Motherhood, Sex, and a Woman's Deepest Fears

By Deborah Orr, Independent UK. Posted May 28, 2009.

I was plagued for a long time myself, in the moments before sleep, with worries about the low sash window at the top of the house, with a long drop to a concrete staircase below it. Over and over again, I'd see my naked, tiny children defenestrated, and all because I'd been too lazy to fit any window locks. Occasionally, I'd perform an exercise during the day, touching the window-locks, reassuring myself that I'd had them fitted before any baby had arrived in the house. But that didn't stop the nightmare visions that screamed: Lazy woman! Bad mother!

My own mother had her own version of this strange self-flagellating ritual. Whenever my dad was on night-shift, she'd either drag herself out of bed to check the telly plug was out, or, if she was just too exhausted – and these thoughts usually come when one is just too exhausted – call for me to do it for her. I never minded popping down, to check that, as always, she'd removed the plug. I understood without being told that my mother feared being the agent of the death of her precious children in a terrifying inferno.

I don't think I'm the only woman who finds that one's relationship with the sexual body changes after childbirth. On the contrary, the complaint that babies ruin sex lives is much repeated, Von Trier himself left his first wife when she was pregnant with their second child, for the babysitter. It's not hard to analyze what might have got him thinking about such things.

Nor do I think my mother and I are the only women to have suffered from obsessive and irrational thoughts about our ability to keep our children safe. The maternal psyche, at the best of times, can be fragile.

I value von Trier's films because they make me think about things that I'd rather not think about, things that are rarely acknowledged, and often those films make me angry or distressed. Breaking The Waves, in which sheltered, simple Bess McNeill is driven mad by her paralyzed husband's demands that she should have sex with other men, then describe her encounters to him, was one of the best, most awful films I have ever seen.

An eminent and admirable film critic once told me that he'd hated it, and that he had purposefully taken his wife to see it. She'd hated it too, which relieved him. If she'd liked it – and he had to know – he wouldn't be able to bear the things this said about her. Men and women alike are divided by von Trier's films.

The director denies being a misogynist, though he admits that he finds female sexuality "terrifying". Like most men who find female sexuality terrifying, he likes pornography. But he is also interested in what the effects on women are, when their sexuality is challenged by motherhood, or their life becomes an exercise in acting out the sexual fantasies of their crippled husband. He is interested in what goes on in the minds of women under stress. If he is a misogynist, then he is a curious one, and not the more usual bland or annihilating sort.

Perhaps our popular culture is simply too fond of blaming the messenger. I think misogyny, intended or unintended, acted out by women or by men, is merely von Trier's favorite subject. This subject that is paid lip-service to, then bundled out of sight, much too often for society's good. That's why I'll be going to see Antichrist at the very first opportunity, and hoping that it gets the serious critical attention it deserves.

See more stories tagged with: sex, gender, women, motherhood, sexuality, lars von trier