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THE LIGHT AND THE DARK
By Jean Roberta
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INCOGNITO by Lisabet Sarai
(New York: Blue Moon Books, 2002)
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Who knows what secrets lurk in the hearts of men (and women)? This question (or something like it) was the ritual opening line in THE SHADOW, a radio show of the 1930s and a movie of the 1990s. It could also serve as an introduction to Lisabet Sarai's intricately-structured novel, INCOGNITO, which offers a few answers.
Be warned that the book lacks in-depth character and social analysis; all its main characters are young, privileged, White Anglo-Saxon, apparently airbrushed. The style is not innocent of cliches, and the plot flirts with the formulae of romance novels. The dialogue is neither witty nor original nor particularly convincing.
INCOGNITO is not in the same league with the classic books which seem to haunt its pages. In its own way, however, this novel is brave, seductive and thought-provoking, much like its heroine Miranda, who is literary on several levels.
Dark-haired Miranda, who has lost some of her innocence to a man who broke her heart, embarks on a search for healing knowledge in mind and body. She is hungry for sexual experience and for evidence to support the premise for her Ph.D. thesis: that some Victorian erotica is the record of real events, not just the fantasies of frustrated writers trapped in corsets and starched collars. This theory is controversial but plausible, and it raises questions about the relationship of desire and reality. It also raises the possibility that history has been misinterpreted, and that the sexless "angel of the hearth" of Victorian culture was always more of a myth than her alter ego, the "ruined" woman. The author satisfies the one-handed reader with a variety of sex scenes woven through a story full of sly literary and historical references. Miranda, whose scholarly father named her for the daughter of a wizard in Shakespeare's play THE TEMPEST, lives in Boston, site of the public shaming of a colonial adulteress in Hawthorne's nineteenth-century novel THE SCARLET LETTER. Like the dark and sensual heroines of Victorian fiction, Miranda has a present-day blonde counterpart, Lucy. The true sexual natures of both these hot babes are eventually revealed to the reader; Miranda, who seems at first to be more bookish and inhibited than her flirtatious friend, discovers her own multi-faceted character as a switch who enjoys age-play, bondage, spanking, whipping, cross-dressing and various other adventures.
Miranda, a kind of updated nineteenth-century bluestocking, also has a historical blonde counterpart, Beatrice (also the name of a spirited Shakespeare heroine), an outwardly proper wife and mother of the 1880s whose secret diary falls serendipitously into Miranda's hands. Chapters describing Beatrice's adulterous erotic journey alternate with Miranda's parallel trysts, or tricks, with a cast of sexy strangers. Beatrice's risk-taking clashes with her seemingly bland life and marriage, threatening to lead her to a public "fall." Miranda's dimly-understood desire to seek out new playmates in Boston's night world (nightclubs, sex clubs, a biker bar, an alley) threatens to expose her to serious violence, if not professional disgrace. Tension of various kinds is drawn out and heightened in scene after scene.
Just as Beatrice assumes that her husband, a successful businessman, could never plumb the depths of her depravity, Miranda assumes that her fellow academic Mark, apparently a clean-cut nice guy, would be shocked and possibly disgusted to learn of her double life. Lucy and her latest beau, who has swept her away to Paris, form a third couple whose compatibility is not obvious at first. Hints and clues about Lucy's own sexual tastes suggest that everyone has hidden depths, including the men. Mark, an actor and Dickens scholar, gradually reveals his skill at role-playing while introducing Miranda to sides of herself that surprise her more than they surprise anyone around her. Far from being the corn-fed Midwesterner he first appears to be, Mark is several jumps ahead of Miranda the student, and he serves as her sexual mentor. Like an incestuous brother and sister, the two literary seekers perfectly complement each other.
After a kind of family reunion in which Miranda, Lucy and their men come to know each other better, the plot reaches a dramatic climax which is intellectual rather than physical. Miranda's theory is challenged and defended in a public forum, and she is offered an unexpected chance to claim yet another role. Suspense is neatly resolved, and few narrative threads are left hanging.
An exception to the well-planned conclusion is the permanent absence of Miranda's first lover, whose motive for lying to her and then returning to England to marry another is never adequately explained, even after Mark and Miranda have travelled the same route for other reasons. Some secrets remain locked in the hearts of men, it seems - or shit happens. This downplayed expression of real cruelty looks satisfyingly true to life.
The contrast of public and private roles in this novel, of cool rational theory and hot physical need, of Seekers and Offerings (the doers and the done-to) suggests the collision-course plots of gothic novels about unforgivable acts, sinister doubles and irreconcilable personalities. Instead of leading to a predictable doom, however, these contrasts suggest a needed redefinition of the dark side as well as the light. Like Shakespeare's virginal heroine, Miranda is threatened with violation by the monster Caliban, but instead of being spared, she seeks him out and finds enlightenment, not destruction.
The hip, modern Miranda need not choose between becoming a scholar or a slut, a man's woman or a lesbian, a Dominant or a submissive. She learns that sexual promiscuity does not rule out emotional commitment. She will go ever further without falling off the edge, and her true love will keep pace without slowing her down.
Pure fantasy or potential fulfillment? You be the judge.
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