At a moment when erotica is mainstream, and when the issue of who controls a woman’s body has never been more relevant, “Nine and a Half Weeks,” and its frank, poetic treatment of illicit sex, has lost none of its disturbing power. But what’s stranger is that Day chose to reveal even more disquieting aspects about herself under her real name than she ever did with a nom de plume. Examining “Ghost Waltz” and “Nine and a Half Weeks” in tandem, we see a woman whose identity is divided in two.
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Reading “Ghost Waltz” and “Nine and a Half Weeks” side by side, Day’s vulnerabilities come shimmering into view. Both books examine the consequences of relationships marked by withholding—be it her lover’s effortless domineering humiliation or her parents’ shutting the door on discussing Herr Seiler’s deep-seated Nazi ties. The absence and emotional deprivation that young Ingeborg detects and learns to live with permeated her adult life, and must have been tied up with her brief but toxic relationship, in which submissive infatuation was mistaken for something more. The pair of books allow us access to Day’s mind, demonstrating her obsessive need for order in the face of extreme emotional chaos. But they also offer insight into a particular moment in history ripe for both a self-excusing memoir of a Nazi past and a self-punishing memoir of sexual obsession. The prolonged social upheaval of the decade threw secrets into the light and enabled the discussion of formerly taboo topics. To pilfer from the title of one of the more popular self-help books of the period, if Day’s book-length confessions enabled her to be O.K., then perhaps we could be similarly O.K. with our own darkest fears and desires.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/who-was-the-real-woman-behind-nine-and-a-half-weeks.html#ixzz2FNkDjAR3
