Oedipa's family

[Susan Danewitz]

The Oedipus complex, of course, is of a male to a female, his mother.
Alexandras or something is the female/father version, right?  Oedipa
then would either be pre- or post- killing her father and marrying her
mother.  heh.  this is kindof fun.  place Oedipa in the cycle:

1.abandoned at birth
2.growing up
3.meeting sphinx & solving riddle
4.meeting father and killing him
5.meeting mother and marrying her
6.meeting adopted parents & finding out truth
7.putting eyes out, etc in despair

(Sure hope I have the order right.)

I'd sure put her at #3, wouldnt you?  She's definately trying to solve
a riddle at this point.  Which makes her mother the one that helped
abandon her, but whom she has not yet met.  Like Oedipus, she's had
a fine time until her destiny has hit her.  The sphinx was sort of the
harbinger of all Oedipus' "fate" -- until then, life had been rather
prosaic, right?  I mean, typical California marriages, interesting people,
but nothing like the Tristero significance.

After all, Fate is the biggest conspiracy there is.  

So her mother is out there, just waiting in the wings at this point--at
this point Oedipa is an orphan with a riddle.

Susan
argus at paynet.com

(Just in passing, it is written on the jacket of my copy of V (from
 what i recall, don't have the book with me)-- "Stencil, searching for 
 the mysterious V.--a woman who may or may not be his mother" --as well 
 as giving away the way Fausto dies, "in a rainspout off of Malta."  
 Obviously someone felt like giving away answers when they wrote that...:> )

> If I had to speculate (and you KNOW I have to speculate) I would say that
> Necessity is Oedipa's mother....But Oedipa, like Clementine, was proboably
> raised by her father, who sits now broken-hearted, pining for his lost
> daughter.
> 
> And lost she be, sucked under by a a strangely seductive whirlpool of
> trivia...like Ophelia, victim of a prince who can't decide...
> 
> jp