Atdtda33: A city not yet come into being, 924-927 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

Thus far in this chapter, Frank the wanderer hasn't been going anywhere; the
narrative has gathered round him characters who have 'rematerialised' to
occupy his consciousness. Hence, the introduction of an alternative Frank,
or "Frank" (two references on 925). The "apprentice practitioner who seems
to be Frank himself, as he used to be, before the Broken Days came upon the
land" (924) encourages the view that this is some kind of transposed (or
fictional) reminiscence; however, a subsequent reference to "his sisters"
might distance the reader from the Frank who is hallucinating--ie positioned
as a narrator--by offering a "Frank" who can be included among "visitors"
(top of 925, another take on tourism) and then function as a guide to "urban
bustle" (down the page). Changing the sex of siblings, of course, might
allude to no more than dream-censorship, or displacement; but the sisters'
own confinement (ie "chores", 924) emphasises Frank's ("the apprentice
practitioner") role as the one who must go out into the world as a
representative of the family (ie in the absence of father or older brother).

This sexual division of labour is, seemingly, confirmed by the "female
attendants who have spent hours on eye adornment ..." etc (925): the role
allocated to women here both contradicts those roles associated specifically
with both Stray and Wren as narrative agents and yet also recalls their
subjection to a male gaze that would turn them into passive subjects.
However, in the writing, outsiders/tourists are drawn by the spectacle of
both "promenading hierarchy and ... female attendants". Implicitly the
former are male, this is no matriarchy; and the latter little more than
children--"hair drawn back from sweetly convex child-brows"--just as "Frank"
is an "apprentice". To complicate matters further, on 926 we are introduced,
via the "periodical" that Wren (or should that be "Wren"?) provides, to "a
young woman ... called upon repeatedly to defend her people ..." etc.