VLVL concluding chapter 7

[Terrance]

> 
> The setting is that of a wedding, a reaffirmation of the patriarchal family;
> the ceremony sees the bride handed over from father to husband (another
> object/possession being passed on down the line, just like the amulet in
> fact, each object the means by which a particular narrative is described).

Yes, we might contrast this  patriarchal ceremony with Zoyd's wedding.
Zoyd is described as feeling like a schoolmarm. And Frenesi, her
promising career in film making burdened with child, is  contemplating
abortion. After the birth she contemplates killing the baby. Why? Well
it's a very long story but if we turn way back to P's first novel where
Stencil is looking for his Mother and Robert Graves and Henry Adams are
two of the texts he carries about with him (the history text = to Vico
in Joyce is a Jesuit and I can't remember his name) we will recall that
one of P's big big themes is the Virgin's conversion to the
rocket/dynamo and the patriarchal family  (N. K. Hayle's essay on VL is
useful here too) replacing the matriarchy in which males had limited
contact and claims to the children of the mother. 
The rules of patriarchy altered, for centuries, gender relations and
sexual norms. 

And,  of course, Vomitones = Paranoids, and patriarchal  property rights
is a big big theme in CL. 

In any event, the sexual norms run something like this: 

Virginity: a women is not to come to marriage pregnant with the child of
another male (is Z the father? or is BV? is Weed?). 

Fidelity: women were not to invest their desire and delight in males
other than the lawful husband (where is Superfuck? and note that Zoyd
feel's like MP's husband--work being the glue that holds this novel
together) 

Chastity: even if the husband is dead/at war indefinitely/ probably ...
possibly dead...or just MIA ... a women who violates this norm could
produce a claimant to the property. No prbs for the men, being kings and
all, they could have a team of bastards, or just one who speaks some of
the best lines in Lear. 

Fecundity: Ah, the big big big theme in all of P's novels ... produce,
be fruitful and multiply. There was an old lady and she lived in a shoe. 

Why so many children, man? 

children, as Moon Pie and RC have discovered, can work/play and add to
the family by adding more kids and wealth and property. 

infant mortality. girl babies will marry and add to another family.
defense. 

That's the man's world and it's falling apart, it's center can not hold.
But the girl's world be no better. Sisters? Oh come on. You don't
actually think that P has written a feminist book, do you. NO! The
girls, we are about to discover, are as fucked up as the boys. No one is
saved.