COL49 and feminism (was: Roseman)

[Robin Landseadel]

On May 7, 2009, at 10:51 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> . . . Personally, I think the Golden Notebook IS feminist, in that,  
> like COL49, it portrays an intelligent female protagonist grappling  
> with issues unrelated to mere femininity.  It's a difficult  
> balancing act:  to portray a character who's more than a male  
> character with a female name tacked on, female but not an object for  
> men, intellectual but still able to have sex without emotions taking  
> over the story.  That Pynchon pulls this off is, IMO, attributable  
> to his using Varo's paintings as a starting point.  From the poor  
> glimpses one gets of the paintings via the internet, as well as  
> Pynchon's description in COL49, a central theme that Pynchon's  
> picked up on is using the confinement of women to specific roles as  
> a STARTING POINT for exploring the confinement of all of us to the  
> limited roles society allows us.  Pynchon successfully creates a  
> woman, Oedipa, and turns her into EVERYMAN.  It's no mean feat, but  
> he couldn't have done it without Varo's visions (No, I don't have  
> any "proof" -- just a gut feeling from his long description of  
> Oedipa's reaction to Varo's paintings up front in chapter one).

There is a mood in those paintings that resonates with CoL49.

> One thing that Pynchon didn't get from Varo's work, and certainly  
> wasn't able to pick up on in the mid '60s, was the feminist concept  
> of sisterhood.  It's this concept of woman as EVERYWOMAN that  
> Lessing wanted to avoid, but which has driven women's movements  
> whenever and wherever they occur.  You need the EVERYWOMAN concept  
> to fight for feminist change, but the penalty is marginalization,  
> the intellectual nightmare of "chick-lit," based on emotion over  
> intellect, sisterhood over human-hood.  Pynchon had no feel for  
> this, didn't know how to portray female friendship and solidarity.   
> Doris Lessing did, and suffered for it.  No wonder Oedipa doesn't  
> encounter too many women on her journey.
>
> Laura

Can't really argue with that. The sisterhood of ninjette's in Vineland  
are a fairly weak attempt.