ESSAY CEMETERY

Problems with fiction about horror: it can be pleasurable; it doesn’t do justice to the horror (but at least there’s exposure) Have we considered that the explorer enticed into that forest may come out not better and stronger for the experience but worse? How do you compare two evils? Can you? Is there an ethical problem with such a comparison? Having to choose between telling a story and doing good. Elizabeth would choose good; he would choose to tell a story. Basically he is an aestheticist and she is an ethical writer. The answer, as far as she can see, is that she no longer believes that storytelling is good in itself, whereas for West, or at least for West as he was when he wrote the Stauffenberg book, the question does not seem to arise. If she, as she is nowadays, had to choose between telling a story and doing good, she would rather, she thinks, do good. West, she thinks, would rather tell a story, though perhaps she ought to suspend judgement until she hears it from his own li...

Summary Men don't seek to define themselves according to their sex, whereas women do. Masculinity is the norm whereas femininity is marginal. Men need no explanation whereas women need qualification. It is male perception that is the normative perception of the world. This convention dates to Aristotle, who said that females are defective because they lack things males have, and even to Genesis where woman was created from a mere bone of Adam's. Humanity is male. Male is dominant, and female is secondary, the "Other".  Woman is the product of society, not biology.  New relationships between men and women are already being formed and will continue to be so. Male and female sexuality will always be distinct, but this doesn’t mean that equality otherwise cannot be achieved.  Women need to both become individuals, rather than stereotypes or symbols clumped together in groups. Also, women need to become equal to men. This will not mean the end of passion – sex will always ...