vitality

Synonyms: vital, vitalize

Sexual vigor, the sexual interest in life. There were emotional frustrations in her love life that troubled her as much as the physical frustration of orgasm, frustrations which she seems to have identified with a selfishness and lack of consideration, of love, in the lover. Usually she overcame these troubles by extra exertions to please her lover (after all her professions of selfless serving are overwhelming, and to these must be added her many hints that her knowledgeable lover praised and esteemed her for her knowhow of fondling techniques(which she must have learned gradually yet willingly, yes ardently). But there are also many poems in which she brings out that her dutiful accommodations of the lover at times became an awful drudgery which sapped her own sexual interest and visor. She will then complain and complain of lack of “vitality” in the lover as well as in herself. The words “vital”, “vitality”, “vitalize”, “vitalless”, etc. hardly ever appear in a stanza exuberant with sexual vigor. Let us not forget: she was a woman, thus prone to disappointment and complaint; woman also in the liabilities of the menstrual period. And far more than these two detrimental forces in her love life, jealousy and the feelings of being jilted gnawed on her.