RUIN ME, PLEASE

Part 9: Mother F*cker

If I cannot return from this loss of innocence, let me return to that place where fantasy and reality meet. Because it is THIS place, this precise place, where the pain lives. And where the pain lives the pleasure can arise, if only, if only, if only…well. If only, in this case, in real life, men knew how to make love to the reality of an aging female body, to the reality of a woman far past the evocation of the virginal bride, to the reality of a woman who has already lived through his false promises and knows good and well every word he spoke of love was nothing more than fleeting lust for the status both within society and within his own corrupted soul that her youth, beauty, and “moral purity” provide.

Ultimately, the fantasy is that she is no true threat to him, as he is no true threat to her. She threatens to ruin him, but she cannot ruin him. He threatens to ruin her, but he cannot ruin her. They transcend ruining because every single threat (every obstacle in our attraction + obstacle = desire formula) is either nullified from the start or revealed to be an unfounded fear. Like every kinky fear play, it’s only sexy if someone MIGHT get hurt, out there in the real world, not here where the fantasy holds everyone in bounds even as they step out of bounds.

If the power each of us holds to hurt one another is fully acknowledged, fully surrendered to, fully revered, there is no need for a power struggle. The power struggle serves only to illuminate that BOTH parties are powerful, and when we know this, power struggle can become a path to pleasure. Pain can become a path to pleasure. Death can become a path to pleasure.

For him, the turn on is that no other man has made her feel this kind of pleasure. No other man has known her body or owned her body in this way. He gets to feel special because of the dogmatic exclusivity of what they share. And because she has no other man to compare him to, he is unthreatened by her past as well as unthreatened by any comparison she might make of him to another lover. He is humbled by his responsibility to her innocence. He is secure.

For her, the turn on is that he has known dozens of other women, but he chooses her above them all. No other woman has known his heart or owned his heart in this way. She gets to feel special because of the dogmatic exclusivity of what they share. And because he has many other women to compare her to, but she remains unique in his desire transformed to devotion, she is unthreatened by his past as well as unthreatened by any comparison he might make of her to another lover. She is enlivened by his validation that she possesses all he could ever need in any woman. She is secure.

It is a mythological degree of monogamy, where the presence or influence of others serves only to enhance the rarity and therefore increased value of what they share with one another alone. The “danger” they pose to one another in this society where there are strict rules of conduct and codes of protection for people who hold their social prestige, leads to profound security–the kind of security that would make most heteronormative women weak at the knees. The kind of security that allows us to remain wanton and wanting even in the early throes of new motherhood.

We see over and over again the kind of erotic potency the virgin commands, but are offered brief glimpses at what the erotic mother can be, mostly in epilogues and second epilogues added to each republication of the stories. We have one tiny moment where the trope is (yet again) LIGHTLY subverted, as Francesca, the only Bridgerton bride who is a widow, knows just enough about sex to tantalize and tease Michael until he loses his mind. It is, in my opinion, the hottest sex scene in the entire series.

Some brief context: Michael is being an angry asshole, because he desires her deeply but is racked with guilt that she used to be the wife of his beloved cousin. And Francesca is being an asshole, because she desires him deeply but is convinced he does not have any feelings for her beyond lust, and that she does not have any feelings for him beyond lust. He does something shitty, I can’t remember what. I think he makes some kind of rude put down, or gets her hot and bothered but then runs off across the country for a while and leaves her hanging. The important thing is, he weaponizes his erotic power over her in some subtle way, and it makes her really pissed off and really, really horny. Anyway, then they get soaking wet in a rainstorm and wind up alone in a game cabin in the middle of the sprawling fields of his family estate (which is also her family estate, which is also hot because women find being family hot).

He lights a fire and they begin taking their clothes off with their backs politely turned and…things escalate quickly from there, except suddenly she’s wicked enough to hit the breaks. She makes him lie down on the bed and performs a sultry strip tease, delighting in the sensitivity and beauty of her own body with her own hands, letting him see only what she wants him to see, selectively shifting away from his hungry gaze and moaning with satisfaction as he’s left with his imagination about her wandering touch. He grows crazier and crazier and crazier until he grabs her and pulls her atop of him. But she stops him again and makes him BEG her for what he wants. She tells him he’s allowed to look, but he’s not allowed to touch.

I mean.

When Julia Quinn first proposed the plot for this particular novel, her publishers were against it. Never before had a paperback Regency romance novel allowed for the widow to actually love her first husband. In a standard widow trope, the first husband is meant to be sickly and tepid, a man of status but not a man of passion. He may be her first love (her childhood love), but it is implied the bond is almost platonic. So she is still deflowered by the arrival of the rake, still ignorant to the depths of her unfulfilled sexual appetite. But Julia fought hard for Francesca’s arc, insisting the first part of the novel focus on her love story with Micheal’s cousin and the impact of his traumatic, sudden death.

Shortly after he dies, Francesca discovers she’s pregnant…only to suffer an emotionally devastating, physically graphic miscarriage. The setup for her love story with Micheal is that years have passed, he’s been away in India, and by the time he returns to his motherland to finally assume his role as earl, she’s in full blown baby fever. She decides to remarry someone unremarkable and nice enough in order to get pregnant, and delicious chaos ensues once she realizes the man she used to go to for torrid stories about prostitutes and opera singers is a man of high integrity in disguise. Turns out his rakish reputation is largely embellished. Turns out he’s long been carrying a torch for the one woman he believed he could never have.

I mean.

Francesca’s story reveals what most heteronormative women who want a family know in our heart of hearts: the hot sex we desire with “dangerous” men who might break us, cannot be decoupled from the vulnerability of childbearing. It cannot be decoupled from our desire for babies, or the risk of birth. It cannot be a fling, it has to be family. And Julia Quinn, like all middle aged white women writing Regency romance in the 90s, knows this well and good.

Because these stories of young, virginal deflowering are written by women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. The average romance reader is 42-years-old. These stories offer women a way to touch on desires and needs far beyond the consequence of their likely sexual neglect. These stories offer an escapist fantasy where the man who fucks your brains out also pays his fucking child support. He is a man who loves the Holy Mother well. These stories are not merely an initiatory ritual, but an erotic recompense for collective female grief.

In real life, most men do not reform. Many men cannot desire women over the age of 30. In the fantasy, the rake becomes the husband. He relishes making love to a body that bears the signs of motherhood, that bears the signs of disappointment, that bears the consequence of another man’s abandonment (the abandonment of all men). A body blemished and fattened and scarred and sagging by the trials of unrequited love. A body beyond sexual innocence, ripened with sexual self knowledge, capable of a frankness around erotic intimacy that can at once receive and command the power he only holds over her when she does not know how she brings him to his knees. If the female protagonist is cursed by the virgin/whore dichotomy, he is equally cursed by the husband/rake dichotomy. His resolution is far more a fairytale than hers, though.

For what is the fucking POINT of protecting or stealing or shattering her innocence if not to give way to the mother, who then gives way to the hag? And what is the fucking POINT of ruining him in return, if not to secure his place by her side? If not to shape him into a man who is wise enough to value the sovereign maturity of the crone over the tempestuous temptations of the maiden?