Chapter 14 Becoming Mat-Tee
I love these chapters as we watch Madeleine blossom. I get excited with her as she moves off in to the world to purse her goals and her dreams. In order to become the adventurer that she yearns to be, she takes some serious risks. First she dresses as a man, which in those days was unheard of. Second, she travels alone with a man, and begins to experience the complicating emotions of heterosexual relationships. Third, along with Tonato, she risks her very life as she faces treacherous wilderness, hostile Indians, and a life-threatening storm.Before I go on to my main topic, let me toss out this question. Do you like taking risks? Does a risk excite you or scare you? Would you share with us a risk you took, and how it turned out for you? I mainly want to open up a discussion about sex. Yes, S-E-X. Can you stand it?To do talk about White Heart and the theme of sex, we need to get to know Tonato, a friend of Madeleine’s. Tonato is Madeleine’s first partner in love-making.LaSalle gives Tonato the assignment of finding an area on the Niagara Frontier that would be suitable for a fort. Tonato asks her to accompany him. During their travels she learns that Tonato is a good dog handler, a calm and accepting friend in the face of crises, and open-minded to Mat-tee’s instincts and desire to help Jenet’s Huron wife.Tonato is the person that begins to turn Madeleine’s damaged female identity into a healthy, sensual one. After having been abused at Versailles, Madeleine had a distorted view of love-making and her own body. You may not believe that Madeleine’s choice of being sexually intimate outside of marriage is right and proper. But at least you can breathe a sigh of relief that some loving man in her life shows Madeleine the beauty of sex.
Author’s Tidbit
When I do sex counseling, one of the basic methods I use is sensate focusing. This technique encourages partners to give themselves permission to have sensual pleasure, without the pressure of having to perform. And by sensual pleasure, I do not mean receiving excitment from the act of intercourse. The pleasure comes from other sensations. The couple explores their bodies in order to practice relaxation, to broaden their experience with sensuous stimuli, and to discover new erogenous zones. I believe that Tonato’s intimacy with Madeleine, before they went all the way, was an example of this. 