V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

[Michael Bailey]

I was thinking that the little moments of cruelty ("when you've
finished with your cripple"'; locking old Godolphin in her flat;
killing a goldfish with a rock; the gratuitous bad advice dispensed on
Malta) mark her as a bad seed.

It's equally compelling to think of these as indicative of bad
upbringing, and bad upbringing as a consequence of a misdirected
society.  Probably more fruitful too.


 Mark Kohut wrote:
> Laura asks:
> Is V. making conscious decisions to be false or bad, or is she the hapless
> receptacle of all the excesses of the 20th century: colonialism (Cairo),
> conspiracy (Florence), genocide (Sudwest), high-tech war (Malta) - plus at least
> one more version coming up in Chapter 14?  When the children (the natural >island children) cruelly strip her of all her prostheses, she becomes a fragile,
> pathetic human again.  The children scene is a disturbing one.  Rebellion of the
> oppressed?  Or is it some sort of Catholic parable about casting the first
> stone?
>
> Leads me to remember that good plist conversation involving more than a few
> regulars who are quiet at the moment wherein we seemed to get to agreeing--
> with examples--that the They in GR was also Us.................
>
> I'd say V. actively makes choices against being human and is a receptacle of
> society's move to inanimateness.....
>
> When one thinks on it, a typical NOT one and NOT the other dualism
> subverted....part of TRPs complexity
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>>
>>anyway, moving on to something I can argue better:
>>Fausto's vocation, or Fausto I's, and Fausto I himself, seems to have
>>been interrupted by falling in love (not a bad thing...) but hasn't
>>been forgotten:
>>"We will return to this matter of vocation." (p 344)
>>
>>Meanwhile, within this written confession, Elena makes a confession to
>>the Bad Priest (p 344-5) who at this moment we do not know to be V.
>>
>>And as V. has taken the confession of Godolphin before, now this
>>incarnation or avatar of V. (and let's see, are there 4 V.'s - V in
>>Egypt, in Florence, in Sudwest and in Malta - to match the 4 Faustos?
>>I honestly do not know, you may remember I was talking about 3 Faustos
>>a couple days ago...anyway, is this a mirroring effect?) - takes
>>Elena's confession
>>
>>Honestly, I really am not real approving of V. ...
>>
>>she becomes a bad person because that seems like the only way to have
>>an interesting life?
>>
>>her advice is a sort of parody of the Vocation that keeps Fausto from
>>quickly and conclusively committing to Elena, tit for tat, sauce for
>>the goose type of thing
>>
>>She's calling Elena away from love in the name of Jesus, the same way
>>that the prospect of priesthod calls Fausto away!  She's invoking a
>>feeling of sin and shame that "Only Christ was mighty enough, loving
>>enough, forgiving enough [to ameliorate and cure]" (345)
>>
>>and what of Stencil in all this: "a mysterious being named Stencil"?
>
>
>
>



-- 
"Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a
violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural
liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the
whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all
governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical." -
Adam Smith