Sex and Social Order: The Transformation of Intimacy by Anthony Giddens

The evolution of modern capitalist and democratic society is inextricably bound to the development of human sexuality. As economic needs shifted and classes formed, the role of reproduction in sexual relations began to wane while the notion of romantic love for personal fulfillment gained significance. Industrialization and advancements in contraception radically altered interactions between men and women, while the rise of psychoanalysis recalibrated constructions of gender identities. Contemporary ideas about sexuality, as the relationships between sex, love, gender, and intimacy are a direct result of modernity. What was once private was now being brought into the light of the public domain. During the nineteenth century, relationships that were once initiated due to financial need or the pull of procreation began to revolve around passion and courtship. In his text The Transformation of Intimacy, Anthony Giddens posits that the rise of the modern global and democratic society fundamentally changed the shape of all human interactions, from sex to love to pure companionship.

Giddens' theory focuses on what he considers a progressive process of democratization and the modern social and sexual life. His interest in sexuality stems from the fact that few discourses on the subject interrogate its connection to love and gender. Societal advances towards equality between men and women, although nowhere near complete, have created what Giddens considers a sexual revolution and emancipation from reproduction. He uses the term "plastic sexuality" to describe sex free from procreation and considers it able to be molded "as a trait of personality and thus intrinsically bound up with the self" (2). For Giddens, there is no question as to whether sex is natural or cultural; "sexuality is a social construct, operating within fields of power, not merely a set of biological promptings which either do or do not find direct release" (23). The author attempts to trace and develop his theory of plastic sexuality through Foucault's discourse on the "repressive hypothesis," in which the control and discipline essential to modern institutions cause internal repression. He then considers the idea of love and sex as both addictions and formations of codependency, and the challenges to both of these when both women and men's sexual freedom increases. As power roles shift, the link between sexuality and democracy becomes ever more apparent to Giddens. Intimacy is both a construct of and an influence on modern civilization.

Michel Foucault's early writings accepted the idea that the benefits of modern civilization come at the cost of increased self-control and discipline over internal desires and drives. However, his view shifted to include the corollary that, while modern social order is somewhat intrinsically bound to disciplinary power, power can also be a means of producing pleasure. Foucault is primarily concerned with the development of secretive sexuality during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, evident in the medical campaigns against masturbation and the limitations place on women; "female sexuality was recognized and immediately crushed- treated as the pathological origin of hysteria" (21). Giddens reaffirms Foucault's belief that sexuality during this time period was essentially an open secret- regarded as unnatural and even perverse, but obsessively discussed through a scientific or medical perspective. It was during this time that sexuality began to be endowed with great power, evidenced by the psychoanalytic theories of Freud which tied sexuality to reflexivity and identity, claiming it as a core aspect of the human experience. In concurrence with Foucault, Giddens concludes that "sex is not driven underground in modern civilization. On the contrary, it comes to be continually discussed and investigated. It has become a part of 'a great sermon', replacing the more ancient tradition of theological preaching" (19). However, Giddens faults Foucault for neglecting the pervasive phenomenon of idealistic and romantic love, finding both equally important for understanding issues of modern society and identity formation.

Giddens then introduces his study on romantic love. He specifies the distinctions between passionate love and romantic love; passion is universal while romance is culture-specific; passion is not recognized as a sufficient reason for marriage; passion is disruptive to the social order and therefore dangerous to the democratic civilization. As the Enlightenment brought about the modern society, the institution of marriage was allowed to shift from an economic or purely functional union to one associated with freedom of choice. Romantic love both broke from and embraced sexuality and introduced the role of the self and the question of intimacy. However, romantic love was essentially feminized, and "the intrinsically subversive character of the romantic love complex was for a long while held in check by the association of love with marriage and motherhood" (46). This distinction between sex and romance further developed the idea that female sexuality was linked to marriage, and created the stereotypes of the "respectable woman" versus the "loose woman" which still exist today. Love led to marriage which led to sex, and there were no substitutions in that chain of events. When the home became the female sphere of influence, the cultivation of love became her duty as well. Hence, romantic love became a tool for subordination and a means of distancing the woman from the external world, confining her completely to the house and husband.

Giddens then devotes chapters four, five and six to the topics of commitment, addiction, and codependency, focusing primarily on contemporary studies and their implications. Gender is an underlying issue for each of these discussions, and Giddens now turns his focus to men and the development of a problematic masculinity over the past two centuries. According to the author, "since the beginnings of the transformations affecting marriage and personal life, men by and large have excluded themselves from the developing domain of the intimate. The connections between romantic love and intimacy were suppressed, and falling in love remained closely bound up with access: access to women whose virtue or reputation was protected until, at least, a union was sanctified by marriage" (60). These convoluted ideas developed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century as modern ideas of masculinity evolved. Men latched onto identities created through work, material possessions, and solidarity among the male sex, ignoring their emotional needs and their desire for intimacy with women. Giddens states that male sexuality became increasingly compulsive and, as modern social life developed, increasingly focused on control of the woman. As time progresses and control begins to shift or wane, practices of misogyny and violence towards women are cultivated.

The final chapters of The Transformation of Intimacy address the question of whether or not sexuality is the key to modern civilization and discuss the idea of intimacy as democracy. He incorporates the views of two theorists, Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, in an attempt to reach an answer. Reich despised bourgeois marriage and saw in the cultivation of sexuality the key to dissatisfaction with modernity. "Reich believed that sociopolitical reform without sexual liberation is impossible: freedom and sexual health are the same thing" (163). Once again Giddens stresses that sexuality and power are inherently related to social organization, and that any radical changes in the gender politics of modern civilization require a transfiguration of male and female sexualities. Marcuse places a strong emphasis on the unconscious and believes that, through its recovery, the mechanisms of social repression can be uncovered and therefore eradicated. Giddens acknowledges that very few people subscribe to the beliefs of these two men, yet he sees in their writings the opportunity for radical social critique and change. For Giddens, democratic norms "sever sexuality from distributive power, above all from the power of the phallus. The democratization implied in the transformation of intimacy includes, but also transcends, 'radical pluralism'… sexual emancipation consists in integrating plastic sexuality with the reflexive project of self" (194). Giddens mentions the issue of commodified sexuality in the capitalistic society, but focuses more on the repressive order of modern capitalist institutions and the tension between a simultaneous privatization and publication of modern sexual lives.

Giddens equates sexual emancipation with sexual democracy- a new social order in which sexuality is expressed without compulsion or dependency, representative of a total equality between genders. He believes that sexual emancipation "can be the medium of a wide-ranging emotional reorganization of social life" (182) and cultural norms of relationship behaviors. If true democracy is ever to be achieved, if the pure relationship and total sexual emancipation is ever to exist, it is crucial to recognize the correlations and interactions between love, sexuality, gender, and intimacy.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's novel The Silent Partner investigates sexual organization and subordination in both the upper and working classes of the nineteenth century. Sexuality is shown in socially constructed terms as a distinct apparatus of the contractual relationship of marriage. Phelps's sentimental realism contrasts love and marriage as two completely separate functions, and Perley Kelso's shifts in beliefs and desires demonstrates the complicated nature of love as both liberating and subjugating.

Giddens equation of sexual and romantic emancipation with that of democracy can be seen as an emerging, if somewhat complicated concept in The Silent Partner. The character of Perley represents a burgeoning female desire for greater levels of equality in the social, professional, and economic spheres. Her fiancée Maverick, however, retains a conservative viewpoint on the issue of women in the workforce; he mandates that she cannot be a partner in her father's company, causing Perley "for the first time in her life… to feel ashamed of being a woman… A faint sense of degradation at being so ignorant that she could not command the respect of two men sufficiently to the bare discussion of it possessed her" (Phelps 59). One of the most radical actions that Perley takes is her decision to end her engagement to Maverick, based on realizations she has fostered since her denial of a position in the company. However, as Perley is already financially independent due to her inheritance, the radical nature of her choice is diminished; if she had made a true sacrifice and forsaken her class standing for her principles and desire for social change, perhaps she could be seen as a revolutionary, one who heralded the feminine liberation from man and marriage alike.

Perley's dissatisfaction with the marital union continues to develop, even as she encounters a man that she could have truly loved. Her relationship with Stephen Garrick complicates Giddens' supposition that during the evolution of modern society the institution of marriage shifted from functional, economic union to a representation of a newfound freedom of choice for both women and men. For Perley, marriage remains too oppressive and commodified to participate in whatsoever. She explains to Stephen that "I have no time to think of love and marriage, Mr. Garrick. That is a business, a trade, by itself to women. I have too much else to do" (Phelps 260); furthermore, the author writes that "Possible wifehood was no longer an alluring dream. Only its prosaic and undesirable aspects represented themselves to her mind" (261). Despite the fact that Perley can technically choose to marry for love, the institution itself is so embedded in a society of male dominance that its participants automatically become stripped of agency and civil rights, no matter their own personal beliefs. As Giddens discusses, in the nineteenth century romantic love is marred by its intractable ability to confine women and prevent them from self-actualization.

Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is set in a world completely opposite that of Perley's, yet also depicts the tricky nature of romantic and emotional sexuality in a society where almost all relationships between males and females are rooted in economics. Published in 1893, the story shows the prominence of prostitution in this time period due to economic necessity for the women of the working class. Crane does not sympathize with his title character; he displays a belief discussed by Giddens that female sexuality outside of the bond of marriage is wickedly disgraceful and should be punished accordingly.

Maggie suffers a hellacious life of poverty in abuse in her tenement home. One of her only sources of reprieve is her relationship with Pete, whom she first perceives as "the beau ideal of a man… Under the trees of her dream-gardens there had always walked a lover" (Crane 52). Her foray into a relationship with a man immediately teaches her a lesson in sexual-finance, when Pete asks her to "give us a kiss for takin' yeh the deh show, will yer?" (Crane 58). With no other source of information on how men and women are supposed to interact, this exchange of sex for what Maggie desires becomes almost ingrained. As her sexuality develops, class distinctions become more prominent, and she begins to fear becoming a spinster like the old women she works alongside. "She speculated how long her youth would endure. She began to see the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable" (Crane 59). She blatantly understands her beauty and its sex appeal as commodifiable; she moves from wanting commodities to becoming one.

Crane's story depicts the confused value systems of an Enlightened capitalist society. When Maggie enters her career as a prostitute she gains financial independence and the goods that she so desired: "She… bended forward in her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements" (Crane 87). In a capitalist society, materialism is linked to happiness, yet Maggie is denied a family and a home in her pursuit of wealth. Maggie's death reflects Crane's opinion that, while her life was hardly worth living, her decision to turn to the streets makes her undeserving of life in any way. Capitalism forces a degree of materialism, an inability to live happily with any degree of economic want, yet modern society insists that only certain occupations are acceptable and viable. In Maggie, the tension between public and private sexual lives and experiences cannot be resolved; either one chooses a life of pure poverty or suffer the consequences.

Paul's Case by Willa Cather is yet another story documenting the sexual implications of social mobility and class constraints in modern American society. Paul, a troubled young man who is described in underlying tones of homosexuality, falls victim to the unattainable materialistic desires of the middle class. His powerful fantasies of luxury are fed by his father's frugality, and fuel his sense of isolation from the world around him.

Anthony Giddens believes that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries male sexuality and identity became compulsively centered on control of women. This focus cultivated a rise in misogynistic violence. Cather's story presents a problem to Giddens' theory; Paul has no interest in women and does not define himself in any sexual terms. However, his character is feminized, although he hides his sensitive and delicate side: he "shook over his fingers a few drops of violet water from the bottle he kept hidden in his drawer" (Cather 169) to cover up the foul-smelling soap he must use in his father's house. He obsesses over his appearance, which can only be viewed in a positive light once he steals from his father's company and runs away to metropolitan New York; "He spent more than an hour in dressing, watching every stage of his toilet carefully in the mirror. Everything was quite perfect; he was exactly the kind of boy he had always wanted to be" (Cather 174).

Paul is, if not a definitional a homosexual, definitely more representative of the feminine than the masculine. His inability to come to terms with his identity as a middle-class male is one of the factors that leads to his suicide, but Giddens might suspect another underlying one. If indeed male sexuality and identity formation revolves around violence against women, than Paul can only understand himself through self-mutilation. He must be violent against his feminine self in order for his masculine side to exhibit dominance and control. He cannot reconcile his dual sexual identity, and therefore he cannot live. The power of the phallus overcomes his homosexual or feminine desires, and ultimately he takes his own life.

Henry James's tale In the Cage supports the theory that changes in societal models inherently and profoundly alter definitions of sexuality as well as sexual roles and identities. As ideas of romantic love emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, economic motivations for marriage became less important and prominent, although not necessarily less present. The heroine of In the Cage toys with the idea of love for love's sake, and places huge emphasis on her romanticized fantasy life, yet ultimately succumbs to the barriers of capitalist society which require a woman to seek a respectable husband who can offer her support.

The shocking idea of love or sex emancipated from financial need exists in Henry James as a nascent philosophy. In her fascination with Captain Everard, the heroine exhibits an emerging 'plastic sexuality,' Anthony Giddens' term for sex free from reproduction and reflexive of self-identity, but ultimately succumbs to more conventional modes of sexual interactions and relationships. For a few brief moments she forgets the economic difficulties which have forced her to consent to marrying Mudge and becomes completely absorbed in her romantic obsession with Captain Everard. She fantasizes about the possibility of seeing the Captain outside of Cocker's and revealing how much she knows of his correspondence with Lady Bradeen- but only for a price beyond legal tender. " 'I know too much about a certain person now not to put it to you- excuse my being so lurid- that it's quite worth your while to buy me off. Come therefore: buy me!'… It wouldn't certainly be anything so gross as money, and the matter accordingly remained rather vague, all the more that she was not a bad girl" (James 207). The heroine is caught between conflicting social constructs; one part of her subscribes to negative representations of sexuality, equating sex with badness, while another facet of her imagination is titillated at the idea of commodifying and essentially prostituting herself.

The context of James' story marks the prevalence of the idea that romantic love, sexuality and intimacy underscore the development of the self. Yet just as the aristocratic men and women who utilize the heroine's services at the post office adopt multiple pseudonyms, the girl herself is comprised of multiple and contradictory identities. She separates her physical self from her inner mind, and was "perfectly aware that her imaginative life was the life in which she spent most of her time" (James 178). Evidently, her fantasy life is far more powerful and pleasurable than the banality of her occupation and engagement to Mudge. While her engagement represents a novel freedom of choice that had not existed in prior decades, she must still base her ultimate choice on finances and not fancy. Her romantic love for Everard, which can never be actualized, becomes a means for subordination which distances her from reality, causing her to exist internally and preventing her dissatisfaction from becoming so great that she actually takes radical action and denounces her relationship with Mudge.

As the story comes to a close, the heroine is made aware of her many errors in judgment, one in particular being Everard's socioeconomic status. When she finds that he is in debt, her decision to marry Mudge is only reinforced. While she is technically sexually emancipated and free to love whomever she chooses, sexual democracy has still not been achieved. The girl is not technically dependent on Mudge- she is capable of supporting herself and her mother through her own wages- yet the American democratic capitalist institution has ingrained within her a notion of class mobility and a hunger for improved class status. Ultimately, Mudge is the better option, as the grocer's "high white apron resembled a front of many floors" (James 199). Henry James presents a world in which the modern gender politic is shifting as sexual identities adapt, while still atop a foundation that is firmly rooted in economic need and class inequality.

In Kate Chopin's short story "The Storm," the character of Calixta exemplifies the type of sexual emancipation the Anthony Giddens values and deems necessary for a true democratic society. While her husband and child are away from home, Calixta is visited by her former lover Alcée. Without hesitation she succumbs to a passionate sexual desire for Alcée, and after their lustful encounter she refrains from any sort of guilt or remorse. Yet Chopin's language used to describe their affair still reinforces male dominance and female submission. "The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached. When he touched her breasts they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery" (Chopin). In true patriarchal fashion, the man 'possesses' the woman while the woman 'gives up' her body.

Sexual oppression is furthermore expressed in this erotic tale with the concluding thoughts of Clarisse, Alcée's wife. After Alcée relieves his sexual frustration through Calixta, he writes to his wife that can prolong her stay in Biloxi if she so chooses. "As for Clarisse, she was charmed upon receiving her husband's letter. She and the babies were doing well. The society was agreeable; many of her old friends and acquaintances were at the bay. And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something which she was more than willing to forego for a while" (Chopin). It is clear that Clarisse feels powerless in her marriage; she is forced to participate in a sexual life that offers her no enjoyment. In order to uphold her wifely duties she does so without complaint, yet it is evident how suppressing she finds this arrangement. Clarisse offers a classic case of a situation in which sexuality must be severed from the control of the phallus. While the story is set in a time in which the institution of marriage was beginning to shift from an economic union to a representation of choice, the reader sees that the economic and practical functions of marriage still persevere more often than not.

"The Storm" also reinforces Giddens' belief that at this time female sexuality and reputation were inextricably linked to marriage. During Calixta and Alcée's courtship they had not succumbed to their desire, yet now that Calixta is married and has already lost her virginity Alcée sees no problem in making love to her. "… In Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now-well, now-her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts" (Chopin). In a strange twist of reasoning, Calixta's former purity had been the one thing that prevented Alcée from having sex with her; without marriage, Calixta was not allowed to be sexually active. Marriage made her sexuality acceptable, even respectable, which provided Alcée an excuse for taking her now, after they both had married others. It is a strange society indeed when extramarital sex is deemed more honorable than premarital sex, but in a world in which a single woman is worthless without her virginity, waiting until after marriage is the only option.

Pauline Hopkins magazine novel Winona complicates the idea of sexual identities with issues of race and bondage. In Winona, traditional enslavement of colored people by wealthy white men is portrayed as fundamentally evil by the narrator, yet the text reinforces a more subtle form of emotional slavery that exists between men and women of all races. Even before beautiful young Winona is captured and taken to a Missouri plantation, she is essentially a possession, first of her father White Eagle and then, after his death, to Mr. Maybee. Completely a commodity, she is passed from man to man as she matures and her sexuality stirs and begins to develop. This theme is reinforced during an incident in which Winona is quite literally passed from one man to another; during her escape from the Colonel, she is thrown from Warren's arms to Judah. "Judah, standing upright in the boat, caught Winona in his arms as deftly as a ball is caught and tossed from one player to another" (Hopkins 344).

It is incredibly difficult if not impossible to believe that Winona could create any sort of sexual freedom for herself while she is legally the property of another human being. Even her brother, Judah, regards himself as her protector, implying a sense of ownership. He tells Maxwell "If help does not come I have sworn to kill her before she shall become slavery's victim. It is impossible for me to put into words the fate of a beautiful female slave on these plantations; the torture of hell cannot surpass it" (Hopkins 334-335). Judah may believe he is saving his sister by ending her life before she can be brutally raped or sodomized, but by doing so he negates any independence, and freedom of expression, any agency that Winona might still possess. Just as Shakespeare's Titus murders Lavinia after her rape and mutilation, Judah wishes to save himself from shame and guilt rather than ask for and grant the woman's own wishes.

Winona's tale is also one of romantic love, one of Giddens' favorite topics. The young girl is desperately enamored with the Englishman Warren Maxwell. The social beliefs of the time are easily identified by Winona's belief that marriage to Maxwell would be the ultimate freedom. She fantasizes about herself in terms of strict gender roles as wife and mother, not as an independent woman with her own sexual identity. Giddens claims "how important the confining of female sexuality to marriage was as a mark of the 'respectable' woman. For this at the same time allowed men to maintain their distance from the burgeoning realm of intimacy and kept the state of being married as a primary aim of women… ideas about romantic love were plainly allied to women's subordination in the home, and her relative separation from the outside world" (43-47). This belief is absolutely evident in Hopkins' text. Winona learns about marriage while enslaved, and hence is blind to the similarities in subordination between the two. "In the life she had led as a slave, this poor child had learned things from which the doting mother guards the tender maidenhood of her treasure with rigid care; so the girl thought of marriage or its form, with the utmost freedom. No, she would try to serve this man in some way, in the course of her life… nothing was too great to render him in service for his noble generosity" (Hopkins 356). For Winona, a marital union represents freedom from her bonds and an escape from the ownership of the Colonel. But her fantasy is dreamt of within the context of an undemocratic world absent of feminine freedom and intimacy, which negates its liberating aspects.

Winona's desire for traditional sexual identification through marriage may appear to negate any sort of 'plastic sexuality' for her character, but one radical scene suggests otherwise. For one of the first times ever in American literature, Hopkins alludes to an independent female sexuality as expressed through masturbation and self-achieved orgasm. "Some impulse of the wild things among whom she had lived drove [Winona] to a hole in under the bluff. It was necessary to descend to find it. Presently she was in a tunnel which led into a cavern… She had come upon the eternal now as she lay in a sweet stupor until forced to arouse herself… With rapture she saw again the hopeless passion in Warren's eyes when he left her. Her hands and feet were cold, her muscles knotted, her face white with the force of the cry that she projected through space, "Come back to me!"" (Hopkins 375-376). This autonomy of action no doubt represents some sort of emancipation, some sense of sexual pleasure for one's self and not men. This remarkable account is unfortunately crushed by the novel's ending; Winona and Warren move to England together with plans to ultimately marry, as they cannot do so amongst the prejudices of the American legal and social system. Winona possessed an opportunity to go against the grain, to take a step towards a radical reconstruction of sexual beliefs and hierarchies, but in the end submitted to traditional social order.

Edith Wharton's novel Summer expresses a revolutionary sexual awakening by the character Charity Royall. Certain aspects of Charity's relationship with her lover Lucius Harney echo Kate Chopin's writing. Like Alcée, Harney necessitates a kind of degradation of Charity to occur before he can find her sexually accessible. He subconsciously must separate his feelings of sexual desire and attraction from feelings of genuine affection and tenderness. In Freudian terms, because he cannot desire a mother figure because of pure affection, he is forced to degrade his love object in order to distinguish her from the mother. This need for degradation, for humiliation in order to desire, represents a form of masochism and psychological abuse that makes true intimacy impossible to achieve in the eyes of Giddens. At times Charity seems to be on the verge of sexual emancipation: "In the obscurity she felt her head clasped by two hands: her face was drawn backward, and Harney's lips were pressed on hers. With sudden vehemence he wound his arms about her, holding her head against his breast while she gave him back his kisses. An unknown Harney had revealed himself, a Harney who dominated her and yet over whom she felt herself possessed of a new mysterious power" (Wharton 104). But this power is immediately negated when she is publicly berated by Mr. Royall, giving Harney a new perception of her as a lower creature, a mere sex object for his pleasure.

When Charity reveals her mountain origins to Lucius Harney her status sinks even lower in his eyes. Immediately after this confession Harney is once again overtaken by desire, a reaction to her further degradation. "As she spoke she became aware of a change in his face. He was no longer listening to her, he was only looking at her, with the passionate absorbed expression she had seen in his eyes after they had kissed on the stand at Nettleton. He was the new Harney again, the Harney abruptly revealed in that embrace, who seemed so penetrated with the joy of her presence that he was utterly careless of what she was thinking or feeling" (Wharton 115-116). Charity is right to assume that Harney disregards her thoughts and feelings, but mistakes it for a kind of romantic love that does simply not exist between the pair. She misinterprets his lust for true love and affection, which leads her down a dangerous path towards misguided sexual intercourse with Harney.

Harney's sociosexual subconscious arguably misleads Charity into her sexual awakening, and without any understanding or equality between them there is obviously a lack of intimacy as well. Giddens views this troublesome sexuality as a danger to democracy. "For women, the problem was to constitute love as a medium of communication and self-development- in relation to children as well as to men. The claiming of female sexual pleasure came to form a basic part of the reconstitution of intimacy, an emancipation as important as any sought after in the public domain" (Giddens 178). If Charity cannot claim her own sexual pleasure without being subjugated and degraded by her male lover, she can achieve neither intimacy nor emancipation, both of which Giddens views as essential for a true democracy.

One of the first truly sexually independent female characters is found in Lorelai of Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lorelai knows exactly what she wants- jewelry, gowns, and galas- and knows exactly how to get it from all of the men that surround her. While her material desires are shaped by society, her sexual independence is free from social constraints. She possesses a kind of sexual agency previously unseen in American literature, exhibiting a thrilling freedom from fear of social ostracism for her sexual behavior. She plays men without shame or regret, dropping them as soon as she tires of their infatuation with her, or if they fail to provide for her financially as she sees fit.

But despite the fact that Lorelai blatantly uses sex as a form of currency to obtain what she wants, a hierarchy of women still exists in her world. She states that "I would not sublet the apartment because Dorothy sublet her apartment when she went to Europe last year and the gentleman who sublet the apartment allowed girls to pay calls on him who were not nice" (Loos 20). 'Nice' being the operative word to distinguish Lorelai's lifestyle from that of an explicit prostitute. If Loos novel was truly a depiction of Anthony Giddens sexual utopia, whores would be just as 'nice' as any other woman. Yet Loos must still be applauded for her creation of a woman who owns her sexuality. Lorelai operates in a world in which women and sex are still commodities, but she has found a way to manipulate the system in such a way as to still retain her own sexual identity and power. Unfortunately, Lorelai's gold-digging nature and shallow desires make her an unacceptable candidate for true intimacy; her materialism and selfish nature prevent her from transforming physical sex and romantic love into a kind of ungendered democratic relationship. Her sexuality is 'plastic' in its separation from reproduction, but its entrenchment in capitalist materialism renders it incapable of transcending social order.

Each of these authors reinforce Giddens' theory that men and women have a long way to go towards developing total sexual emancipation, and towards creating a world in which intimacy is the ultimate basis for relationships and hence society itself. These stories prove that sexuality is indeed a social construct that is indistinguishably connected to power and hierarchy. Modern social institutions continue to sustain traditional values of sexuality, both feminine and masculine. Yet the evolution of the aforementioned characters provides hope that radical changes in society can one day be achieved. Although it occurred slowly, the shift of female identification from Perley to Lorelai offers immense encouragement. As Giddens writes, "The possibility of intimacy means the promise of democracy… The structural source of this promise is the emergence of the pure relationship, not only in the area of sexuality but also in those of parent-child relations, and other forms of kinship and friendship. We can envisage the development of an ethical framework for a democratic personal order, which in sexual relationships and other personal domains conforms to a model of confluent love"(188). Many social, psychological and economic barriers still stand in the way of this ideal future, but as society develops it becomes more and more clear that intimacy can one day be reconstructed into its most pure form, a form which includes all people regardless of sex, class or race.