Emexuality And Sexuality In Miss Temptation By Kurt Vonnegut

In the short story Miss Temptation by Kurt Vonnegut, it was made obvious that the prominent theme was the sexuality, and the sensuality, of the main character, Susanna. The story starts with the line, “Puritanism had fallen into such disrepair that not even the oldest spinster thought of putting Susanna in a ducking stool; not even the oldest farmer suspected that Susanna’s diabolical beauty had made his cow run dry.” Vonnegut mentioning Puritanism falling to shambles and cows running dry because of a beautiful girl is, in a sense, a gateway into the overall subject matter.
Before Susanna is truly introduced as a character, she is made out to be somewhat of a bad character, saying she had made cows run dry. Susanna being presented as only the object of Puritans’ grief is already starting to show the objectification of her in the story. When she is introduced to us as a person rather than a subject, she is described in a way that could be beautiful. However, again, she merely acts as the distraction of Puritans in her town, said to be …show more content…
Throughout the story, Susanna was treated as something like an object for the people of the village to gaze at in awe, wondering how such a thing could exist. But once Fuller crossed the line with her and made her realize her own vulnerability, her age and that she was indeed human, Susanna insisted upon respect, and to be treated as a person. This is not always present in a leading female character, as it definitely was not common in the Brothers’ Grimm fairy tales. The hypersexualization of Susanna, present even in the title of the story by referring to her as “tempting”, was the most important theme of Miss Temptation and proved to have quite the different outcome from the leading female than what the reader would