Summary

Chapter 14:

Bess examines the wounds Jack received during his escape (Voth wonders, in a footnote, “who is this capable of letting a woman see him when he’s broken?,” then writes of realizing that “the question is a result of [his] obsessive focus on being self-sufficient” (91)). Jack becomes so comfortable and so aroused that he removes Bess’s clothes and performs oral sex on her, discovering as he does how much he loves the act of doing so, and doing so with Bess in particular (Voth comments, in a footnote, on how women, after men have made themselves vulnerable, in turn become vulnerable themselves, and urges himself to remember that). Conversation about whether Bess will tell the other prostitutes about Jack leads to her calling his concern about it “Spinoza-esque” (93), which leads to conversation about the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, who watched Holland...