Justine Ettler’s The River Ophelia (1995b) is, as its subtitle suggests, “an uncompromising love story”, though that description is somewhat of a compromise in itself. Rather than a story of love, it might more accurately be described as a story of desire, and if one considers the assertion by Bersani (Clayton 1989, p. 34) that “desire is intrinsically violent”, Ettler’s text would tend to lend support to that contention. There can certainly be no denial of the violence portrayed in the novel. Indeed, it would seem Ettler’s protagonist, Justine, desires violence to the point of offering herself as victim to the fruits of that desire.

All I wanted was for Sade to scream at me, hit me, throw me out on to the street and then fuck me again (Ettler 1995b, p. 55).

But is Justine a victim of her desires or perhaps, rather, a victim of the dominant patriarchal hegemony of female subservience to, and longing for, the power and thrust of the male phallus?

Ferris (1995) reads The River Ophelia as a text which questions the relationship between power and sex. Ettler (1995a) claims “sex and violence, desire and power, are at the heart of our culture”. Despite considerable advancements for, and reassessments of, the position of women in society, most notably as a result of the women’s movement of the seventies, that culture remains predominantly defined as the domain of the masculine. This dominance, argues MacKinnon (1989, p. 315), is sexual. It is the masculine over the feminine. The man on top is more than a position for sexual intercourse. It is a statement of hegemony. It is an expression of the binary oppositions of top/bottom, active/passive, leader/follower, male/female. It positions women as objects of male desire – and control. Any attempt to subvert this position must, if the patriarchy is to retain its dominance, be met with repulsion, even punishment. Sex for men, as an instrument of power, is the lustful and socially legitimised pursuit of conquests. Young men are expected to ‘sow their seed’. A man who ‘sleeps around’ is lauded for his virility. A woman who displays a similar appetite is frowned upon and deemed debauched. Sex for women, as MacKinnon (1989, p. 318) argues, is determined by their “status as second class … [involving] … restriction and constraint … servility … [and] … enforced passivity”. Justine dares to step out of this sexual hierarchy. For this she becomes not so much the victim, but the recipient of retaliation, whether from others or from herself through self-admonishment and self-mutilation.

In a discussion of Hollywood cinema’s representation of female madness, Leibman (1987, p. 27) claims women are “victims of their own sexuality … [and] … are punished with insanity for expressing their desire”. In a similar fashion to the femme fatale of 1940s film noir and the later ‘bitches from hell’ films of the eighties, Justine becomes obsessed with her desire for Sade to the point of apparent madness. She phones him at work and at home. She watches his apartment from a street corner or a cafe across the road. She imagines him sleeping with other women, women whom she frets must be “more beautiful, sweeter … sexier … more fun … easier” (Ettler 1995b, p. 58). Justine’s daily, and nightly, routine becomes totally and agonisingly concerned with sex, in particular, sex with Sade. It is an obsession which consumes every moment of her life. As Ferris (1995) states:

Masturbation, oral sex, violent penetration, lesbian rape, snorting heroin, drinking coffee, rarely eating, staring at the computer screen, soaking in the bath, walking the streets crying, stalking a careless lover, catching endless taxis: this is the repertoire of Justine’s everyday experience.

This repetitive, compulsive and addictive behaviour indicates, as Irvine (1993, p. 211) suggests, trauma of some sort; and Justine does write about, and discuss with therapist, Juliette, a childhood “poisoned by physical and emotional abuse” (Ettler 1995b, p. 296). Irvine (1993, p. 203) argues “sex is increasingly privileged as fundamental to individual identity and happiness”. It may well be that Justine is endeavouring to overcome a childhood traumatic experience by immersing herself into a bathtub of sexual desire, yet as this desire is either unrequited or results in violence, her anxiety is only compounded. As Justine (Ettler 1995b, pp. 141-142) says:

I made a mistake, I made another mistake, I made another major mistake … I made the old I-can-make-him-fall-in-love-with-me mistake, I made the old love-conquers-all mistake and then I made them over and over again. I’ve repeated the same mistakes a thousand times … and I’m ready to start making a new one now.

Sade (Ettler 1995b, p. 151) tells Justine she is to blame for her own downfall, her pain. Justine (Ettler 1995b, p. 146) blames her sexuality: “It was all her cunt’s fault”. Ultimately, however, Justine is a victim, not of her desires, but of her attempt to challenge hegemonic expectations of the expression of feminine sexuality. Justine did, indeed, make a mistake.

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