Stereotypes and presumptions about gender have always permeated American culture and society. From taboos to perversions, fetishes, sex and everything that goes with it; relationships, marriages and everything else have been fraught with misunderstandings. For most of history, human sexuality remained an unexplored topic, and many people formed their own conceptions of sex through personal experience, religious teaching, or other methods. However, as people began to become more informed about sex and sexuality, many of these ideas changed. The minds were blank, with no prior scientific knowledge of sexuality, which allowed turn-of-the-20th-century science to define the idea of ​​sex for generations. Sigmund Freud was one of the first scientists to comprehensively study sexual behavior in humans, and his psychosexual analysis is the pillar on which many theories about sex and sexuality in humans were formed. Although many of his conclusions turned out to be incorrect, the influence of his work can still be seen in modern ideas about sexuality. Many of Freud's ideas about sexual deviance and abnormality can be seen in AM Homes' Music for Torching. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned'? Get the original essay Struggling couple Paul and Elaine have a very unhealthy marriage and an inadequate sex life, and they take out their frustrations with their situation by participating in unusual activities and unexpected sexual encounters, thoughts and feelings. Both very self-conscious and insecure, Paul and Elaine are constantly nervous about their performance in all aspects of life, especially sex. They view gender as part of a standard that they must conform to and that their gender must fit within certain guidelines to be acceptable. Because of these high stakes and the pressure to be perfect, Paul and Elaine often feel the need to suppress any abnormal feelings regarding their sexual experiences. Sigmund Freud's ideas of repression and inversion from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality are illustrated in Music for Torching through Elaine's lesbian relationship with Pat and Paul's feminine tendencies. Freud argues that when events or desires are too painful or frightening to process, the human brain pushes these ideas or memories into the subconscious so that they do not disrupt daily life. One of the most repressed sexual perversions, according to Freud, is the tendency toward homosexuality. Freud makes a particular distinction about the abnormality of homosexual behavior because he considers the purpose of sex to be to give birth to children. In a homosexual relationship, no children can be created, and this is why Freud argues that it is an unnatural sexual deviance. In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud states that "the normal sexual goal is considered to be the union of the genitals in the body." an act known as copulation, which results in a release of sexual tension and a temporary extinction of the sexual drive” (Freud 15). However, in Music for Torching, Elaine has a homosexual experience with her neighbor, Pat. Although they are both married, they are both very satisfied with this experience. Elaine, however, is terrified that someone will find out not that she cheated on her husband, but that she cheated on him with another woman. In Elaine's case,the idea of ​​having homosexual urges is too abnormal to deal with, and she is instead obsessed with why the encounter took place. She refuses to accept that she may not be completely straight and instead tries to find another reason why she enjoyed having sex with Pat. In the society in which Elaine lives, she is surrounded by heterosexuality on all sides. Her neighbors are all heterosexual couples and she finds his homosexual behavior so strange that she would be excluded from her friends and family because of it. When having sex with Pat, "Whatever Elaine thinks about who she is, what she is, doesn't matter" (Homes 105). Elaine based her entire identity around her sexuality; she focused entirely on the idea of ​​marriage and children, and she never thought she could live any other lifestyle. It says: "Elaine thinks it'll stop in a minute, it won't really happen, it won't go too far." It’s just two women exploring” (Homes 107). This is a perfect example of repression; as soon as Elaine begins to feel desire for a woman, she tries to convince herself that it's not real. When Freud describes sexual deviations, he says that “Some [inverts] accept their inversion as something in the natural course of things…and emphatically insist that the inversion is as legitimate as the normal attitude; others rebel against their inversion and experience it as a pathological constraint” (Freud 3). Elaine certainly rebels against her reversal. She can't help but enjoy her experience with Pat, but she can't accept that it could actually be part of who she is as a person. After meeting Pat, Elaine becomes increasingly frightened and anxious. She wonders, “did this really happen?” Has Pat ever done this? Does Pat think it was all Elaine's fault? And why does Elaine think it's wrong? Why does she blame herself? (Houses 110). As soon as the sex is over, Elaine tries to justify it in her mind, to find a reason for it, besides the fact that she is attracted to women. For Elaine, a heterosexual existence is key to her lifestyle. This reflects one of Freud's observations on homosexuality and/or degeneration, that in degenerates "several serious deviations from normal occur together, and the capacity for effective functioning and survival appears to be seriously impaired » (Freud 4). The idea of ​​homosexuality as something shameful that should be rejected was one that Elaine took to heart. She fears that having sex with Elaine will ruin her identity and prove that she is a bad wife, a bad mother, and a member of a wealthy society. In order to cope with this realization, she pushes her feelings and memories about Pat to the recesses of her mind in a failed attempt to subdue her desire. Second, there is the idea of ​​Paul's feminine tendencies. Although he often tries to act like the man of the house, Paul frequently faces bouts of fear and insecurity related to his sense of masculinity. During their stay with Pat and George, Paul shaves his legs and puts on a nightgown, and when Elaine asks him about it, he replies, "I feel pretty" (Homes 56). Paul frequently challenges masculine concepts in his private life with Elaine, and yet he still feels the need to dominate her and impose his masculine stature. According to Freud, one explanation for Paul's behavior could be that he does not find satisfaction in his current sexual relationship with Elaine, and therefore uses other tactics to try to achieve fulfillment. Freud states that "aa certain degree of fetishism is therefore usually present in normal love, particularly in those stages where the normal sexual goal seems inaccessible or its realization prevented” (Freud 20). Perhaps Paul is acting more feminine in order to connect with Elaine, who is struggling with her attraction to women. Although this is possible according to Freud, there are other aspects of Paul's character that suggest that his femininity is more than just a phase caused by his marriage. He admits that he still loves his college roommate with whom he had homosexual relations, but he himself will never admit that he is anything other than straight. In order to keep up appearances, Paul is forced to deny the feminine aspects of himself that we see. emerge throughout the novel. In this way, Homes' interpretation of the characters might differ from Freud's. While Freud promoted the idea of ​​penis envy (a woman is jealous of men due to the phallic nature of male genitalia that she can never obtain), Homes seems to imply that Paul desires a more feminine. By doing traditionally feminine things like shaving his legs and arms, he shows that there is a definite feminine side to his personality. Although Freud makes no mention of a male alternative to penis envy, the idea that men have womb envy was proposed by psychiatrist Karen Horney. She states that “when we begin, as I did, to analyze men after a fairly long experience of analyzing women, we have a most surprising impression of the intensity of this desire for pregnancy, for childbirth. and motherhood” (Horney 1967, Horrocks 82). ), and this could be an explanation for Paul's actions. Both Paul and Elaine are struggling to fulfill their roles within their home and marriage, and one of the reasons Paul feels unfulfilled as a father figure and masculine presence could be because he has a inherent jealousy towards women, but he suppresses it to maintain his image as a man. . According to his psychoanalysis, Freud generally does not criticize men's flaws as he does women, because he views the male form as more ideal and desired. Although a woman might be jealous of a man's body, according to Freud's ideas, a man would never desire. be a woman. Homes challenges this idea by presenting Paul as even more feminine than Elaine in many ways. While Elaine works well and is fairly calm during the crisis at the end of the novel, Paul is frantic and distraught; something a traditionally manly character wouldn't display. Rather than being strong and stoic, he descends into hysteria while his wife takes on the role of protector and defender. The fact that Freud does not include this position on a change in masculinity shows the drawbacks of his theories and research. Although it appears that Paul is neither gay nor straight, Freud probably would not have classified him as bisexual, as Freud was critical of this idea, referring to "a female brain in a male body" as "the expression in its crudest form. form” (Freud 8). Rather than operating from an objective and purely scientific point of view, Freud relied on his own experiences and behaviors for his research, which often led him to draw conclusions about sexuality that were not applicable to everyone. Homes presents the character of Paul in a way that Freud would never have imagined, and in this way, Homes' fictional text teaches the reader more about male sexuality than Freud's scientific text. Even if Freud was correct that Paul was exhibiting repression, Freud would likely have associated Paul's actions with.