Retrieve Bear Articulated By Marian Engel Contained In Version
O, Canada. O, living in the wilderness, O, sex with a bear,
Did I just say that Lemme just reread the line above, Yep, there it is. Sex with a bear.
God bless, when a book about a lonely, bookish woman who, sent up to the northern Ontario wilderness for work, has sexytimes with a bear, wins the Governor General's Award.
For those who don't know, this is Canada's most prestigious literary prize, It's like winning the Pulitzer, or Man Booker, in my country, Apparently, that year, Bear was selected by a jury that included none less than Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro and Mordecai Richler, What the wha
It's a weird little book, to say the least, Especially for one in the Canadian Lit Canon, Aren't we all supposed to be polite, respectable folks Not a people who have sex with actual animals, or celebrate stories about people who do this by bestowing literary awards thereupon.
Maybe that's why I'd never heard of the book until just recently, We've kinda put it by the wayside, in favour of sitelinkThe Handmaid's Tale or sitelinkThe English Patient, which are, let's face it, a little more respectable, eh.
I finished reading it, perplexed, What to make of it Is it a humorous piece There are parts that are funny, with bearfarts, et al, Is it feminist The protagonist doesn't need a man to satisfy her sexuality, Is it environmental, the ultimate commune with nature Is it an outofthebox story about two painfully lonely creatures who find each other What the hell IS IT,
Whatever it is, it had the strange power to lure me in, in that seductive way that only literature has, I found myself turning the pages, wondering, is this going to be the day she gets effed by the bear And then I would chastise myself, am I actually rooting for this to happen
I'm still not sure how to categorise this.
It's beyond classification, a witch's brew, It is fascinating and strange, a true original, The writing is elegant. The subject matter provides a rebellious contrast to "Canadiana", a much needed foil to our goodygoody reputation, That alone merits its place on the bookshelf, I have nothing to add to the mountain of words, both adulatory and damning, that have been written about this book, except that perhaps more than with any other book reviewed on this site, I wish that, freedom of speech be damned, I could delete other users' reviews.
For the love of reading, people, it's a novel, She fcked a bear,
She literally fcked a bear,
No. This isn't some euphemism for a beefy gay man,
She motherfcking literally fcked a literal bear,
What, The. Hell.
Okay, So. I'm not a cultured reader, I read mostly YA and, . . well that's about it. BUT, I am a reader, A layman reader, So, here is the review from a casual justforfun reader:
She fcked a bear,
For the record: did I pick up this book knowing there will be bearfckery No,
I picked it because I wanted for once to read a novel, I wanted one of those fancy Englishstudentsreadthis sort of novels,
I found thisish page book on the "suggested reads" table of my local library, Here's the blurb from the back:
Marian Engel, one of Canada's most celebrated and provocative novelest, died, . . The short and controversal novel "Bear," her last and bestknown work, . .It sounded good it had all the hallmarks for cultured reading, right It won prizes, it's by a treasured national author, it was controversial.
I was pumped watch out world, I'm gonna get cultured,
The book started off okay, It's a bit pretentious but it was manageable, There's an isolated, island house donated to a historical society and it's filled with old books,
For once, instead of Sunday school attendance certificates, old emigration documents, envelopes of unidentified farmer's Sunday photographs and withered love letters, something of read value had been left to them.A librarian Lou is sent there for the summer to categorize and catalog the collection, There's an old bear chained up that was the family pet that our Lou needs to care for,
At this point, the book wasn't too bad, It wasn't particularly gripping but hey, Not bad. Then we get to the "First Look":
As she sat down, she realized the bear was standing in his doorway staring at her,Again, not bad, She starts to befriend the bear, bringing him food, petting his fur, giving him anthropomorphic characteristics, essentially all the things that even a five year old knows NOT to do with a wild animal,
Bear. There. Staring.
She stared back,
At one point Lou walks the bear on his chain to the island's edge and as the bear swims, she jumps in naked,
Yes, it was a bit odd it was odd that she thinks of the bear with so many human emotions, that she goes skinnydipping with him, that she notices his very "maleness" when she first meets him.
but I maintain that at this point, there wasn't any indication that things were going to go so far south,
I remember thinking, "Oh jeez, That's those fancynovels. Free spirits. Wouldn't it be funny if, . . "
Turns out, that was not funny,
To summarize the rest of the book: And note, I'm summarizing this in the blandest way possible but I'm still putting it as a spoiler so you have been warned:
To use one of the side character's words:
"People get funny when they're too much alone, "Did the side character know Did anyone find out What was the plot
Honestly, from pgon I skipped every page that involved genitalia and stimulation thus reading maybeof theremaining pages.
It was just too much,
I didn't get the plot but I am not going back for it,
sitelinkYouTube sitelinkBlog sitelinkInstagram sitelinkTwitter sitelinkFacebook Snapchat mirandareads This poor book! Thes sextastic cover promises bear erotica, which has caused many chuckles because it's a an awardwinning Canadian book so hahaha those crazy Canucks.
In reality, it's a story of a woman finding herself in the wilderness, So if you were here for the sex, leave now,
The summary: A quiet, young librarian gets an assignment to catalogue a collection on a remote island, On the island she finds a tame bear and she begins to question herself about life, relationships and her previous existence in the city, In the city she's not depressed, but she's not happy either, just going through the motions, The island and the bear change her, It's a feminist tale. That doesn't mean that there isn't some sexual stuff in here, but it's more depressing than titillating, You probably wouldn't wank to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and so you won't wank to this,
A good, smart, slim read which reads very much Canadian with the capital C, If looking for more sexually charged material with less ponderous thoughts there's Chuck Tingle, In Engels novel, Lou and Bears relationship is not consensual many of their encounters are sexually abusive, verging on rape, As Margret Grebowicz argues in “When Species Meat: Confronting Bestiality Pornography,” “how might we begin to distinguish between the sexual agency we anthropomorphically project onto animals in the production of porn, for instance and their real sexual agency, the very thing which render them rapeable at least in human legal terms in the first place” Because animals cannot verbally give informed consent, they are legally in line with humans who cannot for instance, the severely mentally handicapped and underaged people in this way, all sexual encounters with animals are rape.
Bear cannot give informed consent because of the language barrier between his suitors and himself, which makes him rapeable in Bears case, raped, Bears encounters with Lou are an example of this sexual abuse of power taken by a caregiver, made possible by Bears conditioned submissive nature,
Ethically, animals are not responsible nor should they be to uphold human laws, but humans are, Restricting animals such as Bear by humaninvented constructs of sexual agency and the concept of informed consent is to measure them by standards outside of their species, This is not the case when a human commits a crime against an animal, Sex without informed consent with an animal human or otherwise is rape, As Jeremy Bentham argues, the line between “us” and “them” is not our intelligence or ability to communicate and understand one another, but our ability to suffer Bentham, Therefore, if an animal suffers under abuse as a human does, they are no different in terms of rape victimhood,
Lou does not see herself as a bear, or Bear as a human, nor does she have any delusion that Bear could give informed consent, “She had no idea what animals were about, They were creatures. She supposed that they led flickering, inarticulate psychic lives as well” EngelLou thinks of Bear as a thoughtless brute, yet still believes she is right in trying to have sex with him, knowing she cannot get informed consent.
Lous forcing herself on Bear is especially abusive in the case of her attempted rape because she not only abuses his physically sexually she does not respect him on an emotional or mental level either.
Stockholm syndrome is a “psychological condition in which hostages or victims
of kidnappings sometimes develop positive feelings towards their captors, on whom they depend for their survival” Colman.
Lou seems disinterested in understanding the Bear and his mind, more interested in his body,
In Greg Garrards “Being Zoo”, he cites an interview with a zoophile who expresses his distrust of condemning bestiality “it is unthinkable that any sexual act with an animal is punished without proof that the animal has come to any harm”.
In Bear and Lous relationship, it is clear that manipulation and conditioning is at play,
Lou and Bears relationship is tenuous and unstable, Lou is only at the Cary house for a summer, Lou takes advantage of a bear that has been a captive of humans for many years, possibly sexually abused by Lucy, the Indigenous woman, and the Colonel, In this way, Bear could have developed Stockholm Syndrome himself, forced to be docile and submissive around his keepers, even when he could physically overwhelm them, Bear is described as “a middleaged woman defeated to the point of being daft, . . I can manage him, she decided” Engel, Here, Lou positions herself as the dominant in their relationship, both believing the bear to be “defeated” and “daft,” that is passive and stupid, and deciding that she can manage, control, abuse him, take advantage of her fiduciary position.
In the instances where the bear initiates sexual contact, it is made clear by Engel that he is not visibly aroused, that is, not erect, Therefore, it is feasible to argue that he does not treat licking Lou as a sexual act, more as an act that simply makes her happy, and through her contentment, more likely to give him treats, take him to the water, and play with him.
This is another sign of conditioned response he has been trained to please his captors, Lou says, “I dont care if I cant turn you on, I just love you” Engel, In that way, she does not care if he is attracted to her that is not important, Lou has never needed consent to feel she has right to abuse Bear,
The only instance in which Bear becomes erect is at the climax of the novel here, Lou notices his arousal and tries to have sex with him but is injured instead Engel.
There is no preamble, no attempt on his part to be submissive and please her
she looked at him, He did not move. She went down on all fours in front of him, in the animal posture, He reached out one great paw and ripped the skin on her back, . . she turned to face him, He had lost his erection and was sitting in the same posture, She could see nothing, nothing in his face to tell her what to do, Engel
While this wound inflicted on her back could be an accident or a part of regular bear mating, it is understood by the reader to be a violent act that drives Lou away, perhaps Bears intention.
The one instance when penetrative rape is truly threatening him, he acts violently, never having shown a violent or aggressive side before in the novel, His sexual agency was encroached upon, and he responded in defense, As well, his erection is lost as soon as she assumes the “animal posture,” a sign that he does not wish to have sex with her, This moment is another attempted rape of Bear, and while he did not attack her the first time, he is ready to defend himself and his sexual agency in this instance.
Garrard argues that Bears reasoning behind his act of harming Lou “remains unknowable, it can hardly be “neutral,” and goes on to argue that it is the moment when Bear is no longer an object to Lou, the moment she is seeing his selfhood for the first time Garrard.
The moment when the bears agency and personhood is finally clear to Lou is his attack on her, ripping at her skin, Paul Barretts “Animal Tracks” cites Elspeth Cameron who argues that the protagonists “relationship with the bear is emblematic of her tentative exploration of, gradual immersion in, and full acceptance of the primitive forces in the world and herself” Barrett.
This is yet another critic who is content to see an anthropomorphized, allegorized bear rather than the person himself, If we interpret Bear as a symbol of Lous sexuality, or “the Wild, the Canadian North, the Romantic spirit, or masculinity” Garrard, then his sexual agency is unimportant as he is not really a bear.
Of course, if he is a bear, as the facts of the narrative point out clearly to us through its clear and frequent physical descriptions of Bear, he is grossly abused by the protagonist, his sexual agency disregarded as she attempts twice to rape him.
With Lou and Bear, the relationship is obviously manipulative and abusive, In Bear, Lou takes advantage of Bears dependency on her, his conditioned submissive nature to please her, regardless of his own awareness of his place in her sexuality, She leaves with no care for the bears future, showing her true disinterest in his mind and identity, only having used him as a way to explore her own sexual identity.
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