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About the Author
Gina Barreca is a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut. Her books include They Used to Call Me Snow White, but I Drifted; Perfect Husbands and Other Fairy Tales; Babes in Boyland; and, with Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post, I'm With Stupid. She's written or edited other books on vice, Victorians and sex, American humor, the erotics of instruction, The Sopranos, women's humor, and Italian-American literature. She will blog about teaching, sex, humor, money, publishing, ambition, books, marriage, envy (professional and personal), politics (professional and personal), aging, and cartoons.
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Recent Posts
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Heathcliff and Heath Ledger | Comment [8]
Featured Articles By the Author
Feral Emotions
Unacknowledged longings can be destructive
You start to imagine, for example, that someone to whom you are attracted finds you equally attractive. You indulge the thought in order to please yourself.
It’s like scratching a mild itch. As you indulge in this fantasy (and whether that person is attracted to you makes no difference, really, because it’s your fantasy independent of any basis) it grows larger.
It feeds off scraps of conversation and pieces of experience; it becomes loyal. It’s there everyday, waiting to be fed and petted.
It’s a feral emotion, something you don’t let into the house to play with the other domestic emotions for the very reason that you know it’s wild and that you haven’t bothered to tame it or put it on a leash.
So it’s dangerous. And fierce.
Then in some dark part of your heart, you start to prefer it. You start feeding it from the table, giving it the best cuts, the tenderest bits. You act as if the story you’ve told yourself is true and thereby give it the power to disrupt the actual truth.
This is not the sign of a passionate personality or an emotional soul: it is an indication of weakness, an inability to accept life as it is.
Posted at 09:58:29 AM on July 10, 2008 | All postings by Gina BarrecaComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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There is a wide spectrum of fantasy activity compressed here, ranging from harmless daydream to delusion. And, as when reading Freud’s similarly cautionary views about the etiological role of fantasy, I wonder how true to reality it really is, and whether the fantasy activity is epiphenomenal.
— Anonymous · Jul 10, 01:07 PM · #
I’m worried about being cautioned against fantasy. It doesn’t necessarily lead to action anymore than appetite leads to gorging. Maybe the author is showing, too clearly, her Catholic school roots (routes?).
— MCM · Jul 10, 05:00 PM · #
Does this broad every think about anything other than sex?
— Heel · Jul 10, 11:14 PM · #
Surely all human progress, however defined, is born of the author’s claimed weakness — viz., our “inability to accept life as it is.” Indeed, isn’t evolution predicated on an inability to accept things as they are. Ultimately, life itself, in its futile battle against entropy, is a striving against physical matter “as it is.”
— Adam Robinson · Jul 11, 07:47 AM · #
Gina is attracted to me. I just know it.
— Mr. Wiki · Jul 11, 07:49 AM · #
Billy Joel got it right a few decades back: “The Stranger.”
— dan · Jul 11, 07:57 AM · #
She teaches “feminist theory,” and that says it all. Way to go Univ. of Connecticut.
— Joseph Spretnjak · Jul 11, 08:49 AM · #
Heel: does anyone ever not think about sex?
I’ll keep the doors locked tonight…no feral inclinations here!
— Hannah · Jul 11, 09:03 AM · #
Joseph: are you saying that all feminists think about is sex? that’s a new way of defining the approach. might get more students to sign up for classes. way to go uconn is right and i say it without joseph’s ineffective irony.
— kkkkatie · Jul 11, 09:55 AM · #
this made print! and in the Chronicle!! I may be one of those science guys but even I’ve read D.H. Lawrence who plucked the strings of this song more than a little better. I did, however, like the undeveloped metaphor of a seemingly harmless pet or indulgence that might harm or undue you before you realize what is happening and has happened, except for the buried class allusions in the metaphor which remind me of being “undone” in a 19-th century British novel. Adam above (how ironical) is correct about human progress and isn’t it a good thing that Adam fed that feral itch and how boring it would be if he didn’t and the same relative to the other side of that equation:)
— vinnie · Jul 11, 10:34 AM · #
MCM-
“Catholic school?” Displaying your contribution to one of the last of the permissible prejudices are you? Just because Ms. Barreca has a vowel at the end of her name you make a presumption about her religion? Based on what I’ve read of the author’s writings, she seems quite well-adjusted & capable of objective thought, Catholic school or not. The majority of Catholic school grads I’ve known turned out like that. Your bias is showing!
— 1 who remembers · Jul 11, 01:12 PM · #
From an evolutionary standpoint, isn’t man wired to contribute to the growth of our species? Being faithful is a morality issue, not a biological/physiological fact. 6 billion and counting is probably good enough, but I’m just thinking… it takes a lot of strength for some people to fight that primal urge, so what if sex is a more powerful motivator for some and love isn’t enough to keep their eyes (etc.) from wandering? As in—there’s no “right” person. Eek!
— lizzy · Jul 11, 01:20 PM · #
Actually, kkkkatie, What I was saying is that because this woman is teaching a subject matter that should be relegated to “frustrated female’s coffee klatches,” it’s understandable that she’s “outside of the program” in her other endeavors. Maybe if she had “real” sex once in a while… what do you think, kkkkatie dear?
— Joseph Spretnjak · Jul 11, 02:36 PM · #
If you’d ever heard GB speak or read any of her books, as I have, you’d know that she’s had more Real Sex than you, JS, have had Hot Meals. She’s clearly too happy for it to be otherwise.
— GB fan · Jul 11, 05:22 PM · #
kkkkatie and lizzy are attracted to me, too. I just know it.
— Mr. Wiki · Jul 12, 08:52 AM · #
coffee klatches?
— erv · Jul 12, 09:15 PM · #
No, I want to meet them first in a dimly lighted cocktail lounge.
— Mr. Wiki · Jul 13, 06:40 AM · #
The post struck me as the damn truth. And whose to say that life itself is separated in any certain way from entropy?
— Luke Warm · Jul 13, 03:32 PM · #
So you have to ask yourself: Are you running to something or away from something?
— Paul B. · Jul 18, 03:25 PM · #