Strawberries and Sex (A subtle title, no?)

Okay so. After class yesterday I scampered on home to Bentonville, Arkansas...I got home around 9 to discover the Internet at my parent's house doesn't work. Yikes. So I'm posting almost 12 hours late. SORRY!

I'm not sure what drew me to the strawberry-selling passage, but when I first read it I couldn't get it out of my head. In particular, I'd REALLY like to call attention to the final paragraph of this section:
"'With strawberries, wine, obviously,’ said Anna greedily; and moved the spoon about among the fruit, feeling its soft sliding resistance, and the slipperiness of the cream under a gritty crust of sugar. Molly swiftly filled glasses with wine and set them on the white sill. The sunlight crystallized beside each glass on the white paint in quivering lozenges of crimson and yellow light, and the two women sat in the sunlight, sighing with pleasure and stretching their legs in the thin warmth, looking at the colours of the fruit in the bright bowls and at the red wine" (13).

Something about the sensuality of the whole passage makes me feel like I'm intruding on some tense, erotic moment. The spoon's "soft sliding resistance" in conjunction with "the slipperiness of the cream" honestly makes me feel uncomfortable-even typing those words out made me squirm. (Though keep in mind that I'm writing at Starbucks due to my lack of Internet access...but still.) After a description of "quivering...light," the two women sigh "with pleasure and [stretch] their legs in the thin warmth," providing even more sexual imagery within the passage. However, this underlying eroticism is unusual in that it is present in a scene between two women, and two free women at that. Perhaps Lessing is alluding to the idea that free women do not need men to experience gratification or pleasure? Not necessarily in the sexual sense, but in general. Free women, independent of the male gender, instead find pleasure in similar company: Anna and Molly are utterly content to sit and eat their strawberries and drink their wine without any reference to maleness-or its shortcomings.