2. When
I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue. Instead of the world
being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and
Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw
the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people
who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between
one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come
over me the day I crossed the boundary line.
This quotation from Chapter 7 shows
that Esther inhabits a world of limited sexual choices. Convention
dictates that she will remain a virgin until she marries. If she
chooses to have sex before marriage, she risks pregnancy, displeasing
her future husband, and ruining her own name. Esther sets out to
defy conventional expectations by losing her virginity with someone
she does not expect to marry. Despite this firm goal, she finds
it difficult to gain an independent sexual identity. The men in
her life provide little help: Buddy has traditional ideas about
male and female roles even though he has mildly transgressed by
having an affair with a waitress; an acquaintance named Eric thinks
sex disgusting, and will not have sex with a woman he loves; and
Marco calls Esther a slut as he attempts to rape her. When Esther
finally loses her virginity, she does not experience the “spectacular
change” that she expects, although the experience does satisfy her
in some says. Esther only partially escapes the repressive ideas
about sexuality that surround her. By losing her virginity, she
frees herself of the oppressive mandate to remain pure, but she
fails to find sexual pleasure or independence.
