Strength and Appetite
Lessing noted what she called “a basic female ruthlessness” in herself, and went on to disdain the notion that gender is, in its essence, “socially constructed.” How, she asked, did she acquire her husband? She stole him from another woman. And how did she feel about that? She felt, she said, that it was “my right”: “When I’ve seen this creature emerge in myself, or in other women, I have felt awe.” No need to pursue the question of what was, or was not, a “basic female ruthlessness” in Lessing. No need, in fact, to ask whether anything in Lessing’s description has more to do with women than with men. Critical, however, to consider that the awe Lessing cites—a quality others might describe as pride, pride in being what one is—may well have much to do with the experience of oneself as a being sufficient, whole, indisputable, and yes, beautiful in one’s felt disdain for standards not of one’s own choosing, as for example moral standards that have something to say about a woman’s setting out to steal another woman’s husband. […]
Lessing—so we may say—felt rapture at the absence of impediments associated with anxiety or reluctance. She seemed beautiful to herself precisely in her healthy, uncomplicated understanding of strength and appetite.
—Robert Boyers, “A Beauty”
