MDDM Ch. 16 Questions, Comments

[jbor]

What's a "Cotswold Waggon"? (168.12) Any significance to the colours, "brick
red and sky blue"?

Mason's imagination, for a supposed "phlegmatick", seems remarkably
Romantick! (169)

As Paul mentioned, Mason's first meeting with Rebekah is a "cute meet" of
the first degree! (170)

"'Unless ghosts are double,-- ' '-- one walking, the other still,' the Twins
propose." Meaning? (171.22)

171-2 Interesting passage:

    She occupies now an entirely new angular relation to Mercy, to those
    refusals, among the Living, to act on behalf of Death or its evr'yday
    Coercions,-- Wages too low to live upon. Laws written by Owners,
    Infantry, Bailiffs, Prison, Death's Thousand Metaphors in the World,--
    as if, the instant of her passing over having acted as a Lens, the Rays
    of her Soul have undergone moral Refraction.

Is Rebekah perhaps the spur, or creation, of Mason's "moral" conscience?

172.24: the "slain Forest"? (cf. _Vineland_, logging, the original cover)

What's happened to Dieter? (172-3)

"Dhow" (174.4) a lateen-rigged Arabian-Sea ship. [19th c..; origin unknown]
Another anachronism? A lateen sail is triangular on long yard at angle of 45
degrees to the mast.

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Rebekah's perspectives from Beyond

172.14: the "Sky, a Harbor to Travelers from Ev'rywhere": the existence of
extra-terrestrial life

172.15: "the Earth ... I know she lives": the planet as a sentient being

best