I found it fascinating that Petersberg and London, with their adventurous narrators were back to back. In Petersberg we have Margarita, who is openly admitting that she takes "lovers" for personal gain. For Margarita her sexual relationships don't always equate love, but power, until she falls for Rudi. I find it interesting that of all the men for her to really love, she loves the one who is most unavailable even though he is "hers." Between Rudi's drug use and his various "respectable" or "club" women, he seems to be spending time with everyone but her. Tatyana's conversation with Margarita also seems to be steering Margarita away from Rudi. The difference between Margarita and Marco is that though Margarita is a monogamous relationship, she is still engaging in outside sexual activities for the good of the relationship, while Marco switches from a wider net to a monogamous relationship with Poppy.
At the beginning of Marco's chapter he is sorta kinda in an "open relationship" with Poppy, the mother of his daughter. But he talks quite freely of his various conquests and bedmates. He seems to have a string of one-night stands or short stints of casual sex. I don't think it's right necessarily to label him as commitment phobic, but he seems to rely on his idea of fate and destiny to decide his actions. There are several different women and names he mentions in his chapter, each one a memory triggered by a thing or a place he sees, but he always seems to come back to Poppy or compare them. His luck in the casino, and the near miss of being very rich, then very dead, really pushes him to make an actual decision for himself. Unlike Margarita who's brush with death ends with Rudi being taken from her, Marco's near miss only serves to draw him closer to Poppy.
The two chapters almost serve as a moral foil. Margarita's crimes and relations though small until she kills Jerome, land her in jail. Marco's big mistakes and flustering nets him a wife. I think Margarita's crimes are worse, art theft is a big deal. But did she only do it for love? Marco's failure to settle on any one thing leads him various bad paths, broke, in debt, floundering, but it takes a scare to push him to decide. The two stories back to back have more power as a couple, than the would if they were spread out through the book.
Your examination of sexual mores and codes makes me wonder how the novel's structure (as "global" and thus not grounded in any particular set of social or sexual norms) might complicate or even disrupt readings of normative sexuality or sexual morality. In other words, are we provoked to read characters as differently "transgressive" or "compliant" based upon Mitchell's structure?
ReplyDelete