P's Mothers

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Okay, how about all of  the GR women together.  Like I said, I'm big-picture
oriented.  I wanna know what they mean all together, as a statement about
Pynchon's 'treatment of women.'  I'm not trying to antagonize you on this
one, Terrance, I seriously don't know what you mean by that.  What big
picture do you paint from all the women in GR that you list down there?

Thanks for this bit of Freud.  Does he write more like it?  I am interested.
It's like the paradoxical freedom (or power)  found in the dissolution of
the ego.  Not  far off  in my mind.  I will read that 1915 essay.  Thank
you.

Barbara

Freud:
>    The turning round of an instinct upon the subject's own self is made
>    plausible by the reflection that masochism is actually sadism turned
>    round upon the subject's own ego, and that exhibitionism includes
>    looking at his own body. Analytic observation, indeed, leaves us in
>    no doubt that the masochist shares in the enjoyment of the assault
>    upon himself, and that the exhibitionist shares in the enjoyment of
>    (the sight of) his exposure.

----- Original Message -----
From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: P's Mothers


> I'm not going to answer your question about misogyny.
> But, I will say something about P's treatment of women--mothers.
> I've got so much on P's woman and mothers I don't know where to begin.
> How about picking one? We could do Slothrop's mother, Roger's
> mother--the war, Prairie's mother, the mothers in V. (Benny's mother,
> one of my favorites is Fausto's mother), um, let's see. we could do the
> mothers in the Secret Integration, there is also
> motherlessness--stencil's mother and V's fetish, barren women,
> abortion--Esther, mother earth, Herero mother, Marvy's mothers, mother
> moon, the white goddess, the women in GR as a collection of mothers,
> Greta, what's Pokler's wife (can't remember now), oh Isle, mary the
> mother of jesus/god, the virgin mother, the mechanical mother or bride,
> the bride of christ--we reading about one of these in MDMD right
> now--Austra, Pudding's mother or the white woman of GR, Mrs. Bortz in
> CL, Blicero....
>
> Let me know.
>
>
> Isn't Proust sweet?
>
>
>
> See Freud's 1915 essay, "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes"
>
>
> Freud believed that any instinct could change into its
> opposite form, relapsing from activity into passivity, and even turn
> against the subject itself.
>
>    "Examples of the first process are met with in the two pairs of
>    opposites: sadism-masochism and scopophilia-exhibitionism. The
>    reversal affects only the aims of the instincts. The active aim (to
>    torture, to look at) is replaced by the passive aim (to be tortured,
>    to be looked at). Reversal of content is found in the single
>    instance of the transformation of love into hate.
>
>