When The Wanting Seed begins, we discover a world that seems like the warped mirror image of our own. Discrimination based on gender and sexuality is rampant in Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram's world, but there, the highest-ranking and highest-paying jobs don't go to straight white men: they go to gay and asexual men instead. One of the hardest questions confronting the novel's readers is this: is its representation of anti-straight discrimination a satirical critique of homophobia, or does it satirize real-world fights for gay and lesbian rights?
Questions About Sexuality and Sexual Identity
- How do the narrative voice's descriptions of heterosexual romance compare to its descriptions of gay and lesbian romance?
- How does State control influence individual characters' sense of their own sexuality?
- In the end, does the novel celebrate Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram's union, or does it treat it with ambiguity and/or ambivalence?
Chew on This
In the first half of The Wanting Seed, homosexuality is a convenient instrument of a repressive State; but, in the second half, heterosexual sex has become the State's most favourite tool. Ultimately, the novel suggests that no one orientation is more "godly" or "sinful" than another—in the end, the real evil is State repression.
Despite the novel's argument that State repression is the true social evil, the homophobia that appears throughout The Wanting Seed is not altogether ironic. Ultimately, the novel validates the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.