Foreword
When a teacher oversteps her bounds by becoming a sexual mentor as well as an intellectual one, is she to be chastened?
Today, now, society practically screams that such is the case. The idea of an adult, much less a teacher, being physically intimate with a child is socially unspeakable. It is ingrained in the moral prudishness of our forbearers and intellectually justified by our desire to protect our children.
Today, however, the restraints of our ancestors as regards moral codes is slipping away. The once permeating idea that all sex is sinful is rapidly falling by the wayside.
There can be no question that in this novel Mala is not the sexually stable average person in society. It might even be hinted from the descriptive passages about her sex drives, that her sexual activity borders on nymphomania.
The fact that she is attracted to youngsters, literally children, to satisfy her inordinate sexual cravings adds even more flavor of perversion to her activities. Yet, is it right to condemn her life style simple because her behavior is socially deviant.
As Mala is drawn into the maelstrom of life in middle America her sexual proclivities are widely accepted-as in truth her behavior would be accepted in real life. Art reflects life, and while the nuances in this book are sharper, more direct than is normal in everyday living, the image of truth is plainly visible.
Mala is accepted because each person she encounters is enriched by that encounter. When people gain by their experiences, when they realize satisfaction, they are positive toward the person who makes life more pleasant. Usually the negative reflections come from people who are frustrated in their own aspirations or behavior. Such people harbor jealousies and hatreds planted in their own minds by their own particular mental and emotional quirks-their own, you might say, perversions.
The point of this book might be best stated by simply saying, what is wrong with a teacher who teaches sex joyfully to her students? Who makes the students understand that there is joy in sex for anyone who wants to find it.
Surely the condensed scene of a typical middle American lover's lane is enough to dispel the myth of sexual innocence that surrounds the average teenage child. And, if we look into the brief incident that takes place there in Mala's story, we are reminded that the evil in sex is a product of a jaundiced society, not that of a sexually liberated individual.
It is too much to say that the behavior of individuals like Carl Chessman who died in California because of a lover's lane kidnapping-rape charge would be totally altered by total sexual freedom, but few psychologists think that total sexual freedom would make the picture worse.
The layman is often confused by the different stances taken by the experts, but one truth above all others in psychiatric medicine today is that the largest group of patients being treated for anti-social behavior are usually suffering from sexual misinformation and hang-ups that directly lead to their own frustration and subsequent anti-social behavior.
What may be needed are more teachers who love their students, not fewer.
-THE PUBLISHER