Namaokie's Sexuality In Witch Creek By G. Wells

The need for amatory narrative could be further illustrated in a more historical context. American men's enthusiasm on fortune and business lead them to view their energy, in a economic sense, as a kind of resource and capital. They were recommended by manuals advocating self-discipline to hoard and concentrate their energy in order to achieve success in civil society. Masturbation, a normal sexual behavior,was conceived negatively by the nineteenth-century Americans with its symbolic meaning of releasing energy. According to Barker-Benfield, masturbation was conceived as “the uneconomical expenditure of male creative power”(10) and was therefore recognized as “the chief rival (167) to men's self-making in the sense that its release of sperms

They could use the relief of reading and the sexual fantasies those tales aroused to release their repressed desires and smooth the high pressure they faced on a daily base.

In “Witch Creek", Namaokie's sexuality is positively depicted. Her sensuality is not like that of the water fairy which attracted the young male upon a fatal pursuit, nor like that of the fairies in wonderland which allured the young male into fantasy. Her sexuality preserves a kind of primitive roughness. The detailed description of her physical beauty would suffice to entertain the male.
[T]ere was a wildness and restlessness in her large dark eyes,which seemed hardly of this earth. Her white arms were bare, and her beautiful neck; and there was glitter of silver,and of what seemed to be gems intermingled with plumes,about her dress and her raven hair. (427)
What admirable to Raymond is that her countenance is “different from the mild, and amiable expression which he had been accustomed to expect in woman”(427). Her sensuality symbolizes her primitive vitality which Raymond tried to domesticate to civil society by persuading the reverend to marry

“Her beauty was of the most graceful and voluptuous kind, and her voice was the sweetest sound which had ever floated over the waters of the Rhine” (267). It is said that the boatmen on Rhine would become enchanted when hearing her exquisite melody and forget their boats and themselves completely thus perished in the torrential currents nearby. A woman's long beautiful hair,which is considered as a strong sex appeal in certain context, is narrated with careful observation in this tale--"[H]er long golden hair floating upon the evening breeze,or fantastically braided and twined with river-flowers"(268). Besides visual enjoyment, it also has an audio gratification--"...the sound was so exquisite that the sense was wholly unheeded"(271). A young Count heard of her legend and determined to bring her away from such a perilous spot regardless of his friends, warning and to “judge impartially of the various stories in circulation respecting