writing to mirror feminist criticism itself,” (117), a view supported by Astrid Henry who argues that “more than any other aspect of contemporary feminism, the so-called dominant feminist perspective on sexuality is what seems to signal regression” (100).

My title, “Desire and its Disastrous Results”—a line taken from René Girard’s writings on deceit and desire in representations of the self and other in literature—has a double meaning. Firstly I use it to refer to the sometimes volatile nature of desire, the notion that one does not always want what is best for oneself and secondly to refer to the disastrous results that may eventuate when such desires are written, particularly the shocked responses that critics and readers may express regarding a woman writing self-destructive representations of feminine desire.² Just as Moore’s In the Cut is a pertinent example of the shifting literary spaces of contemporary fiction, her critics’ responses have predominantly exemplified the ways in which expectations of women’s fiction have been influenced by feminism: “[I]n many feminist debates … assumption exists that there are right and wrong ways of doing feminism” (Rosewarne, 104). I would suggest, as Radway contends, that one of the consequences of feminist literary criticism has been a “resulting preoccupation with the question of what a [female-authored] literary text can be taken as evidence for … whatever her intentions, no writer can foresee or prescribe the way her book will develop, be taken up, or read” (2).

During an interview with Moore, I questioned the apparent seduction by violence of In the Cut’s Frannie, and I asked her to respond to feminist arguments which caution against the psychological damage that sadomasochistic romance plots might incur on female readers. In Moore’s own words, In the Cut intentionally presents an account of feminine experience that is violent, unhappy, and “disturbing; it is meant to be.” In response to critics who have found Frannie’s seemingly masochistic behavior troubling, Moore asserts that “her behaviour is less motivated by masochism than by her refusal to be afraid.” Literary critics, Moore