Let's Talk About Sex

            According to Sigmund Freud, everything we do is motivated by underlying sexual desires. No matter what our motives are on the surface, our libido subconsciously drives it all. I don’t know how much value I normally see in psychoanalyzing fictional characters, but I do think that Freud’s theory on sex drives can be applied to fiction as well. In many fictional works, the plot and the characters are driven by sex. Look at Cat’s Cradle, for example. Sexual desire for Mona motivates Jonah to go to San Lorenzo. In The Things They Carried, sex (and love, I suppose) is the reason Mark Fossie ships his girlfriend to Vietnam, the reason Dobbins wears his girlfriend’s panties around his neck, and the reason Jimmy Cross is constantly preoccupied. In Man in the High Castle everything Frank Frink does is with hopes that he can get Juliana back. I could go into more depth on each of these, but I’m going to look at Kindred.

            Rufus is the prime example of sex drive as an underlying motivation. The most obvious example is in his treatment of Alice. He only agrees to let her kids be educated and freed because he doesn’t want to lose his sexual object. His treatment of Dana, on the other hand seems motivated by something else – perhaps gratitude or fear – for most of the novel. He fears abandonment by her so he refuses to let her leave. We find out at the end, however, that sex was behind this as well. His sale of Joe simply because he talks to Dana indicates some desire and jealousy in Rufus. Then when Rufus says that Dana and Alice are one woman, all of his lust for Alice is transferred to Dana. It’s no secret that Rufus has strong sexual desire for Alice, and if he views Dana and Alice as one then he must have the same desire for Dana. His attempted rape of Dana at the end confirms this. So while on the surface he doesn’t want Dana to leave because he fears being alone, his deeper motivation is driven by his libido.