Feminism & Work IV and in VL (Mildren Pierce Revisited)

[alice wellintown]

In VL Pynchon doubles up Mildred Pierce’s relationship with her
daughter Veda and twists it from the soft boiled
detective novel about work and the suburbanization of California into
a Hollywood film (about work) and onto the tube and into a novel.

Mildred Pierce has been studied by feminist. What they have to say
about it can help us construct a bridge from IV to VL, and maybe even
to CL49. Well, not promising anything, but a bridge. And you boyz are
all too smart to buy a bridge from this confidence woman.

Janey Place, studied Mildred and sez that Film Noir “is one of the few
periods in film when women are active, not static symbols, are
intelligent and powerful, if destructively so, and derive power, not
weakness from their sexuality.

Pam Cook studied Mildred and sez, that the film can be read
mythologically (Bachofen) as the overthrow of the mother-right in
favor of the father-right.

Now, there is nothing new added here, just some old stuff we read
about in Adams, McLuhan, and P's first novel, V.., but the protagonist
of his second "novel" is named Oedipa. This seems more than a cute
name if we apply Pam Cook's approach to Mildred. That Zoyd battles
Frenesi's mom and after hunting Frenesi down in Hawaii, in his
frustration complains in what at first seems an awkward and contrived
attempt by the author to drop an allusion, but is in fact only awkward
and contrived if we fail to read the work as deliberately so (as in
the conversations Larry's parents have with their son about film and
TV, or with Eddy). A feminist work about work. Yes, that's what we
have. So