Women are motivated by sex. Finally, books are reflecting this

Female sexuality has been taboo since Eve ate the fruit in the garden of Eden – and in novels, since the invention of the form itself.Romances, in particular, were charged with corrupting women’s virtue as authors like the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen popularised the genre in the 18th century. This led social commentator Conrad Salomon Walther to write that such volumes led to “the depravity of the reader”, and noting “there are books that one must not read [.

..] out of respect for public opinion, which quite correctly esteems that a young woman should remain ignorant about certain things”.



It’s no coincidence that this uproar coincided with women assuming power in the literary sphere for the first time. But while courtship and marriage often featured in this new rash of fiction by and for women, frank discussion of female sexuality remained almost entirely off-limits for centuries.#color-context-related-article-3008194 {--inews-color-primary: #EDA400;--inews-color-secondary: #FDF6E5;--inews-color-tertiary: #EDA400;} Read Next square BOOKS FEATURES Persephone: How 'middle-brow' women's books were brought back from the deadRead MoreThat is, until now.

After eons of omertà, what women want is finally front and centre in literature – and it’s come a long way from Austenian boy-meets-girl fare. Try girl’s-partner-returns-from-deep-sea-dive-as-something-she-doesn’t-recognise (Our Wives Under The Sea, Julia Armfield, 2022), or girl-develops-erotic-fixation-on-pregnant-friend (Deliver Me, Elle Nash, 2023). Recent novels don’t just throw light on women’s sex lives, they show us characters with rebellious, and often downright outlandish, sexual quirks and obsessions.

Think of last summer’s blockbuster, Miranda July’s All Fours. Its protagonist doesn’t have sex with the garage attendant she falls for, but she does record an erotic dance for him, along with squandering thousands of dollars commissioning his wife to opulently redesign her crappy motel room.Back in 2018, Melissa Broder’s The Pisces depicted a woman who finds sexual satisfaction with a mythical sea creature.

Then there’s Gillian Anderson’s Want, a collection of anonymous women’s sexual fantasies, spanning everything from trees to vampires. And soon, another will be published. Kate Folk’s Sky Daddy centres on a woman who is sexually attracted to planes and believes it is her destiny to “marry” one in a fiery crash: girl-meets-plane.

Sky Daddy’s protagonist, Linda, is both tormented and consumed by her unusual sexuality – not only do her proclivities make it hard to connect with other humans on a romantic level, but she fears revealing her true desires would lead to social rejection too. Accordingly, Linda lives a small life, working as a content moderator for $20 an hour, renting a windowless garage extension, and spending her limited disposable income on domestic flights.Kate Folk’s novel centres on a woman attracted to planesThat is, until her friend and colleague Karina invites her to join a vision boarding group, wherein members meet quarterly to visualise – and thereby bring about – their wishes for the future.

Initially reluctant, Linda is emboldened when her first attempt proves alarmingly powerful: “I’d glued Dave’s image to my vision board, and less than a week later he’d manifested at the club, presenting me with an opportunity to fly for free,” she muses, of the peculiar relationship she strikes up with her boss, who begins paying for the pair to fly regularly after they take an initial impromptu trip together. “I knew better than to question a deal, especially one that had been engineered by the universe.”As well as looking into the emotional impact of Linda’s sexuality, Folk lays out its mechanics.

We come to understand its rhythms – the orgasmic rush of take-off, the titillation of turbulence – and its accessories: a piece of a decommissioned 737-800 hull functions as both “a talisman and a tool of sexual gratification”.Linda’s aeroplane fetish is certainly unusual, but it’s as earnestly felt as any more conventional yearning. With her fantasy world and daily life teetering ever closer to collision, threatening to explode her friendships and career in the process, the delirious desire that drives Linda comes to look like a curse.

“If I remained in the airport, grounded among an endlessly revolving set of strangers, I couldn’t cause any more trouble,” she pronounces.Miranda July’s ‘All Fours’, about a woman’s mid-life awakening, was a summer blockbuster last year (Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty)While representation of female sexuality as an unassailable force for good is an important step in righting historically skewed scales, recent examples such as these aren’t so wholesome – and they’re all the richer for it. Just as male characters have always been permitted the breadth of human experience – depravity, violence and selfishness, as well as heroism and autonomy – so it feels radical and righteous that women be allowed an equal claim, in fiction if not in life.

Think of the reverence we have long held for texts like JG Ballard’s 1973 Crash, about a man whose fetish for car crashes pushes him to stage one. Or Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 masterpiece in which his protagonist obsesses over his 12-year-old stepdaughter – both far more troubling inclinations than Linda’s lust for planes.In the decades since Crash and Lolita were published, scholars have found endless ways to justify and metabolise their male protagonists’ deviance.

As we shrug off the patriarchy’s two-dimensional stereotypes – Madonnas and whores no more – shouldn’t female characters be afforded the same luxury?#color-context-related-article-3597633 {--inews-color-primary: #EDA400;--inews-color-secondary: #FDF6E5;--inews-color-tertiary: #EDA400;} Read Next square BOOKS FEATURES The Holocaust survivor whose musical talent saved her lifeRead MoreBesides, novels that explore women’s quirkiest desires are key in a world where battles are still being waged over women’s bodily autonomy. Insulated by their specificity, fictional fetishes nonetheless allow their authors to tap into some of today’s most charged questions.As Gillian Anderson’s Want reflects, female sexuality needn’t be a mirror image of the marching male desire we’re accustomed to.

It is instead more likely to be reflexive, shaped by circumstance and the drives of others, which is invaluable for an author looking to infuse a plot with complexity. In Elle Nash’s Deliver Me, for instance, the main character’s sex life is shaped by her ex-con boyfriend’s insect fetish, her beautiful friend Sloane, and her determination to carry a pregnancy to term.Similarly, the impulsive decision to ditch a road trip ultimately leads the protagonist of All Fours towards the affair that will change her life.

Interweaving characters’ desires with their stories enriches literature for good – we have done a disservice to women characters by not allowing them to be motivated by sex in the past.Of course, where these novels fall short is that while kinky storylines can take on heavy issues with a light touch, we still struggle to talk directly about sex and women’s lives. It somehow remains easier to read and/or write a woman driven by an unusual fetish than a straightforward sex drive.

A matter-of-fact accounting of more humdrum female desire would make for the most radical narrative arc of all. Even so, thanks to novels like Sky Daddy, the right to staggering strangeness, moral messiness, is finally being extended to female characters, too. What’s more, they’re proving that the topics of women’s bodies, and what we want to do with them, are as loaded as ever.

‘Sky Daddy’ by Kate Folk (Hachette, £18.99) is out 10 April.