Subtle. But real
An essay focused on sexual power dynamics and perception, close-reading The Collector by John Fowles (1963) and This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill (2019)
In 1963, a (male) New York Times critic said of The Collector, ‘For entire success, however, the novel should have been shortened to the length of a nouvelle and confined to Fred’s point of view…by the time we reach the diary we already know most of the facts. We also know Miranda, and we do not need to re-experience her martyrdom in her own words.’[1]
That the reviewer refers to the ‘facts’ is amusing, even within the book’s fictitious context, because these so-called facts are imparted to us, the reader, in the first person, from the perspective of Frederick Clegg, a man who we soon learn has abducted and presumably killed a woman and is trying to justify it. The very subjectivity of fact is a topic that both The Collector and Mary Gaitskill’s This is Pleasure engage with, through their portrayals of sexual violence and psychological coercion, employing shifting male-female perspectives to draw out the gulf in attitudes and to foreground points of conflict and confusion. For this reason, I feel they sit pertinently in dialogue with one another.
I’m glad Fowles didn’t shorten the book. The second portion transforms it from a reasonably one-dimensional thriller narrative into an altogether more nuanced interrogation of misogynistic psychologies, societal convention and compassion; of how these things interrelate and grind against one another. The shifting perspective – from Fred’s to Miranda’s and back to Fred’s briefly towards the novel’s chilling conclusion – is pivotal in expanding our understanding of these concerns. It is this psychological nuance that has caused The Collector to linger and recur so much in my memory since I first encountered it over a decade ago. The 1965 film adaptation meanwhile, opted to omit any plot referred to in Miranda’s diary entirely. The voiceover in the film’s trailer paradoxically characterises Miranda thus: ‘Lovely Samantha Eggar brings a versatile talent to the role of the young girl victim: innocent, carefree, seductive, apprehensive…’, apprehensive being the only trait listed here that the Miranda of the novel could fairly be said to be – as anyone who’d recently been kidnapped might reasonably be.
For a man writing in the early sixties – a time when free love mingled messily with the propriety or ‘niceness’ of fifties conservatism – the sophistication with which the feminist politics are rendered in the novel is remarkable (- incidentally, Betty Friedan’s radical feminist text The Feminine Mystique was published in the same year). The Collector’s recent re-issuing with a new introduction by the novelist Evie Wyld confirms its ongoing relevance, albeit depressingly. Wyld states ‘this novel’s male characters feel utterly familiar to anyone with a passing familiarity of contemporary misogyny’ (p.1)[2]. And we can easily imagine the character of Fred transposed into the present day, recast as a discontented incel, obsessively monitoring manic pixie dream girls on Instagram, plotting how to harm them.
Accordingly, up until the moment when Miranda confronts Fred’s suppressed sexuality and impotence by offering herself to him sexually, he is unable to perceive her as a sexual being, but as an ideal. Prior to kidnapping her, while he is stalking her, he comments ‘She didn’t think at all about the men when she moved. Like a bird’ (p.19) (as though he could possibly know), and later remarking incredulously ‘it was just like having a wife’ (p.50) and ‘she was just like a woman.’ (p.58). Unfortunately, unbeknown to Miranda, it is Fred’s ability to project his fantasies onto her that protects her from him, and once faced with his own failures and fragility, once he has decided that she ‘had killed all the romance, she had made herself like any other woman’ (p. 104), he no longer prizes her and allows her to die. Miranda says of men ‘we’re stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can’t stand ours’ (p.249), simultaneously bringing to mind all manner of injustices enacted on women at the hands of a society steeped in a prevailing culture of toxic masculinity.
Published over half a century later, two years after the Harvey Weinstein story broke and one year after the Nobel Prize for Literature sexual harassment scandal, Mary Gaitskill’s novella This is Pleasure bears a striking number of resemblances to The Collector with regards to the behavioural traits of the male and female protagonists. Crafted with extraordinary concision, it tells the story of a man facing legal consequences for allegedly sexually harassing female colleagues and associates in the literary world. It delves into the murky areas of power and consent with an authenticity and humour that forces the reader to question the provenance of their own ethical codes and beliefs.
Its alternating male-female first-person narration provides an ideal structure through which to explore the opposing gendered psychologies at play, which sits at the heart of the story’s central dilemma. Vitally, we are not offered a direct perspective from any of the ‘accusers’ in This is Pleasure, the effect of which is to force the reader to approach the narrative with a heightened analytical alertness or suspicion, straining to surmise the ‘facts’. The only problem is, the facts in this story are slippery and subjective, shifting from one perspective to the next, and from one reader to the next. It is worth acknowledging that the sexual power dynamics depicted in This is Pleasure are not by any means specific to heterosexual relationship dynamics, but the use of the alternating gendered narrative voices serves to highlight the dynamic itself.
In Oppositions, Mary Gaitskill’s book of collected essays, speaking about a rape that was perpetrated against her, she says, ‘the terror was acute, but after it was over, it actually affected me less than any other mundane instances of emotional brutality’. She goes on to say ‘Emotional cruelty is more complicated. Its motives are often impossible to understand, and it is sometimes committed by people who say they like or even love you…The experience sticks to you’ [3].
This is Pleasure, in a sense, feels like an extended scenario designed to encapsulate the sentiment expressed in the above statement superbly, demonstrating in shrewd detail how small acts of harm committed by someone trusted have the power to devastate gradually and perhaps, more profoundly than physical acts of violence. It’s a sentiment that I can personally relate to, having survived an exceptionally violent, sexually motivated assault in my late twenties myself. Having similarly, arrived at the conclusion that it was not the worst thing that had ever happened to me, from an emotional standpoint at least, its concreteness rendering it easy to comprehend and move on from.
In This is Pleasure’s fast-paced narrative, we are straightaway introduced to the charismatic, albeit problematic, central character of Quin, as told by his close friend Margot (M), and to the specific brand of pain he inflicts on women. While Quin believes that he can ‘perceive people’s most essential nature just by looking at them’ (p.1), what quickly becomes apparent to the reader is that Quin knows how to identify vulnerable women – the first of whom is ‘middle-aged and obviously lonely’ (p.2) – and to gain dominance over them by appealing to their egos, subtly manipulating them in ways that initially appear harmless and funny, yet reflecting on her response with hindsight, Margot says ‘I don’t want to laugh. I feel pain. real heart pain. Subtle. But real’ (p.4).
In the second chapter, the first from Quin’s perspective, he recalls the painstaking care he once took to make an invented object that he claims was intended to help one of his ‘accusers’ make decisions. He says ‘I wanted her to learn how to use her intelligence more actively’ (p.7). Putting aside for one moment the sheer arrogance of this assertion, the image of a professional man hand-crafting a highly-personalised invention is strangely touching. While we could say that it might have been meant as a friendly gesture, that Quin genuinely thought he might help this woman, the early suggestion that he has somehow got himself into professional trouble and the supposition that his behaviour might follow a pattern, challenges this thought; Gaitskill invites us to speculate further about what the motivation might really be.
Like The Collector’s Fred, Quin appears to perceive women as exotic creatures, that ought to be caught, or tamed, though, while Fred applies a butterfly lexicon to his desires (‘it was like catching the Mazarine Blue’, (p.33)), Quin applies a language to women evocative of livestock. He says ‘women are like horses. They want to be led’ (p.60), and as though in testament to his statement, he does manage to lead an impressive rollcall of women into his paddock, though whether this is what they ultimately ‘want’ is doubtful; from the offset, it’s apparent that most of them have already bolted.
In her 1999 book of essays all about love, the late writer and theorist bell hooks wrote ‘while…everyone agrees it is wrong for men to hit women as a way of subordinating us, most men use psychological terrorism as a way to subordinate women. This is a socially acceptable form of coercion’.[4] While it’s never made explicit why Quin wishes to dominate the women he encounters, the implication throughout is one of inherent patriarchal reflex. Lacking in self-awareness within the wider societal context, the compulsion seems a mystery even to Quin, who likes to think of himself as a ‘sort of guardian angel’ (p.1), though conspicuously, only to women.
Later, when explaining why he takes such an interest in women the way he does, he says ‘most people are starved of perceptive questions, and the chance to discover their own thoughts’ (p.30) crediting himself with what he perceives as selfless motives, and delighting in this. His naivety shines through when describing the emails sent between him and his accusers. He says ‘I believe that these emails are my best defence, even when they are a tiny bit sexy. Because they show mutuality, pleasure, even gratitude—friendship’ (p.21). We come to understand that Quin’s comprehension of friendship is constrained to the realm of the sexual, that for him intimacy and sex cannot be mutually exclusive. We are also perhaps compelled to ask the question, is this such a bad thing, and if so, why?
It is difficult to quote succinctly from This is Pleasure since our overarching comprehension of the elusiveness with which the character of Quin operates depends so much on the narrative’s cumulative, impressionistic impact, articulated via a rapid-fire sequence of stories and accounts, ping-ponged between Quin and Margot, sometimes retold from the perspective of the other.
We are presented with not only the power dynamics at play but the mechanisms through which they transpire. One such recurring behaviour Gaitskill deploys via Quin is the way he systematically disarms women with his baffling actions. Recounting her initial meeting with Quin, when he was interviewing her for a job, Margot says ‘He asked me a lot of questions that seemed irrelevant and personal, including whether or not I had a boyfriend. He used my name more often than he needed to… he interrupted me to say “Margot? Margot, I don’t think your voice is your best asset. What is your best asset?” I was so discomforted and uncertain that I didn’t know whether to be offended or not’ (p.10). By following Margot’s memory with a reflection on the way it made her feel, Gaitskill signals to the reader here how we might read the unfolding narrative, inviting us to consider its events on a deeper, more inquiring level. Depending on the reader, the conclusion we reach here might be that Quin is able to bewilder women into compliance, thereby increasing their tolerance for mistreatment. By consistently asking personal and probing questions of the women he encounters, he deftly avoids scrutiny. His character comes across as a disorienting cocktail of charm, of humour and of thinly veiled sexual aggression. He carries out, as Margot comes to refer to them, ‘microaggressions’ (p.34), incidents that are often hard to distinguish in simplistic terms.
One of the most palpable instances of impropriety occurs at a restaurant during Margot and Quin’s second meeting when – as told by Margot – Quin says “Your voice is so much stronger now! You are so much stronger now! You speak straight from the clit!” (p.12) before physically reaching between Margot’s legs. This action – one that conjures the now infamous words of Donald Trump – could, in some circumstances, be considered reason enough to curtail a meeting, a burgeoning friendship, or to even report someone for sexual assault. However, the peculiar alchemy of the backhanded compliment combined with an inimitable statement and impulsive action lends a unique absurdity to the situation that provokes humour.
Instead of apologising, Quin compliments Margot on the conviction with which she rebuffs him and asserts herself, flattering her sense of righteousness, and creating a contrived feeling of rebalancing – as though equality is something Margot needed to earn. Gaitskill’s recognition of the power of the absurd here is integral: surely Quin is far too absurd to be dangerous. But Gaitskill calls into question the validity of the humour itself when Margot struggles to convey the hilarity of the situation to one friend, who asks “Why would you want to have a friendship with someone like that?” (p.18). Yet, for all his faults, Quin is in many ways a good friend to Margot, and we empathise with her internal struggle – with the desire to delight in the intimacy and excitement that a relationship with blurry boundaries can provide, with the desire to be subversive while maintaining autonomy and dignity. Gaitskill draws out these confused yearnings masterfully, the book’s title functioning as a kind of blueprint that runs through it like the word in a stick of rock. All the way through, we are tacitly invited to consider an alternative response, one in which these kinds of relationships and behaviours might be socially acceptable if we only consider them in the right way – is this pleasure? By leaping between perspectives, the overall impression that builds up is one of scrambled binaries, through which new ideas are able to wriggle free.
Cocooned within The Collector’s central storyline and told via the vehicle of Miranda’s diary, is a subplot describing the relationship between Miranda and G.P., an established artist at least twenty years Miranda’s senior with whom she develops a complicated relationship. I can’t help but speculate as to whether Fowles intentionally presented this second depiction of abusive love in the guise of a thriller with a view to attracting sensationalist mass (and particularly male) appeal, before throwing off the cloak midway through and leading us to the site of deeper psychological excavation. While Fred is able to hold Miranda hostage physically using corporal force and luck-won money (which undeniably leads to symptoms synonymous with Stockholm Syndrome), the character of G.P. is able to exert a more mentally pervasive form of control over her. As Evie Wyld points out, ‘she is entombed within his voice’ (p.7).
The cruelty with which G.P. treats Miranda is best demonstrated in an excruciating scene in which she brings some of her artwork to him for critique. He is aware of the effect his response will have on her. We can suppose this, knowing that he is a painter himself, wise to the sensitivities of the artistic ego and aware of the impact negative criticism will likely have. We can therefore assume the calculation behind his actions. In a mortifyingly scathing and extensive put down, he says ‘they’re not much good…but a bit better than I expected…I mean you’ve got the ability. So have thousands. But the thing I look for isn’t here. It just isn’t here…They’re teaching you to express personality at The Slade…But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it’s a no go if your personality isn’t worth translating’ (p.158). As if this wasn’t brutal enough, he goes on to undermine her further by saying ‘you’re too pretty. The art of love’s your line. Not the love of art’ (p.60). He knows precisely how to wound Miranda and ruthlessly proceeds in doing so, ingraining in her a sense that she is in some way defective and then calling her hysterical when she asks whether she should tear the drawings up, finally relenting and showing her an alternative vision for the future, by which point small mercies loom disproportionately.
Contradicting his previous declaration, G.P. says, ‘“I shouldn’t marry. Have a tragic love affaire. Have your ovaries cut out. Something”. And he gave me one of his really wicked looks out of the corners of his eyes…As if he’d said something he knew he shouldn’t have, to see how I’d react. And suddenly he seemed much younger than me.’ (p. 160). The description of G.P. is so reminiscent of Quin here – the way he disarms women by saying outrageous but oddly whimsical things, by following an insult with a compliment, pain with pleasure, contributing to the propagation of the sadomasochistic dynamic. And G.P. seeks to ‘improve’ Miranda in the same way Quin appears obsessed with improving women’s personalities or challenging them as he likes to think of it, consequently triggering insecurities.
On first meeting him, Margot describes Quin as appearing youthful. She says ‘He was at least forty, but he had the narrow frame and form of an elegant boy. His long brown hair fell over his brow in a juvenile style that was completely natural on him’ (p.9). The link between Quin and G.P.’s behaviour and youthful demeanour perhaps seems tenuous but it appears to me an association that works for the men in both narratives as a form of get-out clause, locating their more shocking acts within the context of playful discovery. Miranda too, attempts to present the playful possibility of sex to Fred, as a way of diminishing its power and perhaps even curing Fred of his neurosis. She tries to explain “sex is just an activity, like anything else. It’s not dirty, it’s just two people playing with each other’s bodies. Like dancing. Like a game” (p. 102). While we may appreciate Miranda’s maturity and gumption in speaking so candidly, for Fred, who preserves a grotesque version of conservative values, this is a step too far. Miranda is punished for forfeiting her virtue in this way, for her modernity of thinking, for daring to consider the possibility of sex as a pleasurable pursuit. Fred says, ‘she was like all women, she had a one-track mind. I never respected her again’ (p. 103). If sex is a game, it is one that only the male characters are depicted as being permitted to fully enjoy, continually updating the rules to improve their odds of winning.
I would posit that the female characters in This is Pleasure and The Collector seem primed for manipulation because they do seem to want to be led, wholly too willing to seek validation in male authority. Given excessive time to reflect in her imprisonment, Miranda is able to distinguish and foresee the imbalances a committed romantic relationship with G.P. would involve: ‘I would have nothing to tell him, nothing to show him. All the helping would be on his side’ (p. 219), though not without a generous dose of self-effacement. While a subservient mind-set is likely to have been commonplace, perhaps even encouraged, in the early 1960s, This is Pleasure serves to emphasise how deeply entrenched patriarchal tyranny remains in the contemporary psyche, not only in the minds of men but of women too. Margot’s behaviour exemplifies this notion.
In a moment of conspicuous mundanity in the story, Margot encounters Quin unexpectedly in a grocery shop stooped and ‘exploring his nose with a very large handkerchief’ (p.14). She doesn’t immediately recognise him, so different does he appear in demeanour. Instead of approaching him, Margot says ‘I felt compelled to leave without buying milk, rather than let him know that I’d what? Seen him explore his nose?’ Though Margot makes light of it, Gaitskill is clearly trying to pose a particular comment by depicting this scenario. It is the only time in the story in which Quin himself is portrayed as vulnerable, appearing old and strange. Except, while Quin doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of women’s moments of susceptibility, Margot is unable to do this to Quin, perhaps because her sense of discretion is too strong, but it seems more than this. It is the first and only time in the text when Margot is presented with a glimpse of Quin the fallible man, rather than the robust, poised figure he comes to represent in her life; a figure who is constantly filtering a reflection of Margot back at herself. It is as though directly approaching him would be an equalising act, one that would force Margot to acknowledge her own agency. In this way, by saying nothing, Margot becomes complicit in upholding Quin’s dominance over her.
While in both books, the first-person narrative is consistently confessional in tone, the male characters’ perspective is distinguished by an overarching impression of victimisation and lack of accountability, while the women are quick to disclose feelings of guilt and regret. In The Collector Fred repeatedly suggests that Miranda should be grateful to him for not subjecting her to rape; his tone is consistently one of the aggrieved: ‘I untied her hands. She rubbed them a bit, just to get at me, I suppose’ (p.52). Quin’s narrative is similarly suffused by a whining tone of injury and self-pity. He complains ‘women are now very into the victim story; those I’ve offended are all victims’ (p.81). Even when describing in detail a situation in which he is obviously in the wrong, in which he takes a young female colleague called Hortense shopping before touching her breasts in the changing room, he is incapable of expressing remorse. He recalls, ‘The shirt fit her perfectly and I meant to say that. Instead, through cloth and bra, I touched her breast’ (p.49), as though groping her was a perfectly acceptable natural substitute for a compliment.
Quin’s apparent openness about his own actions adds a further degree of haziness. By relating his various encounters as jovial anecdotes to the other women in his life, particularly Margot, he succeeds in gift-wrapping the negative aspects of his behaviour to such a degree that he appears only ‘vaguely sadistic’ (p.3), laughable even. Margot is groomed to write off his more problematic conduct as part of an eccentric personality. However, as the story progresses, and her own sense of complicity and rising unease mounts, we start to comprehend the sense of foolishness and consequent pain that Margot experiences. It becomes apparent that Margot has not considered herself to be like the other women in Quin’s life because she perceives their relationship platonic and mutual, to exist on its own terms. She makes a distinct effort to reassure Quin’s wife that there is nothing sexual between them, that she occupies an altogether different terrain in Quin’s affections. At one point in the narrative, she explains ‘we were in a taxi, and in the middle of a conversation he asked if he could put his head in my lap…It wasn’t sexual. I didn’t pet his head or anything…It was nice’ (p.27), yet the tone is often mildly defensive. At times, it could be interpreted as delusional.
In an affecting revelation towards This is Pleasure’s denouement, in which Margot recalls Quin’s tactless and troubling reaction to her disclosure of being molested as a young child, she is finally able to identify the source of anger she feels towards Quin and identify with the other accusers in the narrative. That is, anger at herself, for allowing Quin to persist in his mistreatment of her. She says ‘I was like the women who didn’t stop him and who acted like his friend, even as they grew angrier and angrier…The little jabs and jokes he’d always made, artfully woven in with his habitual flattery, stung, like the bites of an invisible insect’ (p. 73). Margot’s genuine love for Quin complicates her responses, preventing her from accessing her anger directly, revealing how manipulated by him she has been. To concede Quin’s failures is to accept her own; that she, like all the other women in Quin’s universe, has walked willingly into a trap of patriarchal deception and subjugation.
Speaking about the trauma inflicted on her by the film producer Harvey Weinstein in an extensive interview in The New York Times, the actor Salma Hayek said ‘I had brainwashed myself into thinking that it was over and that I had survived; I hid from the responsibility to speak out with the excuse that enough people were already involved in shining a light on my monster. I didn’t consider my voice important, nor did I think it would make a difference…When so many women came forward to describe what Harvey had done to them, I had to confront my cowardice’.[5] It seems to me that this is the crux of what Gaitskill is attempting to convey through the character of Margot.
Yet Margot steadfastly retains the urge to defend Quin. She asks ‘did he deserve to lose his job, his right to work, his honour as a human being?’ (p.71) and the answer is neither a straightforward yes or no, but a weighing up that requires a scale with a metric yet-to-be invented. This is Pleasure’s success depends on this embedded pendulum swing taking effect on the reader, shifting us from one possibility back to the other.
I am reminded here, to return to The Collector and the scene in which Miranda invents a fairy-tale she tells to Fred in which an ugly monster takes a princess captive, the monster being a thinly-veiled representation of Fred. However, when he recognises himself as the monster, the only response he can muster is ‘I love you’ (p.188), at which point Miranda says ‘and yes, he had more dignity than I did then and I felt small, mean. Always jeering and jabbing at him, hating him and showing it’. She understands that to regard Fred as a monster is to dehumanise him and feels a terrible guilt for doing so. Unlike G.P. and Quin, she recognises her capacity to harm Fred using her intellect and rejects the option to continue doing so. As in This is Pleasure, Fowles consistently presents us with a compassionate alternative perspective, though how far compassion should be extended on the part of the female characters is called into question repeatedly, most evidently in The Collector through the eventual death of Miranda. In the wake of reading Miranda’s narrative, one which reveals a rich interior life, her hopes and dreams for the future, the finality of her death is rendered still more shocking and cruel. Herein lies the story’s power.
Like Fowles, Gaitskill has considered all of the possible angles in This is Pleasure – throwing open all manner of questions necessary to gain a full comprehension of the story’s conflicts, at times inviting us to empathise with a sexual predator, inviting self-examination, always presenting a counterview. Ultimately how the characters feel and how we as readers feel – some might feel violated, while others do not – is what we are left with. Gaitskill, having worked hard as both prosecution and defence, allows us to make our own judgements, and perhaps find ourselves ambivalent. In Margot’s final chapter, trying to making sense of her own feelings, she says of Quin ‘he helped me feel I was part of humanity, and not with his kindness alone; it was his silliness, his humour, his dirtiness that rekindled my spirit’ (p. 79). And so much of what we enjoy in Quin’s character is his propensity to shock, is his sexualised impishness. Notably, in the final essay in Oppositions, Gaitskill states ‘moral smugness is a kind of prison too’[6].
It could be said that all of the characters presented in The Collector and This is Pleasure are prisoner to their gendered identity as defined by the social context in which they exist. In a world of increasing inequality and division – in politics, in economics, in values – these works of fiction reflect an ongoing societal need for plurality, for the need to extend compassion, to try to understand and commune with one another. They both seem to pose the question, how can we make sense of the world other than through feeling? then invite us to examine the feeling further, acknowledging our own subjectivities and failures as humans in the process.
Post script:
Since writing this essay in 2022, I’ve encountered a short documentary ‘making of The Collector’ film on YouTube. I was struck by the cruel directorial methods, that brought to mind those employed by Bertolucci and Brando in Last Tango in Paris, and their treatment of Maria Schneider. I can’t help but wonder if the irony was lost on Wyler and Stamp, who admit to icing out and bullying Samantha Eggar on set, pushing her to the verge of real trauma.
Bibliography
Books:
Angel, Katherine (2021), Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, hardback edition, London, Verso
Fowles, John (1963), The Collector, London, 2021 paperback edition, Vintage Classics
Gaitskill, Mary (2021), Oppositions: Selected Essays, hardback edition, London, Serpent’s Tail
Gaitskill, Mary (2019), This is Pleasure, hardback edition, London, Serpent’s Tail
Gaitskill, Mary (1988), Secretary (p.133), from Bad Behavior, 2018 paperback edition, London, Penguin Classics
Halliday, Lisa (2018), Asymmetry, paperback edition, London, Granta
hooks, bell (2000), all about love, 2001 paperback edition, New York, HarperCollins
Online articles / sources:
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/31/specials/fowles-collector.html –accessed 20/01/2022
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html – accessed 20/01/2022
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43892189 – accessed 20/01/2022
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/07/this-is-pleasure-mary-gaitskillreview – accessed 20/01/2022
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/586592-at-the-hotel-we-had-separate-rooms-but-in-the – accessed 20/01/2022
[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/31/specials/fowles-collector.html accessed 20/01/2021
[2] Note: bracketed numbers following quotations from primary texts are references to page numbers, as none of the works cited used chapter numbers. Full details of editions used are given in the bibliography.
[3] Mary Gaitskill, Oppositions: Selected Essays (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2021) p.19
[4] bell hooks, all about love (New York: HarperCollins, 2000) p. 41
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html – accessed 20/01/2022
[6] Mary Gaitskill, Oppositions: Selected Essays (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2021) p.200