This was an interesting one. I'm again surprised by Fisher's openness, given the time period she was writing in.
I don't quite understand the seductiveness of food. Generally, when I'm eating, it's all about the food. And if I have really enjoyed the food, I have probably eaten just a bit too much to feel very seductive right afterwards.
Pardon me if this is too much information, but I generally prefer the reverse order. First I'm wanton, then I'm hungry.
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I was surprised, too, by her openness, but I think she's just one of those women — like the delicious Dorothy Paker, writing at the same time — who could just say whatever, and as long as it made up for in wit what it lacked in "propriety" everyone was happy.
I don't really think of food leading to sex so much as food being a kind of sex — a profoundly satisfying sensual experience.
I think Fisher overestimated her quarry if she believes you have to go through that much effort to seduce a man. Obviously, though, she takes a fair amount of pleasure in having a man without his knowing he's been had.
I found her sexual cat-and-mouse outlook rather tiresome myself, but it's all part of that era when people really bought into the notion that women and men are fundamentally different creatures (not just from Mars and Venus respectively, but from totally different solar systems).
At least she acknowledges that getting a guy in bed is no guarantee that HER sexual appetite will be satisfied.
A lot of this chapter went over my head. I do remember the section about seducing a man through a “celestially gentle quarrel.” That didn’t seem to me to make much sense. Serving onions to a man who doesn’t like them sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Agreed, kc, on the "sexual cat and mouse" comment. She represents her gender in a way that makes us all sound cunning, like we couldn't give anything of ourselves (whether our bodies or a good meal) unless we had a hidden agenda.
She makes up for it a little with this: "If two people wish, hope, plan, to be together, they need have no fear of what they must eat first, and indeed no interest in it."
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