A review by seebrandyread
Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin

3.0

Hailed as the first American woman to publish erotica and creator of "the female language for sexuality," Anaïs Nin wrote most of the stories in Delta of Venus in the 1940s, but they weren't published as a collection until 1977 after her death. Nin mentions the difference between the masculine and feminine experiences of sex but doesn’t go into detail. She notices “explicitness” vs. “ambiguities” in the work of her male cohort and her own, and their patron (who paid $1 a page for these stories) expressed a preference for explicitness. Nin covers a broad range of sexualities, preferences, fetishes, etc., however, she ultimately favors a gender binary with the ultimate gratification coming from penile-vaginal penetration. Relationships–sexual and romantic–only seem to work if there’s a masculine and feminine presence. I had to continually remind myself of the fantasy aspect of Nin's work as almost none of these sexual encounters mention contraception, STIs, or unwanted pregnancy. The lines of “fantasy” and “preference” begin to blur and then be crossed by depictions of rape, incest, and pedophilia, all of which appear in the book and beg the question of whether there are fantasies that should never be indulged no matter how imaginary. Though sexuality hasn't necessarily changed since Nin's time, understanding, language, and acceptance all have.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Pedophilia, Sexual content