re Re: MDDM Washington & Gershom

[Doug Millison]

jbor:
>Where, in the novel _Mason & Dixon_, is it indicated that George and Gersh
>"remain fixed in their roles as master and slave"? [snip the rest of that
>series]


I've quoted P's text on most if not all of these  questions. I've restated
elements of P's
 text using adjectives chosen to support the argument I want to make --
same thing you do in this discussion all the time, read the last few of
your posts for many examples.


jbor:
>Chapter 28, of course, where Gershom is shown to hold equal rank with both
>George and Martha


P shows no such thing, Gershom can't possibly hold equal rank with George
and Martha because he's their slave, their propertym the relationship is
unequal by definition. However friendly or humane they might treat Gershom,
a reader simply can't know that they consider him their equal;  W and M
don't say anything about considering G their equal.   W's "nominal Master"
comment takes for granted the inherently unequal master-slave relationship
that in fact exists between the two men. "Master in name only" is still
Master.


>GW's attitude towards Gershom bears no resemblance to the way the older
>Vrooms treat Austra [...] In
>fact, George is deliberately portrayed as having allowed and allowing
>Gershom total liberty to go wherever he likes, and to do and say whatever he
>pleases.


Bottom-line (the way the historical W reported the value of his slaves in
his business records), Gershom is W's slave just as Austra is  the Vroom's
slave. Because he is their slave, Gershom enjoys whatever privileges he has
on W's whim, subject to suspension whenever W chooses, as is the case with
the intimacies W allows.  It's the same with Austra and her owner.


And still with the Orwellian "slavery is liberty"!  Do you really think
that's what Pynchon is saying in M&D? At any rate, that's just an
assumption you keep introducing into this discussion.  There's no evidence
anywhere in the text to support your claim that P's Washington holds this
belief, W certainly never says it or anything like it, Pynchon's not saying
it.  The only one saying "slavery is liberty" is you.


>It's Ch. 28 which characterises GW, and which makes attribution of the line
>at 572.26 quite straightforward, in my opinion.


I've adequately demonstrated there's nothing straightforward about
attrbuting that line to Washington. That  is unfortunate for you because
your argument rests so heavily on your forced attribution of  this line to
W.


>Are you now arguing that Gershom *doesn't* speak this line at 572.28?!


No, I'm leaving the question open, as Pynchon does.  Pynchon writes the
scene murky, cloaking identities in smoke and a swirl of anonymous voices.
You've provided no convincing evidence why anybody should believe that
Gershom speaks this line, and Pynchon doesn't tell us either.  So I remain
happy to hover in a delicious Pynchonian cloud of unknowing.


>In fact, it's your argument which falls apart unless, against
>substantial circumstantial and textual evidence to the contrary, you are
>able to insist that George *doesn't* speak the line at 572.26, and that
>Gershom *doesn't* speak the line at 572.28.


I can't prove that negative, and you certainly can't prove that W and G
speak those lines as you insist. I've said it's not possible to identity
with any certainty the speaker of those lines, and I've presented various
arguments about why it might or might not be any number of people who are
in that room, some of which you have accepted as valid. Again, I've no
problem with the lack of certainty in this scene re who says what in the
haze -- you're the one who's anxious on that account, and understandably so.


>Further, your case relies on
>ignoring or discounting Gershom's point of view altogether, which is why you
>don't want to accept that he is present in Raleigh's Billiard-Room, as is
>indicated in the text (573.4). If nothing else, one consistent thread
>through all of Pynchon's texts is that Africans and African-Americans have a
>voice, and opinions and attitudes of their own. You seem constantly to want
>to deny the validity of these characters' insights, to deny them the right
>to this voice.


Hogwash. Maybe he's in the room, maybe not; Pynchon leaves it something of
a mystery. I've written quite a bit about Gershom in this thread and have
tried to  imagine the pain that comes with being another man's property, a
pain that I expect underlies Gershom's rather frantic clown antics... a
pain of which you seem to be unaware.   I've maintained that Pynchon
creates an unflattering characterization of Washington that highlights the
gap between W's words and deeds with regard to slavery, which (as some
historians believe) meant not only to untold suffering for slaves owned by
others during W's lifetime but which also contributed to the bloody civil
war,  which continues to have repercussions in the Watts riots Pynchon
writes about in the '60s, and to the present day. Feel free to disagree,
but your argument so far is very lame.


>The King-Fool jokes Gershom tells do correlate with slave-master jokes.


Yeah, I caught my mistake later.  I was trying just abit too hard, wasn't I.


>Note that he doesn't use the word "Nigger", nor
>even the word "slave". But the greater irony here is that it's actually the
>Pennsylvanians whose racist attitudes are betrayed by the gratuitous insult.
>What George then shows the boys ("Come. Observe ... ") is the "excellent
>Punch" which is the "invention" of his "Man Gershom", and the scene which
>ensues further demonstrates that far from "insensibly sliding into their
>speech, and so, it is implied, into their Ways as well", as the
>sanctimonious Pennsylvanians mock, there is in fact a healthy and
>untrammeled process of cross-cultural enrichment going on here at Mt Vernon,
>and that the "speech" and "Ways" (i.e. culture) of different ethnic groups
>are not such narrowly-defined fixtures at all.


That's all very well, but the bits and pieces of text larded with your
fine opinions don't add up to "evidence" that W considers G  an equal or
that what Pynchon shows at Mt. Vernon is "enrichment" -- Pynchon uses
another word, in fact:  decadent. In  the South,  it is customary for
polite people of substance like Washington to pay the hired help (since
slavery was abolished) lavish compliments for their cooking, etc. That
doesn't make them equal. Washington himself shows every sign of
understanding very well that he is the master and Gershom the slave in M&D,
he certainly says so.  Undeniably, W permits Gershom some privileges, and G
enjoys certain intimacies in the privacy of their home -- as did many a
master with many a slave -- but the two men remain distinctly unequal, as
do all masters and all slaves.


>
>In Ch. 28 *both* George and Gershom parody the stereotypical slave-master
>relationship and style of discourse (278.19-22, 279.15-17) which the
>Pennsylvanians so self-righteously and disdainfully attribute to Virginians
>and Africans. Again, it is equal, and deliberately contrived to be so by
>Pynchon.

I agree they appear to be having fun. But there's no evidence that
Washington realizes what a fool Gershom makes of him, or that W understands
the degree to which he's acting on deep-seated racist attitudes and
beliefs, or that W considers G an equal.  Pynchon frames Ch. 28 with a
quote that makes it absolutely clear that this is a master-slave
relationship, as P describes what W and G do as a decadent Folly that dates
to the Dark Ages, and equates slave-holding in America and Africa (bringing
in to play that material in V., as well), as well as to the feudal Lord and
Serf relationship. Pynchon further undercuts his Washington by pointing to
a historical situation -- Washington's consigning  his own slaves to  years
of back-breaking labor for Great Dismal Swamp Land Company --  that he
(Pynchon) mocks by having his fictional Washington offering to sell shares
in that venture to his fictional slave Gershom, an action inconceiveable
for the "benevolent." and "humane" Massah Washington of Virginia.