MDDM Washington & Gershom

[jbor]

When does it end.

on 11/7/02 2:39 AM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> Gershom fulfills Washington's expectations

But Gershom *doesn't* do this at all. That's the point.

> without painful threats or
> physical punishment,

This is just another way of "adding what the text doesn't show". As Gersh
*doesn't* fulfil GW's "expectations", and there are still no threats or
punishments or consternation of any sort from GW, it'd be much more
reasonable to conclude that a typical master-slave dynamic *isn't* operating
in this particular relationship.

> 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.

Gersh brings the tray. That's it. Just like George passes the pipe to Dixon.
Just like Martha brings the tray of tarts and pies out onto the porch.
Nothing else Gersh does or says in either scene "fulfils GW's expectations",
either explicit or implicit.

> Gershom knows his limits and
> sticks within them.

No, he says and does just what he wants to. Again, you're making up this
condition of behaviour to suit your preconceived argument.

>> 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?

Again, you are "adding what the text doesn't show", making up your own plot.
What the text does show is that Gershom is permitted by GW to travel around
and perform for tourists, to earn a private income, and to invest his money
as he chooses. These *liberties* do flout "the basic legal and financial
realities of the master-slave relationship". You don't need to be a
"specialist in colonial slavery law" to admit that your argument that GW
"clearly acknowledges [...] the basic legal and financial realities of the
master-slave relationship" is a crock. Again, you're so intent on burying GW
in a "revisionist" mudslide that you totally ignore Gersh's pov, his words
and actions, let alone the characterisations and relationships in the novel.

> 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

Gersh and his act seem to be pretty well-known, and to have been
well-received. Some of the patrons at Raleigh's Billiard-Room recognise
Gersh by his voice and jokes; they don't recognise GW.

> Washington says nothing about how
> this income is spent or who spends it.

Exactly.

> 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,

Yes, you're "adding what the text doesn't show", making up your own plot.

> 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.

Gershom asks Mason and Dixon for investment advice at the bottom of p. 279.
This does show that he has the liberty to invest his earnings as he pleases.

> 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.,

Say you, desperately trying to add in "what the text doesn't show" again.

> in order to secure that kind of ongoing cooperation,
> but it doesn't require equality, and calling it "liberty" is a travesty.

You haven't provided even one example from the novel that shows GW denying
Gershom the liberty to do, say, think, eat, drink, smoke, dress, worship, or
come and go exactly as he chooses and desires. That's because Pynchon's GW
actually allows Gersh absolute liberty to speak and act as he pleases.

> 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.  

This would be you "adding what the text doesn't show" again.

Your whole argument about Pynchon's "unflattering" portrayal of GW has been
based on the "bottom-line" precept that "slavery is bad", and the fact that
GW was a slaveholder. No-one needed to read the novel _Mason & Dixon_ to
know either of these two things.

All you did was to bring in stuff from outside the text, like that 1796
letter, and other historical judgements, in order to support an argument
that Pynchon's portrait of GW is unflattering. But all of this other
material was just other people's (negative) opinions of the historical GW,
opinions which happened to coincide with your own. You didn't actually
relate any of this material to Pynchon's text - you weren't able to -
because it *doesn't* relate. The portrayal of GW, in the novel _Mason &
Dixon_, is, despite your interminable palaver, "quite complimentary".

> 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).

Some of the patrons are racist, certainly, but GW, Mason and young Nathe, at
least, are not, and there's nothing in the scene to say that they *don't*
regard and treat Gersh as an equal as they act to conceal his presence and
protect him from the other patrons.

Ch. 28 certainly shows GW treating and regarding Gersh as an equal.

best