“We So Seldom Look On Love" by Barbara Gowdy

Love, Beauty and stimulating erections of dead bodies.

The short story “We so Seldom Look On Love", from the collection of the same name, is one of the most chilling and mind-blowing short-stories I've ever read. We So Seldom Look On Love is a brilliant example of how a fictional story may convey truths about humans one might not want to conceive or is simply not able to conceive through any other written or spoken form than narrative fiction. 

The story allows amazing insight into a phenomenon in a way that promotes a certain understanding and not just an explanation. We are introduced to a female necrophiliac and we receive, through her own words, her life story. Gowdy instantly places the reader in an ethical predicament by portraying a very sympathetic character that lives very far outside our social norms. Through this narrative form Gowdy manages to create a window to a world most people cannot and will not understand and forces you as a reader to look through and consider the ethical boundaries of this world. 

This is a love story, albeit not the kind we are used to, but none the less, this is a story about love to its most extreme. Gowdy manages in this story, to portray a young necrophiliac as what Aristotle once coined as the “perfect hero", being a regular, ethical person, the reader can sympathize with. The Story is a masterpiece and boy! does it challenge our moral convictions.