Lot49 - Oedipa, Rapunzel and Freud

[Rob Jackson]

Michael Bailey wrote:

> a growing awareness of her own individual Will as distinct from
> Inverarity's (and by extension, society's) mortmain

On 08/06/2009, at 5:00 PM, Mark Kohut wrote
>
> Oedipa is ENTERING the Tristero mentally and in action. Soon her will
> will ...be sure enough to demur....


Interesting back and forths. Thanks.

A Freudian reading of Oedipa's paranoid apprehension of the "Trystero  
System" might be that she never quite worked out what Pierce's angle  
in their relationship was, and thus was trapped in a perpetual state  
of psychological and emotional torment while they were together.  
Naming her as his "executrix" (a role more normally performed by a  
wife or close relation) is a postscript to the mind games he was  
playing with her back then (or which she thought he was playing ...),  
and now again the very same doubts and regrets are being dredged up.  
Oedipa is haunted by the same possibilities: maybe Pierce really  
thought of her as his "soul mate" but couldn't come right out and say  
it (and thus she missed out on happiness and fulfilment in her life),  
or maybe he was just jerking her around. The finality of his death  
makes this uncertainty even more poignant for Oedipa.

It is the lonely "Tower" of her self where she is ever entrapped. Her  
"prince" died. She never let down her hair in time.

all the best