Rape is a Felony, Stanford White
The issue of consent in Ragtime is one of relatively little importance. Doctorow has plenty of other far greater issues he's chosen to tackle, but I think the idea of consent deserves a few minutes of consideration. From the get-go, consent basically didn't exist in Ragtime. Of course, we know that consent didn't exist in the 1900s, so this is a historically accurate fact of the time period, which we see play out in several couples.
Father and Mother don't seem to have a lot of chemistry in the first place, which is already worrying. But E.L. Doctorow's description of their sex life lacks a certain energy: "When the entire house was asleep he came to her room in the darkness. He was solemn and attentive as befitted the occasion. Mother shut her eyes and held her hands over her ears" (11-12). Mother clearly isn't into what they're doing, which doesn't make the act consensual at all. But she resigns herself to having sex with Father, believing that whatever her life is right now is "the happy years...ahead of us are only great disasters" (12). She is desperately trying to convince herself this is what she wants, that her life is happy now, that she is at the peak of her marriage and she should be enjoying it, even though she's not. She doesn't have input in their relationship, she is simply there to let Father do what he pleases because she is his wife.
Similarly, when we get into Evelyn's story, we find that she doesn't have a lot of input in her relationships with Stanford White and Harry K Thaw. When she was fifteen, Stanford invited her to his apartments, offered her drugged champagne, and when she woke up the next morning "the effulgence of White's manhood lay over her thighs like a baker's glaze" (22). That's straight up rape, even in the world of 1900. And Evelyn's life didn't get much better when Harry K Thaw came into the picture: when the two went to Europe, Harry "pulled off her robe, threw her across the bed and applied a dog whip to her buttocks and the backs of her thighs" (23). That in itself is a problem of abuse, but after Harry murders Stanford and is in jail, Evelyn visits him periodically to keep up the appearance of a happy marriage. She doesn't seem excited about their regular meetings, probably because she's subject to his whim. Notably, he once "demanded proof of her devotion and it turned out nothing else would do but a fellatio" (25). Harry is a coercive man, manipulating Evelyn into giving him what he wants -- she certainly didn't have a choice whether or not to give him a blow job.
So, Ragtime didn't have a lot going for it in terms of consent. At least, it didn't until Sarah and Coalhouse entered the picture. Coalhouse is a quite respectable gentlemen to begin with, and part of that respectability is his treatment of Sarah. His courtship of her is very traditional: he visits her home, politely converses with the family, and importantly, lets her take her time with her decision. He doesn't pressure her too much. He simply comes over every week, and if she doesn't want to see him, he has a nice chat with the family and is on his way. They only get together when she herself chooses to see him. She has consent.
The Eskimos Father sees in the Arctic demonstrate enthusiasm when having sex. The concept of the woman "thrusting her hips upwards to the thrusts of her husband" shocks him -- clearly his wife enjoying sex is an alien concept (74). The Eskimos are unashamedly enthusiastic about sex, implying similarly enthusiastic consent.
What point is Doctorow trying to make with the various levels of consent in Ragtime? At first, I thought he was just sticking to the conventions of the time period, but the more the book went on, the less I believed he was fully committed to those conventions. I mean, just look at what he's doing with Coalhouse's story. So there must be something else going on.
The people who have healthy, consensual relationships are the people who would be viewed as inferior during the 1900s. The people who don't are the ones that would view themselves as superior in every way, from race to social class. Doctorow is blatantly giving the white rich upper class population of America shit, just as he has the entire novel. He enjoys ripping apart the life of the white rich upper class, the life they present as the utopian American dream. In fact, their lives aren't perfect, as he proves with their various nonconsensual sex lives. And on the other side of things, Doctorow demonstrates that the "inferior" people's lives are perfectly healthy and respectable -- a point of view explored through Coalhouse's life as well as through consent.
And for what it's worth, I do remember that Mameh is sexually assaulted and eventually raped by her boss. She is the one exception to Doctorow's specific theme of consent throughout Ragtime. However, her boss has authority over her. Instead of representing the divide between classes, she is the all-too-common situation of being subjected to the will of someone in a position of power.
Nice post. I like how you’ve outlined the differences in how Doctorow depicts romantic relationships between people in his book. It’s weird how Mother is a character shown with very little romance, such as in her inner feelings for Father, yet she is the one most charmed by Coalhouse and Sarah’s courtship. Meanwhile Father gets aggravated when forced to allow their relationship to grow within his house – and I think you could trace that aggravation to the fact that Sarah is completely in control of that relationship. If Sarah doesn’t consent to seeing Coalhouse, he leaves. It’s the opposite of Mother/Father’s dynamic. Combine that with his wife’s new penchant for reading Emma Goldman, and you could see Father’s reaction to Coalhouse as a reaction to the “New World,” a part of which means his sex no longer guarantees him absolute control.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting post! I had not thought about how consent is represented differently based on class. I really like the comparison of Coalhouse and Sarah, Mother and Father, and Evelyne, Stanford White, and Henry K. Thaw. The balance of power in the relationships changes a lot depending on the class of the person.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. You brought up a topic we didn't discuss in class so it was really interesting to read your thoughts. You make very good points about the characters that are in a position to give consent are the ones that are looked upon as inferior in the novel, and if Doctorow did this purposefully, it definitely matched with the rest of his overall theme throughout the book.
ReplyDeleteI loved this post! I think it fits in really well with the line "Sex and death were indistinguishable." That part of the narration was talking about an "in popular culture" look at the early 1900s, where the upper-class white people who have terrible sex lives are in a particular spotlight. That line was mostly taken to mean that sex and death were exciting and tabloid-ready in the same way, but it could also mean that, for the upper class, sex was so dead that it was barely distinguishable from death itself.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really interesting point, because, while I was a little unsettled by Mother and Father's sex life, Evelyn's rape seems to just be a part of her storyline, and I didn't really notice all the times that the issue pops up like you point out. On the one hand, you could look at it as Doctorow very matter of factly pointing out that issues of consent would not have been prevalent in the society of the early twentieth century like it is now. However, Doctorow very rarely points anything out without making some type of commentary on it, and I think that this does highlight exactly the vulnerable position of women during this time period that Emma Goldman was arguing against.
ReplyDeleteThe Mother-Father dynamic takes an interesting turn, when Father returns from the North Pole and starts sensing all these changes in Mother. Remember how disturbed he is by his observations of the Eskimo people having sex--because the woman took such an active role. And when Mother is starting to show a little more consent, taking a more active role herself (she has been reading Emma Goldman . . .), Father doesn't know what to make of it. She lets her hair down, and she "pushes back," as Doctorow puts it. These developments can be seen as the earliest hints of change, with Mother representing a proto-feminist taking-of-control in their conjugal relations, and Father (as usual) is utterly bewildered by these developments.
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