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| photo credit: Cait Malilay |
***TRIGGER WARNING:**
This book contains descriptions of physical and emotional abuse, and pedophilia.
Consent is a powerful and raw 2020 memoir written by Vanessa Springora. Written 3 years after the launch of the #MeToo Movement, the 285-page novel recounts her experience as a 14-year-old in a relationship with an older man, a well-respected writer, who Springora only refers to as "G." Springora first encountered Gabriel Matzneff, 50, at a dinner party that was full of literary intellectuals.
She writes that her mother, who works in publishing, mistakenly thinks that he is interested in her, but no. Her mother is far from his type. He prefers teenagers and even younger, some as young as eleven. Didn't she know that? After all, that's what his works are all about. He admits his sexual experiences in the writings that are published by the company her mother works for.
"A father, conspicuous only by his absence, who left an unfathomable void in my life. A pronounced taste for reading. A certain sexual precocity. And, most of all, an enormous need to be seen. All the necessary elements were now in place." - (24)
The opening pages touch on Springora's childhood trauma and first innocent curiosity with sex. She was raised by a single mother after they left her emotionally and physically abusive father.
As she reflects in the memoir, she begins to think that perhaps, subconsciously, she saw him as a way to fill that absence of her father.
At the dinner party, Matzneff smiles at her, which she mistakens for a paternal smile.
It's immediately apparent to her that he knows how to charm his audiences. He takes center stage in all gatherings. The literary elite love him.
What was most surprising for me to read was that French intellectuals, most of which were left-leaning that are still admired and studied today, signed a letter petitioning the imprisonment of three men awaiting trial for having had and photographed sexual relations with two minors aged 13 and 14. Those included Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean- Paul Sartre. The letter stated that the children were not in any way victims of violence, but rather consented.
How was this socially acceptable?
Springora draws from a Foucaldian perspective:
The reason is that in the 1970s, in the name of free love and the sexual revolution, everyone was supposed to be in favor of the liberation of sexual pleasure. Repressing juvenile sexuality was considered to be a form of social oppression, and limiting sexual relationships to those between individuals of the same age constituted a form of segregation (51)
As their relationship progresses, audiences observe how Matzneff controls her, yet she is defensive of him in her mind. She's always making excuses for him, justifying his behavior as acceptable. She's very vulnerable, she doesn't resist and she mistakens sex for love.
What made me angry as a reader was how the mother was complacent with their relationship, despite being aware that he is a pedophile.
Not to mention, the publishing company was profiting from victims' stories told from the perspective of the monster.
It isn't until later that the teenage Springora finds out that he was just using her as another subject matter for his books.
This raises the idea of who gets to tell our stories.
The ending was bittersweet and will still leave the reader questioning who is to blame along with so many other questions that demand reason.
This book is one for the feminists, and for the survivors.
Springora, Vanessa. Consent. HarperVia, 2020.
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