MDDM Washington & Gershom & Martha

[Doug Millison]

>Sam:
>> Not
>> to mention Martha serves George and Gershom...

Pynchon doesn't actually show Martha serving Gershom, does he? P makes a
point of showing Martha serving George (281)  zand Mason (283), but not
Gershom (and that's not surprising, since he is their slave, after all).
So, using jbor's textual evidence standard,  that's something Pynchon seems
to leave out.


Martha calls Washington on his male chauvinist ways, too:

"Smell'd that Smoak, figur'd you'd be needing something to nibble on," the
doughty Mrs. W. greets them. "The Task as usual falling to that Agent of
Domesticity unrelenting, the wife,-- as none of _you_ could run a House for
more than ten minutes, in the World wherein most of us must dwell, without
Anarchy setting in."  (280)

The Domesticity/Anarchy, Female/Male axis here sets up an interesting
dynamic, politically and interpersonally -- Pynchon provides the material
to take it several ways.

Maybe this is just sit-com material, Dagwood and Blondie. But, I know more
than a few women who were still joking that way in the '60s, with a bit of
an edge to their voices, and in several cases it wasn't very many years
until they had left their pot-smoking, revolution talking, male chauvinist
partners for greener, feminst pastures. It's not clear that Martha will see
her consciousness rise in similar fashion, -- those "yawing" eyes leave it
unclear, my gut tells me she knows she's got this husband for the duration,
and I know women from the '60s who realized that, too, but their daughters
managed to do things differently.