MDDM Ch. 30 Dolly

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> I like the way that in this chapter Pynchon shows that Mason and Dixon are
> in fact mirrored in Dolly and Molly (M-D D-M). Ben F. had originally
> introduced the two girls as "Students of the Electrickal Arts" (271.16), but
> Dixon (and the reader) overlook this - they're *women*, after all - and view
> them as no more than a couple of floozies. 299-301 portrays Dolly as more
> than a match for Jere., both in terms of his profession as a surveyor and in
> his natural intuitiveness. They sympathise with one another over their
> partner's predisposition to melancholia, and the strain it puts on them both
> to "be cheery all the time".

Excellent. Yes more Pynchon doubles. You would think that the reader of
postmodernist/post-feminist/Pynchonian (whatever?) fiction would not
fall into the reader trap (and with our Dark girl embroidering in the
parlor needling flirtatiously), but Pynchon sets us up like bowling
pins. A bit over the top in my opinion. We've Philadelphia girls all
turned out in magnetisms of fashionable flirtation at the docks, there
with the hawkers of redemption, potions aphrodisiacal, every scam and
temptation fit for a sailor dockside. Moreover, when we meet Molly and
Dolly, they appear to be dizzy damsels doubled, vigorously nudging one
another, laughing at different rates of speed. Ben does say they are
students of the Electrikal arts, but quips that he examines them on the
subject (playing doctor). When he can't manage to think of the word to
describe the venue for his gig that coming evening, he asks the girls,
what is the Word I *Grope for.* This play, sexual suggestiveness, is
also evidenced by Molly's *piping* that she (Presumably Dolly)  saw *it*
glowing in the dark. Ben, his hair a mess,  appears to be tossed in a
silly and seductive storm of female mirth. And what about the outfits
these ladies are turned out in? WOW! It's as if they or Ben knew more
about Dixon and Mason than one would expect. While the embroidered
slogans ("no Free Kisses", "Be Quick About It") suggest that Molly and
Dolly are not students of the same electrickal arts as Dr. Franklin, but
may be teachers rather or professors of the ancient art of pretending to
love, it is the fabrics and the patterns that I suspect are subliminal
messages for our boys. 

Interesting too, that Dolly's surveying skills have led to a discovery
about the living planet. Also, we will soon read about other reasons for
Mason's Melancholia, having to do with the death, not of his wife, but
of his child-like beliefs.  Something Dixon, coming from the more
Northern and country in the boy bumpkin part of the Island, has managed
to keep alive. 

Also, I think the fact that Mason has not slept, is in a strange land,
has been drinking, experienced some Metamorphoses, his mopey
disposition, his predilection for the grisly gothic, all contribute to
his view of Franklin and the Death Dance and to the effigies he sees,
but this is also a Pynchon set up, common to all his texts. Dixon also 
has a strange "vision" aboard the coal boat. 




> 
> I also like the way that Dixon brings up Franklin (300.28), and is quickly
> rebuffed by Dolly's reply. He apologises immediately, comically - admits to
> poking his nose in where he shouldn't. And there's no reason to suspect that
> Dolly's expression of respect for Franklin's character and intellectual
> pre-eminence is insincere.


A very good point. However, as with Blicero, the sincere adoration of
Ben by Miss Dolly does not prevents us from reading Franklin, on
balance, as a bad guy. I wouldn't want to push this comparison too far
because, as I've stated previously, B/W is, imho, Pynchon greatest and
most complex character (I've compared him with Ahab and Milton's
Satan--specifically as Satan was read by the Romantics) and Ben is not
so. Also, the characters who adore B/W (Enzian, Greta, Thanatz,
Gottfried, etc.) are far more complex than Molly and Dolly, the
relationships much more complex and complicated by the psychological
theories (Freudian, Post-Freudian) that P brings to them. 

Westward the course of empire takes its way; 
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

George Berkeley, "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in
America"