Romance, Sexuality, and Repression Theme Analysis

In addition to being a novel about war, trauma, and survival, Cold Mountain is also about the romance between its two main characters, Inman and Ada Monroe. Inman and Ada live in a time when it’s difficult, if not impossible, to speak openly about sex and sexuality. As a result, they’re both extremely sexually inexperienced, and more or less completely ignorant of the anatomy of the opposite sex. Keeping this in mind, it’s worth thinking about the nature of Ada and Inman’s mutual attraction in more detail, especially since Inman walks hundreds of miles to be with Ada. And how does Frazier, a writer from a far more sexually liberated time, depict love and sexuality in the 19th century?

As the novel begins, sex is a mystery—sometimes enticing, sometimes frightening. The society of the 19th century forbids frank discussions of sexual desire and tries to repress free and open sexuality at all times. In particular, women are encouraged to hide their beauty from men: they wear heavy dresses, dark blouses, and tight corsets that render the female body strange and unknowable. By the same token, the sexual acts that we learn about at the beginning of Cold Mountain seem bizarre, forbidden, and frequently disgusting: the priest Solomon Veasey impregnates a girl, and a father, Junior, sleeps with dozens of married women. These misdeeds reveal individual characters’ neuroses, but also reflect (and are in some ways caused by) the era’s limited, repressed understanding of sexuality. When society presents all sexual desire as dangerous and scary, it’s more likely that one’s sexuality will emerge in unhealthy ways.

As the novel moves on, sex and sexuality gradually become less frightening and abusive: instead of a man assaulting a woman for his own pleasure, we see men and women making love and falling in love out of mutual desire. On his way home, Inman strikes up a brief romance with Sara, a woman who desires him as much as he desires her. Sara, whose husband, Jonathan, has died, wants Inman’s emotional companionship, and his physical presence in her life—even if it consists of nothing more than his lying in bed next to Sara—is a vital part of that. With these episodic encounters, Cold Mountain paves the way for what is by far the most passionate (and mutual) relationship in the novel, the romance between Ada and Inman. It’s not until Ada and Inman have sex that they feel truly comfortable with each other. Only after their lovemaking do they open up about their traumatic pasts, their secrets, and their dreams of the future. In this way, the novel puts forward a very un-19th century message: sex is an important, natural aspect of the love between two adults, as well as an important part of maturity.

On one level, Cold Mountain is a novel about the destruction of American antebellum culture following the Civil War, one important part of which was the repression of women and of sexuality. The characters find themselves in a strange new world in which sexuality is no longer so guarded and forbidden. While some of these characters treat the collapse of society as an invitation to engage in sexual perversions—rape, incest—the two protagonists, Ada and Inman, find a way to love one another without the sexual repression they’ve experienced their entire lives.