Bianca and the females V room

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Another instance of abandonment in GR: Katje abandoning Gottfried to his fate.  He watches her leave from his cage. Gretel abandoning Hansel, allowing the witch to triumph.  Pokler abandoning his daughter.  Slothrop abandoning Bianca.  No fairy tale endings for them, or by extension, for us.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Joseph T <brook7 at sover.net>

>
>Intriguing thread. I think Pynchon is always finding ways to connect  
>the personal to the cultural. The commercial and cultural   
>exploitation of sex are embedded in human history and it is  
>impossible to find complete purity or safety even in the most  
>admirable attempts to create protective zones of  love,  shared  
>idealism and human respect. What is saddest to me in the Bianca/ 
>Slothrop affair is Slothrop's unwillingness to act on the protective  
>instinct which seems to be his deepest emotional response to Bianca.   
>I think she is drawn to TS because sees in him   someone fleeing  
>exploitation,  sexual abuse, power games. Bianca has the same needs  
>but is even more vulnerable. Bianca's most powerful tool to get the  
>protection she needs from  a sympathetic and sufficiently powerful  
>adult like Slothrop would be words, honesty, but she has been taught  
>to think of powerful people in terms of their sexual needs, and to  
>think of her survival in terms of  meeting those needs.  In some ways  
>Slothrops resistance fails because it fails to expand to connect with  
>others as the need and opportunity comes.
>
>  It's iffy to equate protected female youthfulness with innocence.  
>The Vroom sisters in M&D were protected from hardships by slaves,  
>their "protected" environment was directly related to their  
>willingness to exploit both slaves and visiting white men.   The  
>security they got from being the family(posession) of the rich white   
>slaveowner was as dull as their food. The insecurity of the free  
>blacks, malays and mixed race folk was characterized by a more joyful  
>sensuality symbolized by their exotic spicy diverse foods.
>
>In GR  most movements toward the classic forms of love-  friendship,  
>family, community(national, tribal), romantic -are failing  
>tragically,  because they are being expertly exploited and and  
>subverted by the comforts of power and privelege associated with  
>technology and by the individuals internalization of of  unhealthy  
>social models. Sex will always be the wild card, but in GR its'  
>tragic failures to lead toward more enduring forms of love is made  
>particularly palpable in the destruction of Bianca and the Pokler  
>child whose name I forget. 
>