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

[János Székely]

"Are these three different women?  Two?  One?  What's Pynchon doing here? "

One. This is a case of the "unreliable narrator" or unreliable POV
taken to ironic lengths. P. Aieul, the waiter tries to make sense of
the scene he watches and overhears) and these are three versions of
how he interprets it. The embryonic  "Under the Rose", which is much
closer to the conventions of spy fiction is much clearer or at least
simpler both plotwise and in showing where the perceptions are wrong.

János



On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 12:01 AM,  <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
>