Patterns of Male/Erotic Fantasy in Coover’s “The Babysitter”

Authors

  • Banani Biswas Shandong University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18034/ajhal.v5i1.328

Keywords:

Robert Coover, The Babysitter, Male Fantasy, Erotic, Binary Power Relation, Fetish, Psycho-Feminist Viewpoints

Abstract

The paper aims at studying the patterns of the male fantasy in Robert Coover’s erotically charged short story, “The Babysitter”. The story centres on the image of a Babysitter stepping into a bathtub for having a shower while the phone in the living room rings, driving her out of the tub to answer it by the time the towel wrapping her pulls off giving a view of her naked body. In a rapid succession of one hundred and seven fragmented paragraphs, this image vividly recurs in and rolls up through the fantasies to fantasies of its male characters, blurring and overlapping these, creating fresh new versions of the story from the Babysitter being raped to the Babysitter saved from being raped. The study examines a clear line of development in the fantasies of each of these characters. Considering age, sexual orientation, experiments, adjustment and satisfaction, personality, and other socio-cultural variables, it (re)conceptualizes their fantasies as falling into certain patterns like obsessive, childlike, romantic, or deviant. And, finally and most importantly, it explores the binary power relation embedded in these fantasies wherein the Babysitter poses a fetish, an inanimate, sexualized object while the fantasies around her confirm to male/sexual power, violence, and masochistic pleasure. The research approaches the fantasies with psycho-feminist viewpoints.

 

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Author Biography

  • Banani Biswas, Shandong University

    PhD Fellow, Department of English Language & Literature, Shandong University, CHINA,

    &

    Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Comilla University, Comilla-3506, BANGLADESH

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Published

2018-06-30

Issue

Section

Peer-reviewed Article

How to Cite

Biswas, B. . (2018). Patterns of Male/Erotic Fantasy in Coover’s “The Babysitter”. Asian Journal of Humanity, Art and Literature, 5(1), 9-18. https://doi.org/10.18034/ajhal.v5i1.328

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