A Rump Sexuality: The Recurrence of Defecating Horses in Beckett's Oeuvre

Through the examination of the recurrent sexualised image of horses' posteriors in the act of defecation in , , and this paper outlines a nexus of concepts clustering around this apparently aberrant sexual stimulus. Using Freud's case history of Little Hans and the suggested relationship between defecation and childbirth as an analogue, the paper argues that the image reveals not a horror at sexuality within Beckett's works, but a horror at reproductive sexuality which finds its fullest expression in the sterile world of