A friend says that the reason people in Louisiana so fear sex, despite having quite a lot of it (despite having it compulsively, I would say), is that they still regret losing the Civil War and slavery. So they are nostalgic for an earlier time, like the more reactionary Muslims of the Middle East, he says.
In this (Victorian) time you would have the cloying upper-class white women, certain vixen types, and then a lot of slaves and working-class women you could rape and exploit. So it is slavery, which requires an extreme form of patriarchy, that has created the sexual habits and attitudes of the Louisianians, he posits.
This, of course, would explain why my first reaction to Jorge Isaacs’ María was, “This novel is about the fear of sex.”
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Look: Desire in Language begins with essays on the origin of the novel, and I had forgotten this. I keep thinking I must go back to Marthe Robert, but I must go here, too. http://rll-faculty.fas.harvard.edu/alicejardine/publications/desire-language-semiotic-approach-literature-and-art