Chapter 6 Summary

Chapter 6 begins with Anna's reflections on her own attitude toward the flesh. Her attitude toward the body has been, from childhood, one of revulsion and fear. She is dominated by a vague Protestant ethic of the evil of the flesh though she realizes in her adult meditations that this ethic did not come clearly and explicitly from her parents, who had a rather sexually charged relationship. Anna recalls the signs of their sexual energy which she did not know how to interpret as a child, and remembers also the confidences of her mother during the sexual revolution: how her mother had told her about her father's ardor and about her decision to have only one child for her husband's sake, who did not find her sexually attractive in pregnancy.

Anna married Brian as much out of a sense of sexual security as anything...