Disgrace

In J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, Coetzee explores the relationship between sex and violence, raising the question of who really holds the power in when sex and violence collide. David Lurie, the main character, has an affair with his student Melanie Isaacs. Even though the actual acts of sex that David purses with Melanie are not violent, David is very much the aggressor and purser of the affair; therefore, his actions leading up to the act of sex could be considered violent. 

“At four o’clock the next afternoon he is at her flat…He has given her no warning; she is too surprised to resist the intruder who thrusts himself upon her. When he takes her in his arms, her limbs crumple like a marionette’s. Words heavy as clubs thud into the delicate whorl of her ear. ‘No, not now!’ she says, struggling…But nothing will stop him.” (24-25)

Rape of the Sabine Women, by Pietro da Cortona, 1627-29.

David is an ‘intruder’ who ‘thrusts himself’ on Melanie, words of violence. As Coetzee continues from this passage, Melanie does not resist David’s advances, so much as just averts herself from them; she lets him have his way, but is not engaged at all with the intercourse. As Coetzee’s narrator describes it, “Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core” (25).

The scenario is very different, and yet very similar, with the rape of David’s daughter Lucy. The rape of Lucy is never described in great detail, only implied through discourse throughout the novel. However, Lucy does reveal, in a conversation with David, that “’It was so personal…It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest [the sex] was…expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them’” (156). Unlike Melanie’s sexual experience with David, Lucy experienced the violence during the actual act of sex, not only being subject to a rape by three men, but also being subjected to their violent hatred during the rape.

In both sexual encounters that Coetzee explores, the relationship between sex and violence really come to the question of power. Who holds the power during each of these encounters, and how does that power affect the other party. In the situation of David and Melanie, he held a position of power, being her professor, which left her vulnerable to his advances. During the inquiry into David Lurie’s affair, Coetzee writes that “…as teachers we occupy positions of power. Perhaps a ban on mixing power relations with sexual relations” to, basically, avoid undesirable consequences (53).  However, and I think this is the crux of the novel that Coetzee is exploring, that both sexual relations and violent relations are the product of power struggle. For the male figures of sex and violence, David and the rapists, David explains it best that the power struggle is the result of “A history of wrong…It came down from the ancestors” (156). Although David is speaking more directly about the nature of black and white relationships, it applies also to the natural differences between men and women. David continues at a later thought that, “…he does understand; he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself…” because, as Lucy said to her father, “You are a man, you ought to know, “(160, 158).

For the female characters of the novel, Coetzee explores a different level of power, one probably equally powerful, however, not as nearly apparent. Both Melanie and Lucy struggled for some level of power during their encounters with their aggressors. In both cases, Melanie and Lucy appear to just shut down; rather than fight violence with violence, they fought violence with silence. Melanie remained silent during the actual sexual acts; Lucy remained silent about the rape. Therefore, Melanie and Lucy chose to withhold the two things that the male aggressors could not take by force: desire and passion. Melanie withheld her sexual passions from David; Lucy maintained her desires to stay on the farm, despite the threat of a return visit from the rapists.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999. Print.

Cortona, Pietro da. Rape of the Sabine Women. 1627-29. Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy.