re Re: MDDM Washington & Gershom

[Doug Millison]

jbor:

>I don't think there's any textual evidence to validate the contention that
>Gershom's "such a well-trained servant that he knows his master's will
>without always being told what to do". This is a prime example of "adding
>what the text doesn't show", which certainly seems to be your preferred
>modus operandi.


Not at all.  To use your phrase, this is what "Pynchon's novel illustrates"
-- Gershom fulfills Washington's expectations without painful threats or
physical punishment, demonstrating that Gershom knows what to do and does
it, when, for example,  Washington politely asks him to serve punch or cook
food or step 'n' fetch the pipe and herb.  Gershom knows his limits and
sticks within them.  This is sufficient to explain what Pynchon shows,
without adding what he doesn't mention specifically.  It's no more
speculative -- less so, I think --  than assuming as you do that Washington
considers Gershom an equal, or that Washington perceives that he has no
control at all over Gershom's actions:  you take a large leap from the text
to those conclusions.


>And it's quite different from inferring the (relatively
>obvious) "he said" from a piece of dialogue.


No it's not. Pynchon left it unclear who says the lines you have
arbitrarily assigned to Washington and Gershom in Raleigh's Billiard-Room.
I assume Pynchon knew what he was doing when he left out "Washington said"
and "Gershom said" in those lines on which your argument depends and
instead left the situation ambiguous. You're obviously adding something
that's not in Pynchon's text.



>The word "tithable" is not a synonym for "slave". It refers to something (or
>someone) for which the holder is required to pay a tithe, or tax.


Property, in other words, which is what Gershom is as Washington's slave.
And Pynchon clearly shows us a Washington who understands business, real
estate, property, making a profit on what he owns.  (I'm "nominal Master"
of this house, my wife and teen-aged son make all of the important
decisions, but when it's time to pay the property tax, I write the check.)



>I'd say that the fact that Gershom earns a private income and comes and goes
>from Mt Vernon as he pleases flouts "the basic legal and financial realities
>of the master-slave relationship".



That's more than the text shows, I think.  Is it completely clear that
Gershom is not sharing the profits of his comedy act with his owner?
Pynchon doesn't address that specifically, but he doesn't call it Gershom's
"private income" either -- that's your phrase, moving beyond what's
specifically in the text.  Washington merely mentions an unspecified income
per annum generated by Gershom's act (and he may very well be joking when
he says this, too, it's difficult to believe after all that a bar-room
busker could earn an income equivalent to a man of substance and
entreprenurial farmer like Washington -- the "dangerously close" on p. 279
is the telling exaggeration, I suspect), Washington says nothing about how
this income is spent or who spends it.  Given Gershom's legal status as a
slave, I'd be surprised if he wasn't kicking back a share to Massah
Washington -- but we don't know that, I'm only speculating, in the same way
that you speculate when you assume that Gershom is free to spend the money
he earns as he pleases, something that Pynchon doesn't say either.



>It's also very evident that George actually
>accepts and permits these and a range of other liberties on Gershom's part.



I've agreed all along that Washington permits a level of casual behavior
and intimacies from Gershom that is surprisingly generous -- but no more so
that the kind of atmosphere that must have prevailed in households where
the master wanted to enjoy regular sex with a slave without having to
forcibly rape him or her, where the master would have to be "nice",
dispense favors, etc., in order to secure that kind of ongoing cooperation,
but it doesn't require equality, and calling it "liberty" is a travesty.
The legal realities in Virginia permit Washington to change his mind at any
time and treat Gershom as he will, within some limits I expect but don't
know, not being a specialist in colonial slavery law.  I do know that what
Gershom enjoys is not liberty, however.



>Similarly, the nexus you make between employer & employee and slave & master
>is exactly the point Capt. Zhang makes (615-6).


Yes.  M&D secifically discusses degrees of slavery and compares employee to
slave.  But M&D also provides enough context for the reader to shade the
difference and realize that  but employer and employee have an
relationship that is not identical to that of master and slave. Employers
don't  legally own  employees the way that a master owns his slave.


>This comparison actually
>deflates your case rather than bolstering it


Not at all.  My argument explains the behavior Pynchon shows without
assuming what Pynchon declines to say. Pynchon has left the master-slave
relationship between W and G intact, he's showing us a special case, a
parody of the sort of intimacies that in history led to much pain, children
sold away from their slave mothers to please the Massah's wife, that sort
of tragedy.  Pynchon's portrayal of W and G suggests that we think deeply
about what was really going on between master and slaves in those houses
down south, this slapstick scene in M&D stands in stark contrast to the
misery and pain that we know so many slaves felt as they found themselves
trapped in a horrific legal situation where their comfort or mere survival
depended on the owner's whim.  It's possible that Washington and Gershom
drink and drug themselves and play-act as they do (and I'm not sure that
Washington is completely in control of his behavior, at least not to the
degree that Gershom exhibits) in order to dull the pain that necessarily
accompanies such a primitive social arrangement as slavery -- Pynchon
doesn't say that, but I see a rather frantic edge to the surrender to these
mindless pleasures that he depicts.



>but shan't quibble about that - and that there is little to no difference
>between employer and slaveholder in the situation Pynchon has presented.


You ignore perhaps the most important distinction: employees can quit and
leave without the owner setting the law on their trail as the historical
Washington did when some of his slaves decided they had had enough, ran
away,  and Washington posted an advertisement requesting their return.


> GW does treat and regard Gersh as his equal, and extends
>towards him absolute liberty.


M&D shows the opposite:  Gershom is locked into a master-slave relationship
that won't change no matter how nice his master behaves or how much fun
they manage to have.  Gershom shows spunk and spirit in making a fool of
Washington (easy enough, given the W.C. Fields-like habits of alcohol
intake and Furry Freak Brothers levels of pot smoking that Pynchon gives
him) and securing  some privileges that not all slaves enjoyed, but nobody
treats Gershom as an equal -- that's clear when Pynchon illustrates the
anxiety of certain Raleigh Billiard Room patrons at the suggestion that a
"real Negroe" might be in the room (573). Gershom could find himself
chained in a line of slaves being driven to market (the sort of group Mason
and Dixon encounter later in the novel) at any moment in the world that
Pynchon depicts in M&D, and his owner could be laughing all the way to the
bank (unless somebody steps in to disarm him and free the slaves as Dixon
does) -- and that's not liberty.  Gershm does appear to be free to drink
and smoke himself into a stupor and thus ease his mind if the limitations
on his existence begin to weigh too heavily, and perhaps that does make
Washington a very humane master but I'm not at all sure of that.
Washington may also know exactly what it takes to keep a slave in his
place, happy and smiling all the time.