IVIV: Rhus Frothington

[alice wellintown]

I would argue that the narrative here is a bit more subtle, tricky,
even  . . .may be even ... um ...kinda unreliable. What has Rhus got
against men? Nothing as far as we can tell. She doesn't much care for
Larry. That's obvious enough. But why isn't made clear. Is it? Other
than the fact that Penny has been telling Rhus about Larry. We don't
know what Penny told her, although we can assume that Penny told Rhus
something about Larry that has caused Rhus to dislike and distrust
him. Larry is not all men. Moreover, the only other reason given for
Rhus's animosity is Lerry's behavior, his attitude toward women, and
his snide and sarcastic remarks, including the left-handed complement
he pays to Frothington: "that skirt length on you today is especially
attractive." (282. middle of the page).

Again, Larry's narrative is skewed by his male chauvinism and his
attitudes toward women is exposed in his language. That he finds the
hall of justice a hostile, where Penny and Rhus question him, a
hostile place, is a poetic justice.

IV is Pynchon's most feminist work to date. At the deepest level it
celebrates the second wave of feminism and, if any good is looming at
the novel's end it is that women will continue to make progress even
as many other projects of the civil rights movement faulter, founder,
and crash.


On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 1:28 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Many apologies for falling so far behind in the reading -- still straggling in Chapter 16.
>
> Anyway, thought of something regarding Rhus Frothington, Penny's office-mate.  She appears to be a caricature of a humorless, anti-male, frothing-at-the-mouth feminist (golly, I've never met anyone like that!).  The Frothing-ton is pretty overt, but I'm wondering if the Rhus might refer to Joanna Russ:
>
> http://www.nndb.com/people/553/000029466/
>
> She's a feminist sci-fi writer who was a contemporary of Pynchon's at Cornell, where she majored in English.  I've read and enjoyed her book The Female Man. It's easy enough to imagine that, had she rubbed shoulders with Pynchon back in their college days, her attitude towards him might have been similar to Rhus' attitude to Doc.
>
> Laura
>