Sex and
sexlessness are recurrently referred to in the same suggestion as work and economics, seemingly to entail that both spheres come under roughly the same series of standards.
But it is the only means available to Sue in danger of total personality breakdown of gaining a hold on her identity of gaining a hold on a self which in its infantile
sexlessness and hatred of its femaleness had won the hearts of those standing in judgement upon her (Morgan 131-132).
And Bertha, if she is in fact experiencing a sexual awakening, demonstrates the possibility that a woman who chooses a more domesticated life need not succumb to the Victorian 'stereotypes of female
sexlessness and purity', (21) but could also embrace her sexuality.
That decision also instantiates in a 1920s setting, the conjunction of sexuality and
sexlessness, androgyny and femininity, slimness and regal beauty that is the heritage of Salome--and becomes the occasion for yet another Jewish woman to resignify herself in a modern guise.
It was the first true adult scandal for Bieber, who's never had to project the outright
sexlessness of his Disneyraised teen pop peers, but who was nevertheless still a teenager when the charges landed, and no tabloid regular.
Uncannily, and somewhat as in the post-Cubist work of Picasso, the face becomes both face-in-itself and its own mirror, its fusion of self and other sterilizing encounter with the outer world to yield
sexlessness. This synthesis might be compared with the "face-work" of Erving Goffman, which is the "line" represented by the individual: "that person's face clearly is something that is not lodged in or on his body, but rather something that is diffusely located in the flow of events" (Goffman 7).
Yet Fuller also makes it resonantly clear that it was possible to evoke a sexual and desiring life, even for women, the apparent
sexlessness of whom was rapidly becoming established dogma.
In the hands of a greater comedian, Jamie's complaint of
sexlessness so early on in the marriage might have unleashed a brilliant bit that dissected, painfully and humorously, the anxiety men feel whenever their virility is called into question.