[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:35 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:


> Family may be related to the feminine, but equating that with feminism
> seems a stretch.  I don't believe TRP is sexist, but is absence of sexism
> all it takes to be feminist?  I'd say of all his characters, Oedipa is the
> most feminist.  She's a seeker whose life isn't defined/determined by the
> fact that she's female.  Sure, the story's set in motion by the death of a
> former boyfriend, but she goes out to investigate, walking out on her
> husband without a thought, questioning men, more than beguiling them.
>
> Prairie is also a seeker, but she's still young and dependent and is
> subject to that fatal attraction to fascist men that brought her mother
> down and somewhat tainted her grandmother (not to mention her
> great-grand-aunt Lake).  At the end, we're not sure what Prairie will
> become, other than an adult.  DL is tough, yes, but she's cartoonish, the
> Floozie with an Uzi, a bit of a sex fantasy for men.  I never felt that
> Yashmeen (aside from having a baby) was female.  She seems like a male
> character with a female name tacked on.  She relates to other women purely
> as sex objects.  Dally is more successful as a female character, but her
> series of roles: faux-abductee in Chinatown, then sometimes model, later
> spy-mistress, are all based on using her sexuality for money.  All of
> these are strong female characters, but that doesn't make them feminist.
> For me, that word implies either a transcendence of being an object for
> men (which, even with an occasional sexual dalliance, Oedipa a!
> chieves -- men don't drool over her or relate to her as strictly
> fuckable); or it means a woman who assesses each situation in terms of
> what it means specifically for women (none of TRP's female characters do
> this).
>
> Laura


How would p-listers feel about the proposition that one way Pynchon has 
given more power to his women is by increasing the degree of their 
bisexuality?

Culminating in AtD.

P