Johanna,

Your message to John puts me in mind of Blake's "The Sick Rose," which can
be read as a commentary on the destructive force of repressed Male sexuality
("the invisible worm that flies in the night").

  Best, Murray

From: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: FW: vaginal spiders
>
> Dear John,
>
> It is nice to see that you have no phobias about cigars or spiders.  Some
> other people do have strong aversive feelings about either or both and it
> is interesting and may be helpful to try to understand them when spiders
> become metaphoric.
>
> I cannot resist mentioning that Congreve's reference seems to me to be to
> the power of a woman's "monkey business."  In any case, I have heard of
> the vagina and surround as looking like a rose.  [A highly regarded but
> once considered to be pornographic novelist/critic in the 40's and 50's
> wrote famously about this as his impression in letters from a NY
> county--the names of whom and which I cannot recall!]  One could even
> speculate on the general appreciation for the beauty of the rose in
> particular among flowers, and its femininity.
>
> As Freud vigorously proposed, the metaphor is a wonderful communicator.
> When strong negative emotions are conveyed in that way, however, I think
> we do well to try to get concrete-minded.  Thus, I cannot think of the
> spider-vagina metaphor without translating it into female body/mother
> associations that involved fearsome ideas from an early time of life.
>
> It seems as if this thread is strong enough to evoke the tensile strength
> of the silk of the web.  I particularly like the bringing in of the
> literary and historical references.   There's a reason Freud thought the
> Humanities were the proper backgorund for appreciating psychoanalysis.
>
> Johanna
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