Pynchon and women

[Vaska Andjelkovic]

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.

I'm not sure that being seduced -- and I agree with your passive
construction -- confirs on Frenesi much in the way of agency (unless you
want to give it a heavily Sartrean twist, of course).   Also, it is
precisely that exercise of self-will or agency that Pynchon has DL regard
with a sense of shame, failure, remorse: I'm thinking of the passage on pp.
252-3 beginning with "Later, of course [. . .] she could appreciate how
broadly she'd violated the teachings of her sensei."

But what I had in mind when I wrote the message you quote is the long
passage of musings on p. 83.   Is it too much to ask what on earth Pynchon
is doing dragging out and refurbishing, in historically inflected late-20th
century terms,  the mysogyny of the Judeo-Christian myth of the Fall?  Which
is what he is alluding to on p.83.  I also agree with you about that
troubling pattern of being enamoured with power in three generations of
women (of the same family) in _Vineland_: perhaps most troubling because,
precisely as *that* specific pattern, it tends to give credence to the idea
of an inherited and heritable spiritual flaw that Sasha (not a little
incongruously to my mind) fears in herself *as a woman*.

Finally, am I way off-center in suggesting that Prairie's flirtation with
Brock Vond is but another reworking of the old rape-fantasy scenario?  [A
scenario so in-essential to the female psyche (if such an entity exists)
that when I taught Margaret Atwood's short story "Rape Fantasies" last
year, not one of my students (male or female, actually) had any idea what
the title referred to. Atwood's irony was totally lost on them until I
explained the reference.]

The sympathy Pynchon extends to Frenesi, Sasha, DL, and Prairie is palpable
-- but I also feel that it verges on being patronizing.  And that from a
position that has not been earned.

Vaska Andjelkovic
vaska at geocities.com