MDDM Ch. 73 Slavery

[John Bailey]

>From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 08:29:32 +1100
>
>Terrance wrote:
>
> > the text asks us to consider all human relationships and endeavors
> > as forms of slavery. Who is a slave? What Constitutes slavery? Does > > 
>work or labor? Does marriage? Does government? Does war? Does
> > civilization?

>Yes, I agree with you and John on this point. Most of the characters >have 
>an implied point of view on the topic, and what Pynchon does >represent is 
>a spectrum of attitudes regarding slavery.
>
>And I think it's not just characters' perspectives which provide >different 
>points of view about slavery. The different manifestations >of slavery in 
>the novel, from the absolute ease and camaraderie in the >relationship 
>between GW and Gershom at Mt Vernon through the >exploitative familiarities 
>of the Vrooms with Austra at the Cape or >Captain Dasp at Lord Lepton's, to 
>the brutal slave-driver in the >street in Baltimore, the representation of 
>the way the institution was >manifested in that era runs a wide gamut. The 
>case of Austra is >interesting, and I still can't help wondering if Dixon 
>does meet up >with her again in that Baltimore street. Even if he doesn't 
>the
>point seems to be that the "one tall woman in a brightly-strip'd 
>Head->Cloth" *could* be her, even if it isn't (cf. 696.27). Similarly, with 
> >Eliza Fields we also get a whirlwind tour of different types of 
> >enslavement.
>

Yeah, I think that after twenty years of research, or however much it was, 
that Pynchon would have come across a pretty wide spectrum of attitudes, 
perspectives towards, about, and resulting from slavery, and as I'm pretty 
sure most of us here have read at least one other work by him, it should 
come as no surprise to see thematic parallels being drawn between disparate 
concepts (ie applying slavery as a structural model to other things, 
marriage, work etc), but there does seem to be a strong awareness of the 
possible fallacies being committed in doing so. Of course, the multiple 
perspectives aren't just a way of covering his back, but they don't hurt.

More importantly, I think, are the ways these parallels are filtered through 
some fairly specific ideas which were crucial to the period, so we get a 
questioning of the Enlightenmnet mechanistic model of the universe which 
condemns everyone to the slavery of cause and effect (a big theme here 
imo)... SHROUD tells Benny in V. that in the eighteenth century man was 
thought of as motivated like a clockwork mechanism, because that was the 
dominant scientific model at the time, and I see this coming up a lot in 
M&D.

In the novel, people are also slaves to Time (capital T) and to History (and 
history too). The current chapter is a pretty obvious reflection upon this, 
but I don't think P just reinscribes this model; instead he shows how the 
idea of becoming a slave to time is one which arose in the 18th C. and we've 
lived with since. The accelerating idea of progress, of Westering, and of a 
soon-to-be modernity...

But yeah, as someone pointed out, the novel's not about slavery, and it's 
not about a lot of things. It's about 700 pages.

>The other point I'd make here, and I agree that Ch. 73 a wonderful chapter,
>is that I think it's pretty obvious that it isn't being narrated by Wicks.
>
>best
>


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