MDDM Ch. 42 Dixon scores!

[jbor]

on 19/3/02 10:24 PM, Terrance Flaherty at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> 
> So did Dixon have sex with Lady Lepton?

Yes, I think it's pretty clear that he does, and I don't think Mason's the
least bit jealous about it.

After he "detects the smell of" Dixon's blend of pipe-tobacco, Mason
"fancies he can hear Dixon's voice", and then Lady Lepton's - "if he is not
mistaken" - and then he does hear the sounds of furniture overturning,
fabric tearing, sighs, a squeal, and then, "unmistakably", the melody from
the Handel aria, allegro to prestissimo. Everything, including Mason's
certainty about what he senses is going on outside the room, proceeds to the
point of consummation. Then, silence.

And I don't think Mason's jealous here at all. Once he realises what's
happening he calls out "Ripping Tune!" - which is yet another dastardly pun
- and he seems more concerned about the fact that Dixon has left him there
holding the enormous and precariously-balanced tub: "He's out there having a
leisurely Smoke whilst Mason, squinting upward nervously, struggles to keep
the Tub upon its Axes." (424.34) When Cha. begins to correct Voam at 426.14
it's because the professor had put Dixon's name first, and referred to them
both as "Astronomers" - not because he feels jilted.

The use of the Harlands' "Honeymoon Quilt" (393.4), the boys' incessant
bickering, and Mason's sudden - though "far too late" - schoolboy crush
(697.31) notwithstanding, I don't think there is anything like the
undercurrent of homo-eroticism in this novel that there is in _Moby Dick_.
Indeed, apart from the fact that they are male, the characters
(Mason-Ishmael, Dixon-Queequeg) don't match up at all, nor do the cultural
or vocational juxtapositions which are disclosed by the respective
partnerships. Dixon's joke about being pregnant (392.7) is nothing more than
that, a joke, as is his response to Dolly at 300.16.

That said, I think there *is* something in the way that others perceive or
treat Cha. and Jere as a married couple, and that they sometimes think of
themselves, or have to actively resist thinking of themselves, in this way.
The "Honeymoon Quilt" - rather than simply a "spare" or "second" quilt - is
a deliberate detail in this respect I agree. (And I agree with David that
there's no reason that Dixon's celibacy and fidelity have to be intact to
make this point.) Nevertheless, the relationship between Cha. and Jere
doesn't have anywhere near the same sensual texture as that between Ishmael
and Queequeg. Again, the more pertinent model imo is Cervantes' knight of
the rueful countenance and his occasionally-loyal squire Sancho, and the way
that that master-servant dynamic shifts one way and then back the other way
again through the course of their adventures.

best

Btw, where "do the other characters call Dixon and Mason sailors" in Ch. 42?