{"id":16,"date":"2024-02-06T21:59:29","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T04:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/?p=16"},"modified":"2024-02-06T21:59:29","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T04:59:29","slug":"week-v-were-getting-weird-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/2024\/02\/06\/week-v-were-getting-weird-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Week V – We’re Getting Weird This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, boy…where do I even begin? I mean it was definitely an interesting read but, I won’t lie, it did make my stomach turn at some point. From the overly sexual descriptions of his mother to the racism to the overall underlying misogynistic tone of the book, Alberto Moravia’s Agostino <\/em>never failed to disturb and shock me in the most entertaining ways. Moravia’s Agostino <\/em>follows a 13-year-old boy and his mother as they vacation on the Italian seaside, focusing on his “unique” relationship with his mother as he discovers his sexuality and begins to flourish and mature.<\/p>\n

To begin, Agostino and his recently widowed mother are enjoying each other’s company on the beach, taking rides on the pattino, and swimming in the Italian sea. As his mother strikes up a relationship with a younger man, Renzo, Agostino begins to feel increasingly jealous. Not only does this jealously arise due to his time with his mother being shortened, but because, to Agostino, his mother held a very specific role in his life, one that (I hope) not many others share. As strange as it is, Agostino is constantly in admiration of her beauty and her body, and as he traverses this journey of sexual maturation and growth, his mother is often at the centre of it. When he encounters a group of thuggish children, matters are only made worse for Agostino as they shamelessly talk about his mother in an uncomfortably over-sexualized way, sullying Agostino’s image of her. Agostino’s naivet\u00e9 and overall innocence drives him towards learning about whatever it is that everyone is alluding to, as he has yet to understand people as sexual beings. This curiously leads him to spy on his mother as she undresses, visit a brothel, and even skinny-dip with his friends.<\/p>\n

As much I understand the concept that Moravia is going for (the transition out of\/loss of innocence, development of sexuality\/sexual identity, maturing, etc.), I cant help but ask, “Why did he have to make his mother the main focus of it?!” This weird, incestuous undertone within the entire book only brought me out of it and stopped me from connecting to and immersing my within the book for a better understanding. I also cant help but think that Agostino is not learning about sexuality and emerging into adolescence but rather about the constant objectification and sexualization of women that not even his own mother can escape.<\/p>\n

Having said that, my question for this week is:…Is this book showcasing a boy’s flourishing sense of sexuality and maturity or is he just being indoctrinated by the patriarchy and its over-sexualization of all women?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, boy…where do I even begin? I mean it was definitely an interesting read but, I won’t lie, it did make my stomach turn at some point. From the overly sexual descriptions of his mother to the racism to the overall underlying misogynistic tone of the book, Alberto Moravia’s Agostino never failed to disturb and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100357,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,17],"tags":[20,21,19,18,22],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-moravia","tag-adolescence","tag-agostino","tag-childhood","tag-italy","tag-oedipus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100357"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/letstalkromance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}