V-2nd - 7: Victoria Wren, late of Lardwick-in-the-Fen

[Ian Livingston]

Speaking regarding the Battle of the Trees, Graves derives the
following "textual emendation":

There was a man in that battle who unless his name were known could
not be overcome, and there was on the other side a woman called Achren
('Trees'), and unless her name were known her party could not be
overcome. And Gwydion ap Don, instructed by his brother Amathaon,
guessed the name of the woman....

For it has already been shown that the Battle of the Trees was fought
between the White Goddess ('the woman') for whose love the god of the
waxing year and of the waning year yer were rivals, and 'the man',
Immortal Apollo, or Beli...or IEVOA, or JIEVOAO.... (White Goddess,
341).

I mean, just sayin'. Since the White Goddess is also Venus and all....
Maybe no one really can say who Victoria really is, or Veronica, for
that matter. Maybe Victoria Wren is a lot of women.

And doesn't this fit nicely with Jungian readings of alchemy? What
with the conflict of the masculine and the feminine resulting in
androgyny, and all. I want to be careful not obsess over gnostic
allusions, but there might be present here some of that there layering
of depth P. so artfully develops later on.

On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 3:01 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> OK, we meet Victoria Wren again, wiser after her affair with Goodfellow.  Here's something I hadn't noticed in Chapter 3 during the first go-round:
>
> p. 63 (Harper Perennial):  "The peer's [Alistair Wren's] wife - Victoria - was meanwhile being blackmailed by Bongo-Shaftsbury, who knew of her own secret anarchist sympathies."
>
> A few sentences later:
>
> "Bongo-Shaftsbury's avenue of approach would be through the glamorous actress, Victoria, Wren's mistress, posing as his wife to satisfy the English fetish of respectability."
>
> Later, we meet Wren's naive 18-year-old daughter Victoria, who has the fling with Goodfellow and resurfaces in Chapter 7.
>
> Are these three different women?  Two?  One?  What's Pynchon doing here?  Suggesting that these Victoria's aren't human, but some sort of robot that can be issued as needed?  Or one very devious spy playing wife, glamorous actress/mistress/, and naive daughter?
>
> Thoughts, anyone?
>
> Laura
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."