I finished a few books this weekend: Interpreter of Maladies (last story has a happy ending!), The Well of Ascension (on to book 3), Dark Summer (entertaining). The one I keep thinking about, though, finished last Friday, is Cutting for Stone. After a quick and dirty Google search, I think my reaction may be in the minority. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)
I’ve seen Cutting for Stone described as an “epic love story”. The one time se xual encounter between Thomas, a surgeon, and Mary, a nurse, happens when Thomas is so drunk he can’t remember it when he wakes up. It causes Mary such great shame that she hides her pregnancy of twins, which ultimately results in her death. Yes, Mary did love Thomas. And Thomas seems to have realized his love at the eleventh hour, but having s ex with a very religious Christian (subordinate) nurse while drunk and/or mentally unbalanced, sounds like rape to me. Thomas later recalls it as being loving and manufactures new memories each time he reflects on the experience. Do I have the wrong end of the stick here? Perhaps. It could have been the culmination of years of mutual love.
The rape that cannot be called by any other name is Marion’s rape of Genet. There is no possible way that a man having s ex with a homeless, unemployed, circumcised woman with tuberculosis was in any way enjoyable for the woman. Genet was so broken down by then that she could not have resisted and probably didn’t feel like it was worth resisting. She may have felt like she “owed” s ex to Marion, since he wanted to marry her from the time they were children, and was hurt by her repeated rejection. (S ex is not a thing to be “owed”.) Marion’s “love” for Genet was obsessive. The love was obviously not returned, and he should have moved on long before. Genet’s rape ultimately led to the death of Shiva (who had consensual s ex with her, albeit with devastating consequences), while the rapist survived.
I’m not crying over the injustice of the story, because life is unjust, and I believe the story is very realistic. Women have suffered and continue to suffer similar abuses the world over. I’m not even wanting a tiny injection of fantasy, where Marion recognizes/owns/acknowledges his role. (Well, OK, maybe a little.) What I really wish is that the novel opened a larger discussion of the treatment of women — women as property or as a subclass, how we can value ourselves, how we can teach our sons to value women, etc.