Student Question
How does Coetzee address sexuality in his novel Disgrace?
Quick answer:
Coetzee addresses sexuality in Disgrace by using it as a means of communication and power dynamics between characters and society. Lurie's failed relationships and Lucy's rape highlight different societal perceptions and personal reactions to sexual acts. The novel also employs meta-fiction to explore themes of authorship and authority, particularly in how different characters interpret events like Lucy's rape and Lurie's relationships.
Sex in this novel is shown as a way of communicating between two people. This is something that not only occurs between the two people involved in the act, but also between the couple and society as a whole. Lurie's various failed relationships demonstrate this. He refuses to listen to Soraya and Melanie outside of his sexual relationship with them, and therefore abuses their relationship. Of course, another important example of sexuality in the story is Lucy and her partner. Because of their homosexual relationship, they are perceived ina different way by society as their relationship does not fit the norm of sexual mores and codes.
Lucy later on views her rape as a way of her assailants expressing their repression and their power over her by marking their territory. She is therefore able to see the rape in perspective and not take it personally. Lurie, who was only able...
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to watch this tragic event unfold from his position of an observer, being locked up, sees it differently and wants justice for his daughter and her assailants. He is unable to understand that justice is something that exists in a very different form if indeed it exists at all in this world that he is a part of.
Sex and sexuality therefore primarily concern relationships and how we communicate with each other, or fail to communicate with each other, in this novel.
How is Coetzee's style reflected in his novel Disgrace?
Coetzee's work often can be described as either meta-fiction or allegory, and sometimes both. In this novel, Coetzee moves away from allegory but employs his style of meta-fiction in two signficant ways.
Despite a shift in terms of "categorical style" in moving away from allegory, Coetzee continues to employ representative situations that function almost symbolically.
Moments that are repeatedly reviewed and analyzed in the narrative become representative episodes, dealing with the moral complexity of a world where guilt is both a choice and an unavoidable consequence of being an actor or agent in the world. (This theme is present in much of Coetzee's work.)
Additionally, Disgrace continues Coetzee's interest in questions authorship and authority (a facet of meta-fiction) in the exploration of how to intepret the meaning of the rape of Lurie's daughter.
...she refuses to view her robbery and rape in the same way as her father and the rest of society.
This notion is also explored in the accusations made against Lurie that lead to his termination at the university, where his version of the story of his relationship with his student loses precedence to the student's version.
Questions of who has the right to tell certain stories are reflected in the opera, an aspect of Coetzee's stylistic choice of meta-fiction.
Coetzee uses the opera to allow Lurie's change to manifest through his approach to the opera and its conception.
To be clear, meta-fiction describes fiction writing that directly concerns the nature of writing, of authorship, authority, and related concepts. Also, meta-fiction, as a term, describes fiction that features "stories within stories". In this novel, Lurie's opera presents a clear example of this aspect of meta-fiction.