By Roxane Gay - Vulture
The virgin holds a mythical place in our culture. Virginity is a prize, something to cherish, protect, and/or conquer. In Virgin: The Untouched History, Hanne Blank notes, “Virginity is as distinctively human a notion as philanthropy. We invented it. We developed it. We disseminated the idea throughout our cultures, religions, legal systems, bodies of art, and works of scientific knowledge.” Nowhere does this human notion flourish more than in literature.
From the New Testament of the Bible to Jane Austen’s chaste women and the sultry sexuality of Nabokov’s Lolita, we have seen writers grapple with the subject of virginity as it pertains to being unbroken, unclaimed, and unexplored. Even vampires get in on the act with the Twilight trilogy, placing Bella’s virginity at the sacrosanct center of the narrative. Or, put another way, you know virginity is a big deal when a vampire breaks a bed frame as he breaks his new wife’s hymen.
From the New Testament of the Bible to Jane Austen’s chaste women and the sultry sexuality of Nabokov’s Lolita, we have seen writers grapple with the subject of virginity as it pertains to being unbroken, unclaimed, and unexplored. Even vampires get in on the act with the Twilight trilogy, placing Bella’s virginity at the sacrosanct center of the narrative. Or, put another way, you know virginity is a big deal when a vampire breaks a bed frame as he breaks his new wife’s hymen.
Virginity is treated with far more grace and subtlety in Pamela Erens’s latest novel, The Virgins (Tin House Books), a beautifully written story about two outcasts who form an all-consuming bond at an exclusive boarding school, as told, in secretive, sweaty detail, by a rather odious classmate. In fact, much of what is written about virgins is fueled by secretive, sweaty desire; the best modern novels on the subject — like the ten I've selected below — tell a story that, as in The Virgins, transcends the easiest or least of what we know about virginity. Such novels tackle the more complex question of what it means to surrender to a desire for the very first time. The attention is placed on the person in the virgin body rather than he or she who means to conquer that body, and sexuality becomes the beginning rather than the end of the story.
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides (1993)
In The Virgin Suicides, we know what’s at stake from the outset, the title doing so much of the work of preparing us for the story to come. It is the seventies and the Lisbon family boasts five daughters, ages 13 through 17, who are budding with sexuality while their strict Catholic parents do everything they can to keep the girls cloistered at home, pure, and, well, intact. This is also a story mediated through someone else’s gaze — the boys of the neighborhood who covet the sisters and who can only watch helplessly as the young women succumb to circumstance, their parents closing them off from the world ever more until one by one, the Lisbon girls end their lives rather than remain subjected to an overly constrained existence.
In The Virgin Suicides, we know what’s at stake from the outset, the title doing so much of the work of preparing us for the story to come. It is the seventies and the Lisbon family boasts five daughters, ages 13 through 17, who are budding with sexuality while their strict Catholic parents do everything they can to keep the girls cloistered at home, pure, and, well, intact. This is also a story mediated through someone else’s gaze — the boys of the neighborhood who covet the sisters and who can only watch helplessly as the young women succumb to circumstance, their parents closing them off from the world ever more until one by one, the Lisbon girls end their lives rather than remain subjected to an overly constrained existence.
Forever..., by Judy Blume (1975)
Judy Blume is a foremost chronicler of adolescence and the ways it is fraught. When Forever was first published in 1975, it was groundbreaking in its frankness about sex, birth control, and young bodies and what they do together. In Forever, Michael and Katherine negotiate love and desire after meeting on New Year’s Eve. Throughout the novel, the couple spends an inordinate amount of time discussing sex. Along the way, we learn Michael’s penis is named Ralph, the most indelible of details. They are both young and naïve enough to believe their love will last forever, and Blume makes us believe Michael and Katherine will overcome all the obstacles standing in the way of young love. At times, the book feels overly didactic, but given the time in which it was written, Forever strikes just the right note as a tender and true story about young sexuality.
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Judy Blume is a foremost chronicler of adolescence and the ways it is fraught. When Forever was first published in 1975, it was groundbreaking in its frankness about sex, birth control, and young bodies and what they do together. In Forever, Michael and Katherine negotiate love and desire after meeting on New Year’s Eve. Throughout the novel, the couple spends an inordinate amount of time discussing sex. Along the way, we learn Michael’s penis is named Ralph, the most indelible of details. They are both young and naïve enough to believe their love will last forever, and Blume makes us believe Michael and Katherine will overcome all the obstacles standing in the way of young love. At times, the book feels overly didactic, but given the time in which it was written, Forever strikes just the right note as a tender and true story about young sexuality.
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