Charlotte Roche and Sexual Liberation

Charlotte Roche’s second novel, *Shossgebette*—which, if translated, could be titled *Prayers from the Womb* or *Uterine Prayers*—is a bestseller, following her debut novel, *Wetlands*.

It is a novel that deals with eroticism in an open manner and confronts the conservative family… sexual liberation is pitted against dogmatic feminism…

This second novel, with more complex and profound undertones than the first (Zonas Húmedas), initially seems at times to draw on it, and at other times to blend fragments from erotic manuals with passages from cookbooks and the Kama Sutra, essays on early childhood education, and feminist arguments.

In fact, Alice Schwarzer, the grand dame of German feminism (who, in the novel itself, is portrayed as a character who emotionally undermines the protagonist’s sex life), has already expressed her condemnation and outrage.

Speaking of the novel…

The novel begins with a much-discussed, almost graphic five-page description of fellatio, during which the narrator explains that the protagonist is excessively modest during sex, keeping everything under control to prevent the neighbors from hearing her moans…

Her narrative takes the reader by surprise, as they have thus far been accustomed to the high intensity and sexual abandon of Charlotte Roche’s novels; many have looked back at her first novel, *Wetlands*, as an attempt to portray sex as something natural.

The explanations are detailed…about how she reaches orgasm and how she helps her partner reach it…that’s just part of what the narrator considers an ideal marriage, because for her, sexual uninhibition, the liberation from stereotypes… (which the reader can perceive in the novel, in its bedroom scenes…) is merely the result of the rejection of a certain way of thinking by certain feminist sectors that sought to label certain heterosexual practices as a form of domination.

For her, sex is a form of liberation…

Elizabeth Kiel, the name of the journalist narrator, is a woman who frees herself from all her fears, phobias, and paranoia in bed.

The narrator turns to joint visits with escorts (something her therapist disapproves of) to keep both her own and her husband’s desire alive and thus stay connected to her partner.

It also reveals her search for the perfect marriage that will set her free and protect her from a world she finds threatening.

In several interviews, Charlotte Roche has admitted, “It’s a settling of scores with the ’68 generation, which—along with this generation and its feminist movement—taught us to view men as the enemy and to oppose unstable family relationships.”