Female sexuality, autonomy and vulnerability in the work of Anaïs Nin
For centuries, erotic literature was predominantly penned by men. If a woman were to do so, she would certainly cause shock and outrage, even among more liberal circles. No one could fathom that a woman could write something within the same realm of vulgarity as the Marquis de Sade or John Cleland, giving the genre an overwhelmingly male point of view.
Yet, during the early decades of the 20th century, there was a sense of change in the air. In many places, women were fighting for their right to vote, highlighting the desire for independence, while cities like Berlin and Paris offered many women a chance to feel liberated (at least in terms of society’s standards back then). These areas even fostered venues for LGBTQ+ people, giving lesbians and bisexual women a chance to find a sense of community. Art and culture were progressing, and many women in these cities felt able to express themselves in ways they were not able to before.
Anaïs Nin was born in France in 1903, moving between Cuba and New York in the following years. After getting married in Cuba when she was just 20 years old, she and her husband made their way over to Paris. It was here, where art was flourishing and there was a feeling of freedom and excitement present, that Nin asserted herself as a writer. She published a biography of one of her favourite writers, the erotic master D.H. Lawrence, in 1932, having spent the previous years soaking up the city’s culture, mingling with creatives, and even training in flamenco dancing.
The start of the 1930s marked the beginning of her impressive, albeit controversial, writing career. Nin penned countless diaries from here on out, going into immense detail about her personal feelings and affairs. Nin was obsessed with sex and love, although her childhood trauma certainly affected the way she approached her relationships. She had abandonment issues due to her abusive father, who left the family when she was a child, and as a result, she often had multiple partners at once. For a time, she was in love with both Henry Miller and his wife, June Miller, having affairs with both of them.
Nin led a life that shocked many people at the time. She slept with her psychoanalyst, Otto Rank, married a man while still being married to another, and even, according to her diaries (although some critics question the truth of her claim), had intimate relations with her estranged father. She might have been a controversial figure due to her scandalous approach to love and sex, but Nin changed literature in the process. Inspired by her experiences, she penned short stories and erotica, often changing the names of characters but rooting the tales in reality. From her diaries to short story collections like Delta of Venus or novellas such as A Spy in the House of Love, Nin was unafraid to shy away from honestly depicting female sexuality in a way that a female writer never had before.
She is often considered to be the first female writer of erotica, carving out a space for women’s experiences of sex, love and the complicated personal feelings these elicit to be explored thoroughly. Through her own personal lens, she captured feelings of insecurity, passion, unfaithfulness, arousal, vulnerability and self-reflection, writing in a way that has connected with many women since.
Take, for example, The Four Chambered Heart, in which Nin’s narrator, Djuna, who is meant to represent the writer, says, “Love never dies of a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source, it dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illnesses and wounds, it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings, but never of natural death. Every lover could be brought to trial as the murderer of his own love.” Nin’s prose is incredibly fluid and poignant. She writes elsewhere in the novel, “This goodness is a role, too tight around me; it is a costume I can no longer wear. There are other selves trying to be born, demanding at least a hearing!”
Her nuanced thoughts on relationships and the expectations of women are some of her most fascinating and recurring themes, with Nin becoming an accidental feminist figurehead. Her ability to lay bare her experience of wanting to live and love freely, often without commitment, or her honest love of sex, was pioneering. If she were a man, her behaviour would not have been nearly as controversial; thus, she wrote vividly about her lifestyle in defiance of these societal attitudes.
Her eroticism is some of the best ever written, too, blending explicit descriptions with complex storytelling, beautiful prose, and considered commentary on her (or her characters’) feelings. While her writing is often very graphic, it never feels particularly vulgar or gratuitous. For example, A Spy in the House of Love, written in 1954, explored the protagonist’s place in ‘50s New York as a sexually promiscuous woman with no desire for a committed relationship. While there are many erotic moments described, at its core, it’s a novel about the complexities of navigating the female experience, where double standards are routinely placed upon women and marriage so easily imprisons.
Her erotic short stories, most notably those in Delta of Venus and Little Birds, are challenging reads, too, subverting our expectations of erotica. Many of these stories contain distressing scenes, such as incest, rape, paedophilia, uneven power dynamics, and necrophilia. These uncomfortable themes highlight the complexities of relationships and sex, proving Nin to be a writer capable of digging deep into some of society’s most taboo aspects and laying them on the table for all to witness.
Through her work, Nin proved that writings about autonomy and sexuality from a feminine perspective were vital. She left a significant impact on literature due to her incredible prosaic skill and her fearlessness in discussing such bold and unconventional themes. She passed away in 1977, leaving behind an extensive and impressive collection of diaries, stories, essays, plays, and poems.