Monday, May 2, 2011

Liberation or bondage?

It is interesting to see how academic authors can inject their own values into texts. The paragraph below appears in an extract [published in the Weekend Australian Magazine] from the new biography of Australian historian Manning Clark, An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark by Mark McKenna (from the History Department at Sydney University). 
Clark’s extramarital sexual longings were locked in the chains of the religious dogma he imbibed as a child and which would cause him much pain and anguish throughout his life. The desires of the flesh were evil. They were an example of mankind’s baseness. Unless they were kept under control by God’s holy sacrament of marriage, men and women risked losing their souls. No amount of reading about the need for sexual liberation could wash these tormenting thoughts from his being.
What might a less coloured commentary by a more objective academic look like? Here is one possibility, without the strong language:

      Clark struggled through his life, as many men do, with desires for extramarital sex. At times he was racked with guilt, perhaps compounded by his upbringing, as the son of an Anglican clergyman. But even though he rejected this upbringing he was still torn. Perhaps this was because he knew that acting on those desires was morally wrong; they were ultimately selfish and would cause anguish and pain to others, especially to his wife and children. Indeed he did experience this to be the case when he did eventually have extra-marital affairs. This book chronicles some of that turmoil, pain and anguish.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Ross

    As an aside, I find it interesting that people seem to think the Bible is anti sex (wrong, baseness etc.). It would seem some ideas never die, never mind books such as Songs of Solomon.

    Regards
    Bernard

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