The main character of Miranda July’s novel All Fours is a very woke 45-year-old woman who refers to her own 7-year-old son as “they.” Who could imagine that I’d enjoy reading about her circle of gender-non-conforming, fluid, drug-addled, “experimenting soul” fru-fru ladies who don’t need to work for a living and who perish of boredom in their $2-million LA mansions?
But I did because All Fours explores the subject of a middle-aged female sexual transformation that nobody else wants to talk about. I tried to discuss it here on the blog a couple of years ago but younger female readers got sore over the possibility that there might be something they hadn’t learned about sex by age 16, and I had to quit the discussion before people received unbearable psychic wounds.
The protagonist of July’s novel stops at a motel on a drive from LA to NYC, and all of a sudden it happens. It’s an instantaneous transformation. All of a sudden, she understands the entire history of art that always seemed unnecessarily filled with naked bodies. She understands men in a way she never did before. But it’s too late to do anything about it. When she finally receives the full force of human sexuality, her fertility is gone, beauty is gone, and the capacity to refashion her life in any meaningful way is also gone. The realization that this gift is given to her exactly when it’s of no use strikes July’s character with how exquisitely cruel and unfair the laws of biology are. She has spent her whole life trying to make a mockery of biology. She is even planning to trans her small son. But nature comes back with the inevitability of a hired assassin and hits her with a wave of regret over her entire life before and after this moment.
July’s character is a frivolous, spoilt brat of a woman. She is also one of those eternally immature women who try to use symbiotic relationships to make up for their stunted growth. As a result, she responds to this great crisis in the most bizarre and entertaining ways imaginable.
None of us here are rich, coddled princesses who can sit in our butts all day and prattle about our hormone levels with our equally stunted girlfriends. But we do need to remember that what happened to this character is likely (but not guaranteed because we aren’t factory produced) to happen to us. In the absence of wealth and unlimited leisure, we need a life strategy that takes into the account that in middle age the hereto divergent paths of male and female sexuality suddenly reverse course and approach each other like never before. If people are not prepared, it messes with their heads. I mean, even if they are very prepared, it still messes with their heads but at least knowing about this is a good idea.
The female sexual crisis of middle age has been described in literature a lot but it’s usually done obliquely. The female character in its grip is portrayed as suddenly developing a desire to be an artist or realizing that her husband is uncaring. July’s big achievement is that she speaks of it bluntly and almost clinically, and nobody can pretend they don’t understand what she’s on about.
I can’t recommend this novel to everybody because the many pornographic parts soon become tedious and the protagonist’s intellectual limitations lose their entertainment potential about halfway into the book. The subject, however, is important, and we can see how many women are grateful it’s been raised in the number of positive reviews of the novel.
Clarissa's Blog 
Are you saying women become horny in middle age?
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This is an interesting review, usually middle aged women who suddenly become sexual is treated as a joke. One thinks of ugly older women wearing tacky clothes who throw themselves at young guys, as in sitcoms. As a lifelong celibate, I can watch at a distance how many of my female peers suddenly become man-hungry after the hormones go into overdrive. Times like this, I’m glad I’m asexual and celibate so I’m not acting all weird
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It’s also not a bad thing if you are already happily married 😉
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I don’t know what else can be a barrier against this. If you are in love with your husband, this can be a wonderful time. But if not, it could be extremely hard to keep the marriage going.
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What a loser. Yuk. Such absolute confusion of identity. Ouch.
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\ a middle-aged female sexual transformation that nobody else wants to talk about. I tried to discuss it here on the blog a couple of years ago
Have you deleted this discussion? Tried to find it without success.
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I don’t remember which particular post that was. It was a while ago. But people got very upset.
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I think I remember that post. I think the sticking issue was that Clarissa was saying “You don’t know how great sex can become once you’re a mature woman and it has largely to do with ovaries going out of business” and people were taking it as if it meant people couldn’t enjoy sex as young women. Both things can be true and are true. You can enjoy it as a young woman, but it’s also true that so much of sex as a young woman is tied in with wanting to be loved and chosen, rather than the pleasurability of the sex alone (plus, let’s face it, both young men and women tend to be inexperienced, which doesn’t bode well for a great time in the sack for women, despite everyone being hot and toned). And even if you absolutely loved sex as a young woman, you can and will still be surprised by how much your libido and your overall enjoyment of sex go up once you’re over 40, especially if you are with a partner you love and who knows their way around your body. 🔥
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That’s exactly it. At no point did I mean any of it as “you 20-year-olds are all frigid.” Many women experience sexual flourishing in perimenopause. It’s well-documented and not threatening. For some, it continues well into their sixties. We should be able to talk about it without people getting upset.
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\ Many women experience sexual flourishing in perimenopause.
Your blog is the only place on the web that publishes this info.
On usual websites re perimenopause symptoms they mention vaginal dryness “making intercourse painful” and “lower sex drive.”
One of the reasons I love your blog is your inherent positivity, no matter what. 🙂 🙂
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This is exactly what happens to this character. She experiences an off-the-chart sex drive but Google searches tell her that her sex drive should be dead. So she starts behaving in strange ways to use it before it dries up. 🙂
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Here is some more technical reading on the topic, indicating it’s not just the higher testosterone in perimenopause, since we link testosterone to libido in men. The correlation between free testosterone and libido is positive in many women (i.e., both high or both low), but actually negative in highly sensitive women (i.e., one high, the other low). At midlife, a number of psychological factors coalesce with hormonal changes and may result in a woman’s higher libido. There are a lot of comments in the first link, showing it’s not an uncommon occurrence and women are starved for online resources:
https://hellobonafide.com/blogs/news/high-libido-in-women-menopause
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21143419/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21514299/
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Thank you for these great links! This is very useful information because there’s precious little knowledge out there.
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I hoped your discussion would reduce my confusion about this book, and it did help, so thank you! 🙂
There are still a few things I don’t understand: What about her relationship with her husband? It seemed they were almost strangers, why? The same with her kid. She seemed so detached from her family and much closer to her best friend. Is it because she has always been very cut off from her body and her desires and now that she discovers it so late in life everything that came before feels totally empty? Is that what the book is about?
I liked the symbolism of her pointlessly redecorating this hotel room and throwing so much money at it. This was so idiotic that it felt real.
Other than that, I found the book extremely hard to relate although I’m 45 too, maybe it is because my life is very different from her. Still I’m glad I read it because her despair felt true even if I still cannot fully comprehend what caused it and what must have happened in her marriage and her family beforehand. Maybe I missed some clues in the book?
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This character is a symbiotic. They perceive any kind of distance as intolerable rejection. This is why she says things like “What’s going on in your head, second by second?” or “Let’s dream the same dream tonight.” She’s going to go from one short-lived relationship to another in search of the impossible degree of closeness that will subsume her completely.
This is a developmental scenario that exists among women but it’s impossible to understand unless you know it exists. It looks really weird from the outside.
In other words, this character is detached because she knows neither the husband nor the child can give her what she wants.
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And this is another reason why this is an important book. Female symbiotics can recognize themselves in this character and understand themselves better. People really suffer with this condition.
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Do you mean she really feels like this?! I thought this was just totally over-the-top / satirical.
Do you know women who are like this? I never met one. It seems absolutely alien to me. But maybe I never get to know anyone like this because I’m on the other side of the spectrum and truly do not want to know in too much detail what goes on in the heads of people I love. I’m overwhelmed by my own brain.
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Yes, this exists, and it’s not particularly rare. For this type, sex is never fully satisfying because the kind of complete merging with another person doesn’t occur. This is why the character in the novel feels that nobody fully knows her. To her, being known means becoming as one with another person, which is not possible.
Let’s be happy we aren’t like this because it’s not an easy life.
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She made a movie back in the day (2000s?)– You and Me and Everyone we Know (Me and You and…?). Even lo so many years ago, it showcased how seriously screwed up a person she is.
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