How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Scene)
Quote #1
Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a side of beef. (1.1)
By playing on the root meaning of "carnal," Septimus emphasizes the unintentional side effects of language: most people would not think of making love as hugging meat, but that's kind of what it is.
Quote #2
Thomasina: Tell me more about sexual congress.
Septimus: There is nothing more to be said about sexual congress.
Thomasina: Is it the same as love?
Septimus: Oh no, it is much nicer than that. (1.1.48-51)
Septimus might be thinking of his unrequited crush on Lady Croom here, which certainly seems to be causing him more pain than his roll in the hay, er, gazebo with Mrs. Chater – except for the threat of dueling. While the sex itself may be good, it seems that at least some of the repercussions are not so nice.
Quote #3
Chater: You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!
Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. (1.1)
Word choice demonstrates the two men's vastly different attitudes towards sex. If Chater thinks of making love as an "insult," that's almost enough to make us feel sorry for Mrs. Chater. And it seems the one really feeling insulted by Mrs. Chater and Septimus's fling is Mr. Chater.
Quote #4
Thomasina: Everything is turned to love with her. New love, absent love, lost love – I never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex. It only needs a Roman general to drop anchor outside the window and away goes the empire like a christening mug into a pawn shop. If Queen Elizabeth had been a Ptolemy history would have been quite different – we would be admiring the pyramids of Rome and the great Sphinx of Verona. (1.3)
Thomasina here sees love – and, by extension, sex – as a failure of priorities, a distraction from the things that really count. What in the rest of the play supports or denies her claim? (See, for starters, the quote from Chloë below.)
Quote #5
Bernard: You should try it. It's very underrated.
Hannah: Nothing against it.
Bernard: Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You might have written a better book. Or at any rate the right book. (2.5)
Bernard seems to think that sexual repression equals emotional repression equals intellectual repression. While his diagnosis of Hannah may be questionable, he does raise the interesting question of how much mental functioning is affected by physical and emotional states.
Quote #6
Hannah: What the hell is it with you people? Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don't know a worse bargain. Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed. (2.5)
Well, maybe Bernard has the point – Hannah isn't exactly the most sex-positive person ever. Her sex vs. farts equivalence is crude, but it does emphasize yet again that sex is, at its most basic, a physical function, with a lot of emotional baggage added on.
Quote #7
Lady Croom: It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them. (2.6)
Lady Croom's assertion that sexual attraction is so nonsensical even God can't figure it out sounds kind of similar to her descendant Chloë's thoughts on a similar subject (see below) – we wonder whether the characters who are less serially monogamous think differently.
Quote #8
Septimus: But is Mr Chater deceived?
Lady Croom: He insists on it, and finds the proof of his wife's virtue in his eagerness to defend it. Captain Brice is not deceived but cannot help himself. He would die for her. (2.6)
Again love, sex, or some combination of the two triumphs over reason. Even though Captain Brice knows with his head that Mrs. Chater would drop him like a overheated Hot Pocket if something better came along, he can't help loving her.
Quote #9
Septimus: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire --
Lady Croom: Oh . . . !
Septimus: -- I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a face.
Lady Croom: I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr Hodge. (2.6)
Septimus sure knows how to sweet-talk the ladies ... or not. He's fortunate that Lady Croom takes his comment in the spirit that it was meant – which suggests that they have a similarly unconventional attitude towards sex.
Quote #10
Chloë: The future is all programmed like a computer – that's a proper theory, isn't it? [...] But it doesn't work, does it?
Valentine: No. It turns out the maths is different.
Chloë: No, it's all because of sex.
Valentine: Really?
Chloë: That's what I think. The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
Valentine: Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. (2.7)
It's unlikely the Chloë model of physics will be coming to your class textbook any time soon. But her comments do point out that even if the atoms are all going to plan, it's hard to see how matters of human experience – sex, love, and rock 'n' roll – are shaped by what's going on at the level of the atom.