The Role of Magda in John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse”
Women have been programmed to believe that men are strong and they are weak; that men are leaders and women are followers; that men give orders and women bow their heads in complying agreement; that men are right and women are wrong. However, women have also been taught to believe that this is not entirely true, and that there are some cases in which the roles are reversed – in movies or in stories, though never in real life. The fact of the matter is that protagonists and antagonists are roles both played by men; women are just second-line characters used as a means to an end – the keyword being used.
In John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse”[1], the reader is presented with these typical male and female roles. The reader is introduced to the main character, Ambrose, 13 years old; his brother, Peter, 15 years old; their father, their Uncle Karl, and their mom; and Magda, a 14-year-old neighbor girl who tags along for the ride to Ocean City to celebrate Memorial Day, a family tradition. The story revolves around Ambrose “at that awkward age” (page 72), but also around the other male characters in the story. Ambrose’s father and Uncle Karl are bothered by the ongoing war, wonder about the fireworks (or lack thereof), and along with Peter make adult jokes about the sexual activities in Ocean City during that time of the year. Magda and Ambrose’s mom are both secondary, unimportant characters. At least that is what the author leads the reader to believe.
Every story has a more or less clear identification of the protagonist and the antagonist. In Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse”, it is clear that Ambrose is the protagonist and his male family members the antagonists. I would, however, like to introduce a new term, which for my intents and purposes in this essay will have a very specific meaning: the villain. Defined as “the person or thing responsible for specified problems, harm, or damage; a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot[2],” I will use it to go even a step further: I claim the term “villain” to define the character who actively seeks to harm (whether emotionally or physically) the protagonist. The antagonist may be, in some cases, such as in this one, the character who is socially motivated, or socially forced, to play a role. Uncle Karl as well as Peter, for instance, who seem to be one and the same: “Uncle Karl’s face resembled Peter’s — rather, vice versa. Both had dark hair and eyes, short husky statures, deep voices” (page 75): They are the men who are expected to make the sexual innuendos, to laugh at the double-entendre jokes, to cast Ambrose out of their “man” circle because he is no more than a boy.
The adults decided to forgo the pool; but Uncle Karl insisted they change into swimsuits and do the beach. “He wants to watch the pretty girls,” Peter teased… (page 81)
…The grownups stood at the end of the boardwalk where the Hurricane of ‘33 had cut an inlet from the ocean to Assawoman Bay.
“Pronounced with a long o,” Uncle Karl reminded Magda with a wink. His shirt sleeves were rolled up; Mother punched his brown biceps with the arrowed heart on it and said his mind was naughty. (page 86)
They are the antagonists, Uncle Karl and Peter. We do not learn enough about them to determine whether or not they have bad intentions, whether or not their treatment of and behavior towards Ambrose is deliberate; or whether they are just playing out their roles, the male roles, those established by society, in which men only think about sex.
The villain, on the other hand, is a character who may or may not have much literary importance in the story; the villain may or may not have long speeches, or may not speak at all. But it is through the villain’s actions and attitudes that we learn that this character is going above and beyond what society expects of him or her, and consciously acts in ways that directly affect (in mostly negative ways) the protagonist and his subsequent actions. The villain is not playing a role established and accepted by society; in fact, the villain may very well be acting in the exact opposite way than is expected and accepted by society. Therefore, the villain is not reigned by the idea that characters do not act based on their own intentions, on their own free will, but rather based on the expectations that society has placed, imposed even, on them. The villain willingly and knowingly takes on this attitude and purposely hurts the protagonist in order to “win”. The hero usually “wins” in the end – but that is not the case with Ambrose. Ambrose is truly disturbed and changed due to the villain’s actions:
He wonders: will he become a regular person? Something has gone wrong; his vaccination didn’t take; at the Boy-Scout initiation campfire he only pretended to be deeply moved, as he pretends to this hour that it is not so bad after all in the funhouse, and that he has a little limp. How long will it last?
He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he’s not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator — though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed. (page 97)
And so ends the story – with Ambrose terribly damaged, his dreams and wishes destroyed and his future nothing more than building funhouses for others to visit: others, lovers; lovers, he says. So he will never be a lover. At least not the type of lover who goes to the funhouse, “for whom funhouses are designed.”
But who is the villain? Who could be so evil in this short story to so completely devastate Ambrose, to the point that at no more than 13 years of age he already knows he will live an incomplete life? Who is the villain?
As explained, Peter and Uncle Karl are no more than antagonists; Ambrose’s mother is a secondary character of no importance who, in any case, is also following the role that society has assigned to her: the loving mother who cares for her husband and children:
Although they were no longer small children, Peter and Ambrose were each given a dollar to spend on boardwalk amusements in addition to what money of their own they’d brought along. Magda too, though she protested she had ample spending money. The boys’ mother made a little scene out of distributing the bills; she pretended that her sons and Magda were small children and cautioned them not to spend the sum too quickly or in one place. (page 78)
Neither the operator nor his daughter are developed enough as characters in this story to be able to decide whether their actions are motivated by social expectation or by the desire to be evil. A similar situation happens with the sailor and his female companions: not enough is said about them to learn their intentions.
The narrator does hint quite often at the idea that Ambrose’s father might be the villain. There is not much to know about the father, which already points towards a negative representation of the father-son relationship. “The boys’ father is difficult to describe; no particular feature of his appearance or manner stood out. He wore glasses and was principal of a T County grade school” (page 75); “The boys’ father was tall and thin, balding, fair-complexioned” (page 79). The reader learns that there are certain similarities between Ambrose and his father: they are both different, different from their respective brothers (page 91); Ambrose’s father used to take the same holiday trip to Ocean City when he was Ambrose’s age (page 73); and they both burn easily (page 81). But then the similarities end, and the reader is allowed access into Ambrose’s most private feelings towards his father: “But he despised his father too, for not being what he was supposed to be. Perhaps his father hated his father, and so on, and his son would hate him, and so on” (page 90), “He hated, he loathed his parents!” (page 91). The narrator justifies Ambrose’s feelings by then stating that “parents did not necessarily love their children” (page 91). Ambrose clearly has high expectations of what fathers should do for their sons, and his father is not fulfilling his expectation, thus the hatred. Ambrose as the narrator then goes on a seemingly unstoppable tirade about why he hates his father:
His father should have taken him aside and said: “There is a simple secret to getting through the funhouse, as simple as being first to see the Towers. Here it is. Peter does not know it; neither does your Uncle Karl. You and I are different. Not surprisingly, you’ve often wished you weren’t. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how unhappy your childhood has been! But you’ll understand, when I tell you, why it had to be kept secret until now. And you won’t regret not being like your brother and your uncle. On the contrary!” (page 91)
Ambrose disagrees with the his father’s silence; he needs a father who will watch out for him, who will warn him, who will tell him what to do and what not to do:
His father’s raised eyebrows when he announced his decision to do the funhouse with Magda. Ambrose understands now, but didn’t then, that his father was wondering whether he knew what the funhouse was for — especially since he didn’t object, as he should have, when Peter decided to come along too. (page 92)
Ambrose wanted so badly to have someone, anyone, warn him about what was really going to happen in the funhouse – especially that it was not going to be fun. But his father
(…) though presumably an intelligent man (as indicated by his role as grade-school principal), neither encouraged nor discouraged his sons at all in any way — as if he either didn’t care about them or cared all right but didn’t know how to act. If this fact should contribute to one of them’s becoming a celebrated but wretchedly unhappy scientist, was it a good thing or not? He too might someday face the question; it would be useful to know whether it had tortured his father for years, for example, or never once crossed his mind.
Ambrose has high hopes for himself, high hopes in spite of his desperate feelings of loneliness and directionless. He does not know which way to go to exit the funhouse, but he knows he will somehow exit and live a successful life – a successful life without the pleasure of the funhouse, and he only wished that his father would have warned him. His father should have either not let him enter the funhouse or told him in perverse detail what exactly boys and girls do in funhouses. But Ambrose, poor Ambrose, had to walk into this unholy place and get lost in a maze of mirrors and darkness and sounds that he was not ready to discover.
This, however, does not make, as one might think, Ambrose’s father the villain of the story. Ambrose’s father is nothing more than a weak, secondary character, representing a man who does not know how to be a father. But there is no evidence in the story that what his father does is with the aim of hurting Ambrose. The reader is not privy to Ambrose’s father’s actions, or thoughts, except for the fact that, at one point, the reader does learn that he was searching for his lost son (page 80).
It is not by a random act of tossing out the other characters that we are left with the true villain. The true villain is known early in the story. The villain seems to comply with social rules and expectations with her public actions, but in private her actions and intentions are exactly the opposite. It is she who ruins Ambrose, it is she who just like the Whore of Babylon wreaks havoc in this young boy’s life, it is she who like the sinful Mary Magdalene needs to be cleansed of her sins and 7 demons[3]. It is therefore no coincidence that Madga (abridged version of the full name Magdalene) is 14 years old – she has twice as many demons within her as Mary Magdalene had. It is Magda who provokes sexual desire in Ambrose, though he fights with all his might to continue to ignore the burning fire inside his growing member and replace that with warm feelings of love, companionship, and sensuality more than sexuality. Ambrose tries to be a good man, but Magda just will not let him.
The reader’s first encounter with Magda is already filled with lust: “Magda G-, age fourteen, a pretty girl and exquisite young lady” (page 72). And then the narrator kindly proceeds to explain that Magda, although young, is older than she seems: “A girl of fourteen is the psychological coeval of a boy of fifteen or sixteen” (page 73), and that “Magda’s figure was exceedingly well developed for her age” (page 81). Magda knows she is pretty, and she is well aware of the impression she causes on people – and she exploits that.
The first sexual instance we learn about is during the Niggers and Masters game (page 77), when it is Ambrose’s turn to punish Magda, but he must do so alone because Peter had to leave:
Ambrose was afraid to punish Magda alone, but she led him to the whitewashed Torture Chamber between the woodshed and the privy in the Slaves Quarters; there she knelt sweating among bamboo rakes and dusty Mason jars, pleadingly embraced his knees, and while bees droned in the lattice as if on an ordinary summer afternoon, purchased clemency at a surprising price set by herself. Doubtless she remembered nothing of this event; Ambrose on the other hand seemed unable to forget the least detail of his life. He even recalled how, standing beside himself with awed impersonality in the reeky heat, he’d stared the while at an empty cigar box in which Uncle Karl kept stone-cutting chisels: beneath the words El Producto, a laureled, loose-toga’d lady regarded the sea from a marble bench.
Though at first glance the reader might want to allow Magda the benefit of the doubt, the image of the El Producto cigar box appears again when, under the boardwalk in Ocean City, Ambrose walks in on a couple having sexual intercourse (page 80). There is no doubt of what Magda did to young Ambrose: she performed fellatio on him – but what to her was nothing more than a simple punishment in a simple game, for Ambrose it was his first experience with passion: “This is what they call passion. I am experiencing it” (page 84). Magda is a whore performing a service, a service she has performed many a time before; and Ambrose is just a boy trying to understand what is happening with his mind, with his body, and with his soul.
But Magda is not only a lusty whore; she is also proud and vain. She flirts with the men when, in response to Peter’s comment to Uncle Karl about watching all the pretty girls (page 81), Magda says, “You’ve got all the pretty girls you need right here.” This is a completely inappropriate statement to make, since there are only two “girls” in the group: One is the mother or wife or sister of the men; and the other is this sinful girl, who is indirectly offering herself to the men. She also flirtatiously shows off her skills, for example, after winning the spotting game on the way to Ocean City: “Magda demonstrated her ability to hold a banana in one hand and peel it with her teeth” (page 76). The phallic allegory is far too obvious: Magda obviously enjoys inserting things in her mouth, the more penis-like, the better.
Ambrose, however, is too young, too naïve, perhaps, or simply too much of a romantic to notice this. While Magda is demonstrating her “ability”, Ambrose is looking at her, exploring her body and learning her moves. He notices (page 75) her brassier straps, her armpit, her perspiration; but Magda continues to sexually entice him, trying to establish physical contact that only they two notice: “Magda, to take the price, moved her hand from so near Ambrose’s that she could have touched it as though accidentally” (page 76). Ambrose boyishly lets his hand fall down on the cushion (page 76-77) behind Magda and toys with the idea of her moving back on the seat and sitting on his hand – but he is quick to remove his hand “‘in ‘the nick of time’” (page 78). From what we later learn about Peter, and following the social role he is condemned to play as the all-macho male, Peter would have probably left his hand on the cushion for Magda to sit on, and Magda would more than likely have enjoyed it – though she may have feigned discomfort, as she so commonly does in order to maintain her public persona that of a young, virginal lady.
Magda feigns exasperation, for instance, when Peter and Uncle Karl are trying to force her to get into the water. The reader can easily assume that Magda is on her period and therefore, naturally, wishes to avoid large bodies of water at all cost:
Peter grabbed Magda by one ankle and ordered Ambrose to grab the other. She squealed and rolled over on the beach blanket. Ambrose pretended to help hold her back. Her tan was darker than even Mother’s and Peter’s. “Help out, Uncle Karl!” Peter cried. Uncle Karl went to seize the other ankle. Inside the top of her swimsuit, however, you could see the line where the sunburn ended and, when she hunched her shoulders and squealed again, one nipple’s auburn edge. Mother made them behave themselves. “You should certainly know,” she said to Uncle Karl. Archly “That when a lady says she doesn’t feel like swimming, a gentleman doesn’t ask questions.” Uncle Karl said excuse him; Mother winked at Magda; Ambrose blushed; stupid Peter kept saying “Phooey on feel like!” and tugging at Magda’s ankle; then even he got the point, and cannonballed with a holler into the pool. (page 82)
The reactions to this incident from each character are a clear representation of their personalities: Uncle Karl asking, sarcastically (evidenced by the italic emphasis on him), to be excused, represents his male role, unaware and careless of seemingly unimportant female hygienic situations; Mother winking at Magda implies the female solidarity expected from the only other woman in the story; Ambrose blushing indicates his naïveté, his unease with females; and Peter and his “phooey” are such obvious examples of his macho carefree attitude – the fact that he ignores the situation and goes on to show off with cannonballs into the pool signify that what just happened is of absolute irrelevance.
All of the previous examples might be perhaps attributed to perception and not to fact. But when combined with the following and final examples, make for hard evidence of Magda’s harlotry and Ambrose’s boyish innocence – and by innocence the idea is not to excuse Ambrose of any possibly inappropriate behavior, but rather to explain his unsettling response to it. Let us delve into this a little deeper before going into Magda’s whoreishness.
When Magda is taking her “punishment” during the Niggers and Masters game, Ambrose could have, should have, said no; but he did not. He allowed that Magda purchase clemency – but, unlike what the reader can easily imagine Peter would have done, as the macho-male model in the story, Ambrose pondered the situation, trying to understand. His was not carnal enjoyment of the fellatio; his was an intellectual understanding of what pleasure, and later passion, should feel like. When Magda is eating her banana (that is, imaginarily performing fellatio), Peter and Uncle Karl are probably aroused, but Ambrose is contemplating the contour of Magda’s body, looking at her not with the hunger of a dog in heat, but with the love and intrigue of an artist discovering his masterpiece from within a rock. When Magda is being forced into the pool, both Peter and Uncle Karl probably got a glimpse of her auburn nipple and enjoyed the peep-show, but Ambrose blushed and protected her by his inactions, by not joining in the crowd to help get her into the pool. Ambrose is wise beyond his scarce 13 years, but his maturity is not a sexual one, like Peter’s; his is an intellectual maturity, for his thoughts are not those commonly associated with a 13-year-old, but rather with a much older man – certainly not a boy:
(…) but Ambrose knew exactly how it would feel to be married and have children of your own, and be a loving husband and father, and go comfortably to work in the mornings and to bed with your wife at night, and wake up with her there. With a breeze coming through the sash and birds and mockingbirds singing in the Chinese-cigar trees. His eyes watered, there aren’t enough ways to say that. He would be quite famous in his line of work. Whether Magda was his wife or not, one evening when he was wise-lined and gray at the temples he’d smile gravely, at a fashionable dinner party and remind her of his youthful passion. The time they went with his family to Ocean City; the erotic fantasies he used to have about her. How long ago it seemed, and childish! Yet tender, too, n’est-ce pas? Would she have imagined that the world-famous whatever remembered how many strings were on the lyre on the bench beside the girl on the label of the cigar box he’d stared at in the tool shed at age ten while, she, age eleven. Even then he had felt wise beyond his years; he’d stroked her hair and said in his deepest voice and correctest English, as to a dear child: “I shall never forget this moment.”
But though he had breathed heavily, groaned as if ecstatic, what he’d really felt throughout was an odd detachment, as though someone else were Master. Strive as he might to be transported, he heard his mind take notes upon the scene: This is what they call passion. I am experiencing it. (page 84)
Ambrose hopes that he can, one day, find his intellectual equivalent:
Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she’d see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her . . . and to Wester Civilization! (page 92)
In some points, the funhouse really is a funhouse, a place one would visit in an amusement park, a house with mirrors and dark hallways and creepy music and weird pathways; a place where one could get lost, but it would all be in good fun, and one would re-emerge and laugh.
“The important thing to remember, after all, is that it’s meant to be a funhouse; that is, a place of amusement. If people really got lost or injured or too badly frightened in it, the owner’d go out of business. There’d even be lawsuits.” (page 90)
The funhouse, however, is in this story also an allegory for sex. “Peter suggests they do the funhouse; he had been through it before, so had Magda. Ambrose hadn’t” (page 80). Ambrose is aware of his virginity – because virginity is assumed until there is actual coitus, fellatio is not sexual intercourse per se.
Naturally he didn’t have nerve enough to ask Magda to go through the funhouse with him. With incredible nerve and to everyone’s surprise he invited Magda, quietly and politely, to go through the funhouse with him. “I warn you, I’ve never been through it before,” he added, laughing easily; “but I reckon we can manage somehow. (page 90)
But Magda enters the funhouse with Peter, and “manages somehow” to get through it with Peter – not with Ambrose. He is left alone and lost because he is an inexperienced virgin, and therefore learns to enjoy “watching others”, like at the pool while they are swimming (page 81) and later in the funhouse (page 85). He is aware of his underdevelopment, not because of any physical problems, but because of his age, and the difference it strikes when compared to his brother:
“You could pretty well tell by looking at their bathing suits and arm muscles how along the different fellows were. Ambrose was glad he hadn’t gone in swimming, the cold water shrank you up so” (page 83).
But even worse, Ambrose does not know how to control his body: “Ambrose gets hard when Ambrose doesn’t want to, and obversely” (page 85).
Magda, on the other hand, knows very well how to control her body, and how to make her body control the bodies and minds of the others. Magda teases Peter, for instance, when at the pool she claims that she does not want to get in because “Maybe I want to lay here with Ambrose,” (page 82), she teased. That sends Peter into a frenzy and he tries to force her in. She likes it. She enjoys the attention and the physical contact – but due to her monthly condition must seriously fight Peter and Uncle Karl off, which she finally accomplishes with Ambrose’s mother’s help. The narrator (seemingly Ambrose in this point) grants the reader a little insight into Magda’s actions, when hinting that women (a generalization trying to avoid a singling-out of Magda) at a certain age only appreciate “wisecracks and teasing and strutting” (page 83), which is the only thing Peter does, and which is why Magda is so attracted to him – and not to Ambrose, who is young, and innocent and gentlemanly; quite frankly, Peter’s opposite in every single way. Magda tries to rise up to the intellectual challenge Ambrose poses, but not to please Ambrose, rather to tease Peter: “Amby and me aren’t interested in such things!” (page 89), referring to sexual innuendos. But she lies – she is a lying hussy who is just toying with both boys, because they are both interested in her, and she knows it and likes it. It is only in this moment when Ambrose realizes what it is all about: the funhouse, Ocean City, the jokes, the teases, everything.
Money spent, the three paused at Peter’s insistence beside Fat May to watch the girls get their skirts blown up. The object was to tease Magda, who said: “I swear, Peter M —, you’ve got a one-track mind! Amby and me aren’t interested in such things.” In the tumbling-barrel, too, just inside the Devil’s mouth enhance to the funhouse, the girls were upended and their boyfriends and others could see up their dresses if they cared to. Which was the whole point, Ambrose realized. Of the entire funhouse! If you looked around, you noticed that almost all the people on the boardwalk were paired off into Couples except the small children; in a way, that was the whole point of Ocean City! If you had X-ray eves and could see everything going on at that instant under the boardwalk and in all the hotel rooms and cars and alleyways, you’d realize that all that normally showed, like restaurants and dance halls and clothing and test-your-strength machines, was merely preparation and intermission. Fat May screamed. (page 89)
Everything was about sex. Everything was related to sex. And sadly, this was an adventure for which Ambrose was ill-prepared, not only intellectually but physically. His brother was superior in both instances, for Peter does not only know what to do (he has already been through the funhouse) but also has the material to fill his shorts, unlike poor, young Ambrose. And Magda? Magda enjoys every bit of it: When she trips and Peter sees her underwear (“I see Christmas!” page 92), she doesn’t even have the nerve to feign exasperation, she just enjoys the attention. And later even commends Peter for his achievement in sexualizing her:
A wiry little Seaman 3rd, the fellow squeezed a girl to each side and stumbled hilarious into the mirror room, closer to Magda in thirty seconds than Ambrose had got in thirteen years. She giggled at something the fellow said to Peter; she drew her hair from her eyes with a movement so womanly it struck Ambrose’s heart; Peter’s smacking her backside then seemed particularly coarse. But Magda made a pleased indignant face and cried, “All right for you, mister!” and pursued Peter into the maze without a backward glance. The sailor followed after, leisurely, drawing his girl against his hip; Ambrose understood not only that they were all so relieved to be rid of his burdensome company that they didn’t even notice his absence, but that he himself shared their relief. (page 93)
Ambrose understands – he may be young, but he is not dumb. He has learned the real meaning of the funhouse, and recognizing his weakness in this sexual field (quite literally), he chooses to let the others go and allows himself to get lost. He gets lost in the maze of the funhouse, yes, but he also gets lost in his world, in his life, in his age. How does one get out of the funhouse? How does one get out of being in that awkward age, 13? Neither are easy questions to answer. And even if Ambrose did have the answers, those were not ones people wanted to hear. Magda did not want to listen to Ambrose profess his love for her (page 93), she wanted Peter to smack her backside. Magda did not want to babysit Ambrose through the funhouse, she wanted to be lead through in the coarsest of ways by Peter; and Peter fulfills every single one of her expectations seemingly well:
Magda’s teeth. She was left-handed. Perspiration. They’ve gone all the way, through, Magda and Peter, they’ve been waiting for hours with Mother and Uncle Karl while Father searches for his lost son; they draw french-fried potatoes from a paper cup and shake their heads. They’ve named the children they’ll one day have and bring to Ocean City on holidays. Can spermatozoa properly be thought of as male animalcules when there are no female spermatozoa? They grope through hot, dark windings, past Love’s Tunnel’s fearsome obstacles. Some perhaps lose their way. (page 80)
Peter and Magda did not lose their way: they both knew what to do, and they both knew how to enjoy it. Magda seems to be a fellatio expert, and has learned to enjoy the taste: “Magda would certainly give, Magda would certainly yield a great deal of milk, although guilty of occasional solecisms. It don’t taste so bad.” (page 85)
Magda, the Whore of Ocean City – or, rather, one of the many whores of Ocean City – is the villain and not the antagonist of the story, because her actions at first read do not seem to be ill-intentioned and act against the well-being of the protagonist; Peter, on the other hand, as well as Uncle Karl, are clearly the antagonists: their actions and attitudes highlight not only everything that they are, but everything that Ambrose is not. Ambrose is not sexually experienced, Ambrose is not physically developed, Ambrose is not a male chauvinist pig who enjoys teasing and smacking girls. Ambrose is an inexperienced virgin, he cannot control his body to react as he would want it to react, and he respects women, loves them, and wishes for their well-being. Magda comes in the picture to further emphasize the macho characteristics in the antagonists and not only thusly diminish Ambrose, but even goes one step further when actively engaging sexually with Peter instead of with Ambrose in the funhouse. By preferring Peter over Ambrose, Magda is furthering the very well-established preconceived notion that “good girls like bad boys”. By using Ambrose to tease Peter, Magda is furthering the also well-established preconceived notion that “good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go anywhere.” And finally, by sexually abusing Ambrose – for she was in a more favorable position than him for being older, he could not have said no, thus he was abused – Magda proves that she is the whore, the Magdalene who needs to be cleansed of her sins. Moreover, she is the villain: the character who indirectly, through her actions, changes the course of the protagonist’s life and future.
Magda damaged Ambrose, she scarred him for life. It is because of Magda’s flirtatiousness and her choosing Peter over the loving Ambrose, that Ambrose “will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator – though he would rather be among the lovers for whom the funhouses are designed” (page 97). Magda is the seemingly secondary character used as a means to an end: Magda is used to change the course of the protagonist’s life by using him, by harming him, by exploiting him, by abusing him both sexually and emotionally. Oh, yes: Magda is most definitely the villain. And she clearly challenges all of the preconceived notions women are taught to believe: she is strong and not weak; she is a leader and not a follower; she gives the orders (even when her role should be that of abiding slave) and never bows her head (unless to perform fellatio) in complying agreement; she is right and never wrong. Magda, the villain, has most certainly won: she has ruined Ambrose and in the process she has pleased herself.
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