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Sample of Spanking in Novels: Under 18

 

 

Dangling Man  by Saul Bellow   

  •  Publisher: Jove Pubns; (April 1989)

 Saul Bellow’s 1944 novel Dangling Man is an intellectual parable.  Joseph, the narrator, is a twenty seven year old young man whose normal life is held in abeyance as he awaits the call to military duty.  With “life” on hold, Joseph, an introspective philosophic and angry anti hero, comes to terms with life’s big questions.  As Joseph endures his forced waiting, he engages in a series of angry confrontations with the people in his life.  One of these confrontations is with his 15 year old niece, Etta. 

 Joseph tells us that he and Etta are enemies, that they hate each other.  He also tells us that they look alike, a circumstance that makes him believe that they share other affinities.  In the absence of meaning in his life, Joseph creates his own.  In the absence of meaningful activity, he instigates scenes and spectacles that force attention of others on him. The scene with Etta happens at his brother’s house, upstairs in the music room.  Etta bursts into the room as Joseph is listening to a classical album, demanding that she be able to listen to her records.  He refuses and a verbal tousle ensues.  Etta is a complete brat, but Joseph makes perhaps too big a deal in standing his ground.  Finally she calls him a beggar, at which he explodes. Here is the scene:

“You’re a little animal,” I said. “As rotten and spoiled as they come. What you need is a spanking.”

   “Oh!” she gasped.  “You dirty…dirty no-account.  You crook!” I caught her wrist and wrenched her toward me.   “Damn you, Joseph, let me go!” The album went crashing.  With the fingers of her free hand she tried to reach my face.  Seizing her by the hair fiercely, I snapped her head back; her outcry never left her throat; her nails missed me narrowly.  Her eyes shut tightly, in horror.     “Here’s something from a beggar you won’t forget in a hurry,” I muttered.  I dragged her to the piano bench, still gripping her hair.

   ‘Don’t!” she screamed, recovering her voice. “Joseph! You bastard!”

    I pulled her over my knee, trapping both her legs in mine.  I could hear the others running upstairs as the first blows descended and I hurried my task, determined that she should be punished in spite of everything, in spite of the consequences; no, more severely because of the consequences.

   “Don’t you struggle, I cried, pressing down her neck. “ Or curse me. It won’t help you.”    Amos pounded up the last flight of stairs and burst in.  Behind, breathless, came Dolly and Iva.      “Joseph,” Amos panted, “let her go.  Let the girl go!”

    I did not release her at once.  She no longer fought against me, but with her long hair reaching nearly to the floor, and her round, nubile thighs bare, lay in my lap.  Whether this was meant to be an admission of complicity and an attempt to lighten my guilt, or whether she wished them to see and savor it fully, I did not know at first.

     “Stand up, Etta,” Dolly said curtly. “Straighten your skirt.”

     Slowly she got to her feet. I wonder if any of them were capable of observing how exactly alike we looked at the moment.  “And now, if you can, Joseph,” said Dolly, turning her dilated eyes on me, “Explain what you were doing.”    “Mother,” Etta suddenly began to sob, “I didn’t do anything to him.  He attacked me.”

    “What!!! In the name of God, what are you talking about ?” I exclaimed.  “I spanked you because you had a spanking coming.”     What unspeakable inference or accusation was that in Dolly’s widened eyes?  I returned her look steadily.

     “Nobody has ever laid a hand on Etta for any reason whatsoever, Joseph.”

     “Whatsoever!  Is calling her uncle a beggar a sufficient “whatsoever?” There is something ambiguous in your mind.  Why don’t you speak out?”     She turned to Amos as though to say, “Your brother is going insane.  Now he is springing at me.”      “I put her over my knee and gave her a good spanking, and it wasn’t half of what she deserved and needed for a long time.  She swore at me like a poolroom bum. A mighty fine job you have done with her.”

 

Joseph is as violent as he can be with a fifteen year old, pulling her hair and pressing down on her neck.  The antagonism between the two is palpable. He wants to make the spanking as severe as possible, because if he is going to suffer society’s scorn, he may as well make it be truly deserved.   Spanking his niece has given Joseph another chance at a public display, at putting himself at the center of attention.  While Joseph may be justified in his feelings, his actions are always socially inappropriate, as an uncle spanking a teenage niece would be.  His feeling that the girl’s mother is silently accusing him of dishonorable intentions underscores his sense of disgrace.   It is interesting that Bellow would choose a spanking as one of Joseph’s “episodes. ”  Joseph behaves in ways that most people may want to behave but are prevented from doing by social mores and the pressure of civilization.  The reader certainly feels Etta got what she deserved, but it is also clear that Joseph’s” freedom of expression” causes problems.  His wife Iva is ashamed of him afterwards and runs from him.  He himself is miserable in his freedom. 

 

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