Pynchon and women

[Murthy Yenamandra]

Vaska Andjelkovic writes, among other things:
> [...] I've always found something
> troublesome about Pynchon's treatment -- and the use he makes of -- his
> female characters.  And after his intro to _Slow Learner_ I was disappointed
> -- to put it mildly -- with some of the stuff in _Vineland_.  The novel's
> attribution of some sort of crypto-fascism or at least crypto-militarism to
> a generalized (essentialized) female mind (I can't find the exact page
> reference right now) is one of the things about the novel that continue to
> bother me.    

A few decidedly non-academic thoughts:

I don't know about the generalized or essentialized female mind, but
making Frenesi the vehicle of crypto-fascism in Vineland has the effect
of treating her as having a certain degree of agency (and the potential
for cooptation), as opposed to the usual line of ascribing power to the
male mind and treating the female mind as merely the object of this
power. It also shows that power is appealing not only to the primary
agent (Brock Vond), but also to the others who are seduced even as they
realize that it is against their own interests. The triangle of
Brock-Frenesi-Zoyd is an example of this equation of power: Brock the
agent, Frenesi the seduced and Zoyd who doesn't resist (unfortunately,
no active resistance in this particular equation, unless you count
Sasha).  After all, being seduced is just an extreme mutation of
non-resistance. Remember also that Brock is merely the vehicle of Their
power (he just wants to be one of Them, much like Prentice in GR), so
one could as easily make the argument that his in turn is an even more
sophisticated form of seduction by Them. How come we're not troubled by
this attribution of fascism to the essentialized male mind (we have many
passages of Frenesi railing against it)? Perhaps because we've come to
accept this and not the other, more disturbing, implications?

If we think of the female characters as full-blown agents (as opposed to
objects of power, merely being affected by someone else's actions), then
the power to cooperate with fascism is part of the deal. Doesn't this
make Vineland an illustration of all of our potential to be Them, with
Frenesi standing in for Us?

It's true that there is a troubling pattern of being enamoured by power
in the three generations women depicted in Vineland, but not all of them
give in to this seduction. This is a potentially redeeming option.
Vineland makes us sympathize with Frenesi while not allowing us the easy
option of explaining away her cooperation. This is what makes her a
full-blooded character and easily one of the most memorable ones in
recent fiction.

Murthy

-- 
Murthy Yenamandra, Dept of CompSci, U of Minnesota. mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
"Always there's that space between what you feel and what you do, and in
that gap all human sadness lies." - _Blue Dog_