Poetry

I wanted to look into Esther's attitudes towards sex over the course of the book. In the beginning of the book, Esther is super freaked out by Doreen and Lenny having what was basically just weird sex. She pretty clearly feels unclean after this incident, as she bathed right after to both literally and symbolically cleanse her of impurity. In class, we talked a lot about Esther just generally seemed freaked out by the concept of sex and while I think this is true to a degree, I don't think it's the full reason why Esther has such a bad reaction to what happened. I feel like a lot of Esther's problem with what was happening was the fact that Doreen, who Esther had sort of idolized for being so in charge, was put in a submissive position. Esther sees Doreen getting called a bitch, bitten, and swung around while her legs are thrashing and she's shrieking. In this scene, Esther doesn't see Doreen as having any agency or ability to do what she wants to Lenny. She see...