Alma & Lureen

[Orleanas]

Is anal sex virginal sex?

I think Marz meant to say vaginal sex.

[Sandy]

D'oh!!

[Marz]

thats what i ment! sorry

[Sandy]

That's okay, someone else explained it for me. I feel like I'm living out a joke told in the Balkans.

A peasant laughs at a joke three times: when you tell it to him, when you explain it to him, and when he gets it. 

[Ministering angel]

And in answer (finally!) to your question, Marz - I guess they scratched their itches like most people do.

[CANSTANDIT]

just saw this in the other thread  (cant remember which one) but do you think that alma masterbated alot?
she wasn't getting virginal sex from ennis and she hated anal, i think of alma as very straight laced but surely being a young woman she had sexual feelings
also we know that lureen and jack weren't having sex at the end of there marriage ( a few years before jack died) and if the guys can do it (which they did) the girls can to!

I wonder if she knew she could.... ..Something tells me the moon and sun rose and set on Ennis, for Alma. I think she was thinking mostly of what pleased him.

[Cally]

Thinking about what the putative waitress might have seen in Ennis, I started to wonder what on earth Alma saw in him:  only 18 or 19, ragged hair, scruffy, lanky, cave-chested, one pair of torn jeans and 2 shirts, an uneducated orphan with two five-dollars bills in a tobacco can.

Was she desperate to be engaged? Was he a good kisser? Perhaps early marriages were the norm, I don't know.  I wonder what her family would have thought.  I suppose she just fell in love with him, as Jack did.

[Ministering angel]

If we assume that Ennis was keen to replace his lost family (much of the evidence for that is symbolic  ) and if we see how enthusiastic he was to get Alma pregnant as soon as they were married (although that may have been fueled by his summer with Jack) then it may be that he was quite a hot-to-trot kid. It's only after the gloss wears off, reality sets in, he has his two kids and essentially doesn't see the need for vaginal sex any more, and he still can't shake Jack's memory, that he becomes the less-than-satisfactory husband she eventually dumps.

[Marz]

that is so true, well said MA, yeah i think he was keen to get alma pregnant right after they married (which he did) to prove himself as a 'man'

[Ministering angel]

And I guess also that he's hard-working, even if he doesn't get a steady job with the County, as Alma wants. We never get the sense that he's a layabout, just that the jobs he takes are low-paid, long-houred. Before marriage, that work ethic would no doubt be appealing to a young girl. It's only afterwards that she finds the money doesn't stretch far enough.

[Marz]

yeah weather alma sent hiim out to get the job (at the start of the film) or he did it on his own, he wasn't scared of hard work, and that must of been an attractive quaility because neither alma and especially ennis were very well educated (ennis said he got a couple of years of high school but thats not alot)

[CANSTANDIT]

Thinking about what the putative waitress might have seen in Ennis, I started to wonder what on earth Alma saw in him:  only 18 or 19, ragged hair, scruffy, lanky, cave-chested, one pair of torn jeans and 2 shirts, an uneducated orphan with two five-dollars bills in a tobacco can.

Was she desperate to be engaged? Was he a good kisser? Perhaps early marriages were the norm, I don't know.  I wonder what her family would have thought.  I suppose she just fell in love with him, as Jack did.

He came across as very masculine, I think, and also rather nurturing...I think if you take away his desperate background, he had some pretty nice qualities.

[o2binla]

Re what Alma saw in Ennis, presumably her background conditioned her to like uncommunicative manly men, plus I figure he courted her sincerely before meeting Jack, as he figured it was what he was supposed to do, and that marrying her would lead to about as much happiness as he was conditioned to expect from life (as in, a little... more like some contentment and satisfaction).  He needed to be independent of his brother and took his role as provider seriously, so I imagine Ennis was rather sweet, early on. 

I really consider Alma to be the most screwed-over of all the characters, in that unlike J&E, she never even had a great love to console herself with, only the eventual embittering realization that she married a man who loved another, and didn't bother to inform her of that before taking her virginity and getting her knocked up.  IOW, seriously compromising her future.  (Lureen I am slightly less sorry for, as she probably could have detected some things about Jack if she'd cared to, which is an advantage Alma didn't have.)  At least Alma finds some consolation w/Monroe, seemingly the happiest of the characters, but I don't think it could have made up for everything...

[Desecra]

Book only - I think it's Brokeback that changes Ennis, and Alma falling for pre-Brokeback Ennis isn't a puzzle.  He's not, as far as we can see, the wary, uncommunicative guy in the film.  They possibly had similar backgrounds and similar ambitions - Ennis seems to enjoy company, he wants to better himself in some way (be a sophomore) and save for a future.   My guess is that she was probably just attracted to him, and that doesn't take much reason.   It's not at that unusual for straight women to unknowingly fall for gay men - lack of sexual attraction can come across as respect and regard.    Back then, it wasn't that unusual for people to wait until they were married to have sex, so Alma may have felt Ennis was being a gentleman if he didn't push her into anything earlier.   Lureen, in the film, seems to appreciate having a guy she can take the lead with. 

[Marz]

i wonder whos choice it was to name the first child after Alma?
ive heard of boys being named after there dad but not girls after there mum
do you think ennis had a choice in Juniors name? or alma decided and ennis didn't have a choice?
i know its very picky, but i just thought id mention it