V-2nd, Chap 7, "these bushy Freudian Hermaphrodite symbols"

[Mark Kohut]

I can believe in a Hermaphrodite Diety which is why as 
an obsevation about Crockett's coonskin cap it makes no sense to me.
That ain't it................




----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, October 3, 2010 6:21:52 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd, Chap 7, "these bushy Freudian Hermaphrodite symbols"

Mark D. Hawthorne
A "Hermaphrodite Sort of Deity": Sexuality, Gender, and Gender
Blending in Thomas Pynchon's 'V.'

After his repressed sister drank the chemicals in the dark room and
faded from the portrait of a happy Adams Family, Adams said he had
died as well. He then published Esther under a nomdeplume, a female
name, Francis Compton Snow. In December, 1876, Adams delivers his
Lowell Institute lecture, "Primitive Rights of Women." His satire,
Democracy, exposes male corruption in Washington, and other vices,
from the POV of the female heroine, Madaleine Lee.

Adams owed more to the American woman than to all the American men he
ever heard of, and felt not the smallest call to defend his sex who
seemed able to take care of themselves; but from the point of view of
sex he felt much curiosity to know how far the woman was right, and,
in pursuing this inquiry, he caught the trick of affirming that the
woman was the superior. Apart from truth, he owed her at least that
compliment. The habit led sometimes to perilous personalities in the
sudden give-and-take of table-talk. This spring, just before sailing
for Europe in May, 1903, he had a message from his sister-in-law, Mrs.
Brooks Adams, to say that she and her sister. Mrs. Lodge, and the
Senator were coming to dinner by way of farewell; Bay Lodge and his
lovely young wife sent word to the same effect; Mrs. Roosevelt joined
the party; and Michael Herbert shyly slipped down to escape the
solitude of his wife's absence. The party were too intimate for
reserve, and they soon fell on Adams's hobby with derision which stung
him to pungent rejoinder: "The American man is a failure! You are all
failures!" he said. "Has not my sister here more sense than my brother
Brooks? Is not Bessie worth two of Bay? Wouldn't we all elect Mrs.
Lodge Senator against Cabot? Would the President have a ghost of a
chance if Mrs. Roosevelt ran against him? Do you want to stop at the
Embassy, on your way home, and ask which would run it best -- Herbert
or his wife?" The men laughed a little -- not much! Each probably made
allowance for his own wife as an unusually superior woman. Some one
afterwards remarked that these half-dozen women were not a fair
average. Adams replied that the half-dozen men were above all possible
average; he could not lay his hands on another half-dozen their
equals.



On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Davy Crockett's coonskin cap...............
>
> This line seems to me to be TRP doing what too many accuse him of too much:
> showing off some observational erudition.............
>
> Reading Freud or Jung on symbols...and he applies it to those Crockett
> hats........
> No thematic resonance here, right? beyond asserting that society is (partly)
> driven
> by ...the unconscious?
>
>
>
>
>