Grace and virtue

Note:There is one more relationship story and related unsolicited bit of  love advice coming next week. After that, I'm going to move onto more general cultural subjects. 

Since knowing Grace, I have often thought of making her a character in a novel. I think one of the reasons no one ever hated her was that she was such a charismatic person. Like Hamlet, she had the blessing and you watched her fascinated and admired her; perhaps did so even against your will.

How could you write the story of Grace (and I am conscious that readers know only a little of the story) so that she doesn't screw up? Without changing her character that is. Without simply making her into a different person. How could you make a story that would still have her be the young woman with sexual power who gets a bit intoxicated by that power and puts a lot of effort into making it work for her but tell it so that she credibly ends up with an ending that isn't sad?

For what, if anything, is wrong with what Grace did with her life?

I think the problem is more complicated than it looks at first.

For starters, I think we have to be honest enough to admit that we cannot pat ourselves on the back for not doing what she did for the truth is most of us couldn't have done what she did. The amount of sexual power she had is not something most of us ever have. We don't honestly know that we would have done any better if we'd ever been through the heady experience of being able to turn heads.

I have two teen-aged neighbours going through this experience right now. One is fourteen or fifteen and just budding. She has the power to reduce boys (and not a few men) to drooling idiots. Watching her from the distance I can see that she quite enjoys this power. The other is 19 and is starting to lose that power. I don't think she has consciously noticed that she is losing it but she is conscious of having to make greater efforts to keep the attention she has come to love and she exposes a little bit more every day. Come the height of summer it's going to be something else.

And she is not the only one. I have to say I can't get very upset about this. I like seeing women's bodies especially young women's bodies. The question here is what should they do for themselves?

In any case, neither of these women has what it takes to be a Grace. Grace still had them drooling well into her thirties and that is the other aspect that makes it difficult to judge her. It's hard, hard work being Grace. There was real virtue in Grace. She showed wisdom, prudence and temperance. She had to because she could not have been what she was without these. It is precisely those virtues that my two teen-aged neighbours lack and it is because they both lack them that I know their moment of glory will pass relatively quickly.

I didn't list justice in Grace's virtues and, truth be told, she didn't show any special strengths there. I'm not sure that alone would be enough to criticize her life choices. I'd say Grace's weakness with regard to justice was her tendency to go along with whatever was going. If most people around her supported the Turquoise Party she would vote Turquoise. If most people supported the Violet Party, she would vote Violet. In other words, she was no better or no worse than the people around her. Yes, she could have been better, but we always can be better.

To finally answer the question, I think what led Grace to where she is was the direction she picked. She was quite happy being popular and admired, with having a job that paid her well enough to support her desired lifestyle, and with having adventures in love. There was never any higher commitment than that and she didn't feel the need for one.

Jumping around a bit here, look at this line from Carrie Bradshaw: "Sometimes I wonder if we're just sluts." The "just" in that question does an enormous amount of work for us. If Ms. Bradshaw were to ask, "I wonder if we're sluts?" we might be too polite to say yes to her face but there is only one truthful answer to that question.

As there is for most of us. Very few people can honestly say they don't have some sexual sin in their past. Most of us have shamelessly exploited whatever sexual power came our way. And most of us have cravenly surrendered to our weaknesses at least once—we have done stupid degrading things either in pursuit of our own sexual desires or in the way we tolerated and put up with ( or put out for) other people's sexual cravings.

And that is the thing that seems to really jump out about Grace now. It is this ridiculous Cougar with implants that she has become that we sneer at.We didn't see anything wrong with what she was doing only ten years ago but now it seems ridiculous and it is ridiculous.

Here we can see why there is something enormously correct about the emphasis on sexual morality. Sexual sins are the sins most people have. Very few people kill or steal or bear false witness (bearing false witness does not mean "lying" by the way). If you want, dear reader, to grasp your nature as a sinful being, the most likely way is to begin with a cool, honest appraisal of your sexual history.

But redemption comes not from imagining how you might have avoided your sins. And it doesn't come from living in a society where the culture makes it very difficult to sin in the first place. It comes in imagining how you can continue to aim at something higher, to seek God, despite your sins. How you can, to get back to Carrie Bradshaw, be something more than "just a slut". [And here there is some hint of why DH Lawrence's criticism of Benjamin Franklin was wrong and shallow.]