COL49 - Chap 1: Roseman

[Rob Jackson]

Absolutely. Oedipa is a female protagonist in a novel by a male  
author. What's more, she's a quest-protagonist, one who carries the  
intellectual and philosophical weight and thrust of the novel, who is,  
in many respects, the author in drag: a character who is separated  
from her husband, is university-educated, drives (often aggressively),  
drinks to excess, has had and does have extra-marital affairs,  
considers abortion, steps out of her traditional domestic role to take  
on the work of executing Pierce's will. These elements of female  
characterisation are quite unique and ground-breaking for a novel of  
the late 50s and early 60s, and they do pre-empt feminist thinking  
about women's roles. What's more, in her flippant aside about the term  
'executrix' in the very first sentence, Oedipa (and thus Pynchon)  
demonstrates an acute consciousness of the gender-discrimination which  
is inherent in the language.

On balance, and the novel has been widely written about by feminist  
critics, the below assessment is pretty much on the money.

best regards


On 08/05/2009, at 4:49 AM, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

> On the one hand, I think Lot 49 could in many ways be
> considered a feminist novel, or at least a proto-feminist novel, but  
> on the other hand it WAS written
> in the largely pre-feminist '60