Pynchon and babies

[matthew.percy at utoronto.ca]

On Sat, 26 Oct 1996 hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu wrote:

> 
> No flames, but I'd like to ask: is it so that Pynchon's representations of
> women in _V._ are "flawed" in a way that representations of men are not? 
> Is it "natural" for male characters to be "cold", but not for female
> characters?

Good points here.  I obviously didn't make myself clear enough: at the 
beginning of _V._, I think Pynchon depicts both males and females as 
"cold" and doesn't really essentialize any specific traits (eg see 
Rachel's worship of automobiles, plastic surgery, etc).  I think if 
anything, he critiques the entire world as "inanimate" and bemoans the 
lack of humanity/compassion/etc.  However, over the course of _V._, I 
think Pynchon does tend to essentialize traits - painting women as 
victims of a male system (e.g. Rachel's experience with Profane [and 
Paola's]), and attempts to elevate "femaleness"/"femininity" to a 
morally superior position.  For example, Rachel's castigation of Profane 
and the whole Sick Crew as being wastrels unable to create, and only 
capable of experiencing a mindlessly commodified twentieth c. lifestyle 
seems to me to be indicative of this.  Furthermore, but the 
loss of humanity _V._ speaks about really begins with the dismantling 
(and symbolic rape ) of 
V. upon Malta, in 1919.  So it seems fairly clear that Pynchon does 
celebvrate "'atavistic', fertile womanhood, while attacking this 
century's "unwomanly" violent femmes [and males] satirically".  


> Do you want to maintain this division between manly coldness and womanly
> warmness? (This is of course a hot question in feminist debates in general.) 
> Might it be so that the Pynchon of _V._ would not like to maintain it, and
> maybe for good reason? 

> Or is it the contrary: _V._ being problematic because it finally favors
> "atavistic", fertile womanhood, attacking this century's "unwomanly" violent 
> femmes satirically? this is what Catharine Stimpson argued in the 70s.
> 
> But the novel is "problematic", indeed. E.g. Gilbert and Gubar connected
> _V._ to the tradition of misogynist satires in the first part of their
> magnum opus _No Man's Land_; in the third part they refer to the novel
> much more favorably, as I recall.
> 
> But this avant-gardistic writerliness is for Linda Hutcheon, another
> Torontoan, a form of ultra-modernism. Whereas postmodernist
> "historiographic metafictions" seem to acknowledge that you just can't
> totally flee conventions, but remain partially complicit with them. But
> it is only through an inscription into conventions that any kind of
> critique is possible, says LH. There are no outside positions, which 
> makes writing traditional satires impossible. So, I would not say that
> _V._ "reinforces what it satirizes". It is not any either-or question
> like "attack OR participate" to me, but something more complex and
> problematic.

Good use of Hutcheon.  Hutcheon's argument goes on to state that 
postmodernism (via historiographic metafiction) and irony are valid 
because of their capability to remind us that what we see as "natural" or 
"innate" (e.g. the notion of woman as being maternal, republican family 
values, whatever you'd care to mention) is actually  "acquired" or 
"learned".  Obviously, I'm sure both you and I could come up with many 
critiques of this argument- does this recognition that the object being 
satirized/ironicized/discussed is learned rather than natural translate 
into political action or change, for example?  Personally,  I think it's 
a matter of what interpretive community (Stanley Fish) one falls into 
insofar as a ultra-right misogynist probably is _not_ going to go through 
a transformation while reading _V._ and acknowledge that the capitalist 
dystopia of 20th c. life is "acquired" and "learned" rather than "normal 
" or natural.  An interesting (feminist) corollary to Fish's argument is 
found in Patrocinio Schweikart's article "Towards a Feminist Poetics"  
which extends the concept of interpretive communities to include the 
ideal of a "validating community" a community which allows/disallows 
certain readings (kinda like a "dominant" reading, if you will) in order 
to avoid an empty relativist position.  However, with _V._, I wonder 
whether the "dominant" reading and audience actually recognizes the 
problematics of Pynchon's female representations (and representations of 
non-Western/non- white cultures) and whether they actually acknowledge 
whether these beliefs to be "leraned" rather than "acquired".  

In any case, I'm really grateful for the articles you've suggested - it's 
refreshing to see at least some criticism of Pynchon from a 
feminist/post-colonial perspective.  

Thanks,

Matt 

> I partly wrote this because I know many women who have read _V._ and 
> loved it, but do not seem to go for _GR_ that much.
> 
> Heikki