Well, gang, here we go again. Last time, I talked on Kvothe’s Sex Life, I had only finished NOTW and started WMF. Having finished WMF, I got a flurry of questions about sex and literature. Spoilers below.
After a romp through the rainy tent-sheets, Kvothe comes out the other side of the enemy encampment saying I do not believe in faeries. Which, by the way, gave me chills. I yelled from the sixth floor of an Upper West Side apartment building, “IT JUS GOT SUHRIOUS!” In retrospect, it had just gotten voluptuous, but who’s keeping score?
Here’s the question too keep at the forefront of your mind:
How was Kvothe able to name Felurian?
He was a virgin. Think about it: young orphan, fledgling namer, misses his momma, girl he loves acts like a selas flower and the wind combined, he’s sixteen, horny, blah blah blah. Got it?
She was a fae, and not just any fae, but the fae who lured you in through sensuality, forced you to indulge in the lust of the flesh and exploded your heart from the inside out through… well… you get the picture. In other words, she’s like lust incarnate.
Virgin. Lust incarnate. Virgin. Lust incarnate. See the contrast? Virgins tend to stand for more than just sexually abstained whatever in novels, they tend to stand for innocence, purity and the rest. When this virgin, the hero of the story, gives himself away to lust incarnate you might normally infer what would be seen in stories like Faerie Queen by Spencer – that the dude just got seduced. But why the control?
Felurian, until that moment, killed men who had been around the bases a time or two. Every other man who came to her died in her arms through an appetite unquenched. Not Kvothe. Kvothe’s a virgin, and when he went to her, he had the chance (especially as a namer) to see her as she was, all of her, inside and out, spirit and body, before and after. He sings four lines of a song, names her, and so does what no man could: I stayed the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life.
That’s power, and it may or may not say something about the spiritual side of sex. In addition, it climaxes (quite literally) in the Albedo, giving Kvothe the greatest enlightenment he could receive for his sleeping mind. He now named a Fae, and the Faeland is the easiest way to get at your sleeping mind. Thus Elodin’s jealousy of the shaed.
Comment early, comment often, keep it civil: