VLVL [8] When BV possessed her

[Doug Millison]

>Doug Millison wrote:
>> Using the light and film metaphors that filter Frenesi's world, she is a
>> "negative" of the slave Austra in M&D, Pynchon's view from the inside out
>> of a woman "possessed", holding an enigma at the core -- the sexual bond
>> with her lord and master -- and possessing an irreducible nub of
>> independence that her master can never dominate. Recall Austra led on a
>> leash, strangely defiant, among her captors, as we see Frenesi bantering
>> with BV at PREP (VL 273-274) and running away at her earliest opportunity.
>>
At 1:01 AM -0500 1/22/99, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:
>> I don't understand the metaphore. How is Frenesi a negative of Austra?

Like a photographic negative -- reversed. Frenesi is white and Austra is
black. In M&D, we don't get much of a look at the inner Austra, if I
remember correctly, while in VL we spend considerable time inside Frenesi's
head. Considering that Pynchon wrote VL while he was writing M&D, the
reversals -- in the light of the "woman possessed" language -- might be
significant. There was some discussion on the P-list of Pynchon's "failure"
to address slavery in any real depth in M&D (not a viewpoint I agree with,
however), just as Jody observed, early in VLVL, that  blacks and the civil
rights struggle of the 60s are largely "absent" from VL (another viewpoint
I don't necessarily agree with); to the contrary, we find Pynchon ringing
the slavery, lord and master, bondage (don't forget the old Marquis de Sod)
chimes loudly in VL.


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