Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
[...] **Since no one's gone there yet, I will admit that I spent some time wondering about Tarzan's sex life, especially before Jane. Obviously ERB wasn't going to go there, but wouldn't adult readers, at least have wondered? Or do I need to get my mind out of the gutter?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl
He was confused about his true-birth mother and his biological makeup so I guess it makes sense that he courted a female ape. He learned concepts of love and hate from his relationships within the ape tribe and with other wild animals. I thought maybe he learned additional concepts of romance from the books that he read in the cabin.
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When I was a kid I did not have access to
Jungle Tales of Tarzan, mentioned by
Calenorn above, so when I finally did get to it I remember being surprised. I had always assumed his sex life was constrained by same reasoning given for not eating human flesh: "All he knew was that he could not eat the flesh of this black man, and thus hereditary instinct, ages old, usurped the functions of his untaught mind and saved him from transgressing a worldwide law of whose very existence he was ignorant."
I'm not saying the hereditary thing is convincing (maybe about as convincing as how much he learned - without help - from the books in the cabin
), but once you accept it for one thing, using it to explain away a few other troublesome details barely makes you blink.
