The Last Letter From Your Lover

On first appearances, the affair between “Boot” and Jennifer does not seem exceptional. Like many of the women Anthony had slept with before, Jennifer is beautiful but stuck in a passionless marriage with a disinterested husband. He is often away; she is bored. Anthony is exciting, witty, and sexually experienced. He also fits the bill of someone forbidden because he belongs to a lower social class. This was true of Jennifer’s first love when she had fallen for “the wrong sort of boy” at 15 and was thrashed by her father (137).

Yet beneath the apparent conventionality of Anthony and Jennifer’s affair lies something distinct. This is connected to words, letters, and Jennifer’s teenage beating. Like this incident, which still haunts her adult sex life, her relationship to Anthony begins with and is continued through humiliation and frustration. She first overhears Anthony ridiculing her. He calls her “a spoilt little tai-tai” (a kept woman) attacking her with words which expose and demean her (188). Then, she humiliates him in their next encounter, when her and Yvonne drive by him in their car. When he tries giving her his apology, she retorts that “anyone can scribble a few words,” mocks his profession, and forces him to read aloud a letter where he admits to social ineptitude and alcoholism (188).

This dynamic recurs in their conversation on the boat. She asks him how many married women he has slept with. His response that “it’s probably simpler to say that I’ve slept with few who weren’t married” is designed to shock and undermine her (111). It mocks the ideal of marriage and sets up married women specifically as objects of ridicule. Her reply that Anthony is little more than a gigolo is equally pointed. It makes of his sexual self-image as the all-conquering virile adventurer, something absurd, pitiable. In other words, Anthony and Jennifer humiliate the other so they can be humiliated themselves. Jennifer’s original act of defying and shaming her father, then being shamed in turn, is repeated through her dynamic with Anthony. The only difference is that here the violence is enacted through speech and mockery, rather than physical blows.

Domination and submission come to be expressed in ways other than insults, principally in the form of sexual denial. Letters become both a means and symbol of this. Just as Jennifer’s defining erotic experience was bound up with humiliation, it was also bound up with frustration. This can be seen in almost all her sexual interactions with Anthony. On the boat she makes a point of saying, “I’m not going to make love to you, Mr. O’Hare” (111). She then acts mortified when he refuses to sleep with her in the hotel. Once more, she is playing the game of provoking to be provoked. She humiliates and frustrates him with the hope that he will frustrate her in response.

This explains one of the defining moments of the novel when, after they have finally had sex in the club, and Anthony asks Jennifer to run away with him, and she refuses. She says she would “lose everything” (her family and conventional life) and would “be disgraced” (187). Yet there is a deeper reason for her hesitance, namely, that having made love with Anthony, the mystique and fascination of their connection has been called into doubt. She fears and senses that fulfilment will make their relationship ordinary and destroy the dynamic of anticipation and frustration that is captivating for her. It would render the flood of tragic, erotically charged letters redundant. Therefore she forgoes the chance to be with him. It is also why Anthony will give her an ultimatum which pushes their concealed sado-masochistic dynamic to a whole new level of intensity.