Esther & Stencil

[Mark Kohut]

Love 'is shit.....

thanks. 



----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, August 4, 2010 1:02:54 PM
Subject: Re: Esther & Stencil

Why Esther?
1. I've noted the bible story and how and why Esther got her name.
Ratchel, Benny, Jews in the sick crew.
2. Esther is a novel by Adams (Adams published it under a pen name--a
female name--note the comments Adams makes about females and art in
the Virgin-Dynamo chapter, and how, in america, venus was stripped or
rather covered). Esther is an artist, or tries to be, she studies
under a male artist, but, although she is clever and has certain
feminie insights and majicks, she is passive and unsure of herself, as
the men battle for her mind, even as they patronize her and envy her
natural creative force.
3, Esther in Adams's novel is related to Old Esther Dudley, so we are
told by a character in Adams's novel, and Old Esther, we are told is a
puritan in hawthorne's rarely read tale of that name, "Old Esther
Dudley."

from Adams's novel, Esther

"She hit the mark at the first shot," answered Hazard. "I must make them
all ask that question. Tell me about your cousin. Who is she? Her name
sounds familiar."

"As familiar as Hawthorne," replied Strong. "One of his tales is called
after it. Her father comes from a branch of the old Puritan Dudleys, and
took a fancy to the name when he met it in Hawthorne's story. You never
heard of them before because you have been always away from New York,
and when you were here they happened to be away. You know that half a
dozen women run this city, and my aunt, Mrs. Murray, is one of the
half-dozen. She is training Esther to take her place when she retires. I
want you to know my Uncle Dudley and my cousin. I am going to have a
little tea-party for them in my rooms, and you must help me with it."

Old Esther is re-worked and becomes a Pyncheon.

Old Esther Dudley, the title character of Hawthorne's story "Old
Esther Dudley," represents one type of female character that Hawthorne
developed, an older woman who serves as a legacy and relic of the
past. She is proud of her once aristocratic connections, eccentric in
her behavior, and gifted with what seem magical abilities to call
forth the "presence" of those long gone. She has great affection for
children, who do not mind her eccentricities, and often treats them to
gingerbread. Old Esther refuses to leave the Province House when the
British retreat during the American Revolution, sure that a Royal
Governor will return. She sees maintaining the Province House intact
and ready for use as her sacred charge. She remains faithful to this
charge until her dying day, the day that Governor John Hancock arrives
to open the building for the new republic.
In her manner, appearance, and view of the past, Esther anticipates
the character of Hepzibah Pyncheon, who plays a major role in
Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables. Both women draw their
sense of self in part from their relationship to a house in which they
have resided for years. Their ability to preserve the house as they
anticipate the return of its rightful resident gives each woman a
feeling of pride and of obligation. For Esther Dudley, the figure who
arrives at the house is not the man she expects, and she dies
believing she has welcomed a traitor. Esther becomes a symbol of a
displaced past. Hepzibah is more fortunate, in that her long
imprisoned brother Clifford does return to House of the Seven Gables,
but his arrival initially does not bring the happiness that Hepzibah
anticipated.

Now, the lit crit term, meta-historical fiction (now used to descibe
Pynchon) can be traced back to romance and the sublime. New
historicism, and P, w/o using the term, directs us to Pearce's coining
of the term 1958, when, after re-reading hawthorne, and hawthorne's
preface to these almost lost meta-historical fictions, Pearce, opposed
the dominant new critical approach.