I’m reading Rabbit, Run by John Updike. At one point in the book, Rabbit is flirting/speaking to Ruth (page 65 of the Fawcett publication). A line reads, “he puts his arm around her and begs, 'Come on now, be a pleasant cunt.” (moments later) "“to his surprise her arm mirrors his, comes around his waist.”
what??
No fall-out, none. Her reaction suggests that he had just said “be a nice girl” or “be a lamb.” I was thinking that perhaps Updike is painting Ruth as a submissive woman (she is, so far) and thus doesn’t react to be called a cunt. or did the word have a completely different connotation back then (the 50s)?
Any input from Updike Scholars, people who lived through the 50s or misogynists is welcome.
Hmmm, well, the M-W dictionary prefaces the definition as usually disparaging and obscene, (maybe this is the non-obscene example) and here is a short history of the word in question for you. Check the various definitions in the third paragraph, not all are nefarious.
More to the point; John Updike’s writings were often criticized as being Sexist and Racist (add further “ists” here). See a powerpoint on his life here.
You might also look at Lady Chatterly’s Lover, where the working class Mellors (the titular “Lover”) uses the word around Lady C. numerous times. It’s been years since I read the book, and I can’t quite remember if he actually refers to her as a cunt as opposed to simply using it as slang for “vagina,” but in any case, she isn’t offended by it and doesn’t seem to think she ought to be. I find it strange too, actually—I don’t imagine you’d find such a sanguine reaction in the real time/place in which those stories took place.
First of all, I havn’t read the book, so I’m just guessing here.
It’s not uncommon for people (especially guys) to mask affection in insults. I’d never tell my best friend I love him, so I call him a motherfucker, instead, and he knows what I really mean. Now, I’ve never tried this on a girl, and I’m not about to start, but is it possible that something like that is going on? Especially if the guy is a wise-ass/undemonstrative type of character?
I could be wrong, but as I remember it, “cunt” has always been vulgar, but 30 years ago it wasn’t the atom-bomb it is now. Maybe it was even less so 50 years ago.
Chaucer used it in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue in the Canterbury Tales. Evidently it goes all the way back to the Proto-Germanic language that English and German are descended from. It seems that it’s only become offensive in the last 60-70 years.
I lived through half the fifties, if that counts. Today is a very different zeitgeist. Back then, not only was offense often intentional, but it did not always behoove the offended to complain.