Austra and the sisters Vroom

[Joseph Tracy]

Well I do see that as a valid way to look at her,  and though I lean somewhat  to my own idea I will be paying close attention to any more information about her, having only read up to ch 10 this time around. 
She is pretty feisty though
(Mason) "Our women are free"
(A) " Our'?  Oh, hark thyself,- how is English marriage any different from the Service I'm already in?

  The whole question of how one might respond to enslavement is intense and fraught. In my younger self I think I would have done what I needed to stay alive, but in my middle years prolly  would not have survived long before I was killed or escaped.   

No one else has thoughts on the Vroom girls, beside Monte's comparison to the neighborhood girls in V ch 6 ?
On Feb 6, 2015, at 5:16 PM, David Morris wrote:

> I see Austra's attitude as much, much darker.  In a sense I think she is like the Herero in GR who have decided on collective suicide.  "Fun" doesn't, IMHO, have any place, EXCEPT that she is in a way turning the tables on her dominators by embracing their domination.  By that turn she removes coercion from the equation.
> 
> David Morris
> 
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 9:27 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> I agree it is ghastly what she is forced into. Both slavery and absolute obedience are cancerous. But I am trying to see things from the POV of Austra who seems to have chosen to enjoy as much of her life as she can and has a kind of clarity and breadth of experiience that gives her a certain freedom of spirit. I do not envy her, but am compelled to admire her more than the sisters Vroom who do not seem to know that they are little more than choice cuts in a devil's butcher shop.
> On Feb 5, 2015, at 9:25 PM, David Morris wrote:
> 
> > Austra's complete willingness, compliance, with Vroom plans to breed her like an animal, and to sell off her kennel's premium is ghastly.  That complete submission and willingness to follow orders puts her into the realm of monster. She is potential bomb. She has been morally engineered to have no morals other than submission. Such engineering always has its blind spot(s).  The Golem, Frankenstein, the Duck, Slothrup, their engineering might go awry...
> >
> > Let's hope so.
> >
> > David Morris
> >
> > BTW, I love the name Vroom.  The word is what you read in the puff of exhaust in a cartoon.
> >
> > On Thursday, February 5, 2015, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> > But Mason is not able to be in Rome. He is deeply seated in his own unresolved inner and outer life which keeps him at a profound  distance from the world created by the Voc. Even the immediacy and appeal of Austra cannot bring him to abandon that inner pursuit.  There is something here also reminiscent of the biblical Sarah and Hagar her servant who she offers to Abraham. Johanna seems to want to bind Mason to a patriarchal role, but he is not much attracted to that.
> >
> > The sisters Vroom and Johanna are a study in middle class and even suburban domesticity and privilege. They have financial security and minimal work responsibilities, but a very small world within which to operate, and it's defined by the bland tastes and social concerns of Cornelius Vroom.  Their blondeness, (whiteness) and attractiveness are the tools they perceive realistically as key to social status. Tey serve as an advertisement for a life that is boring them to death.They are as colonized and in some ways more so than Austra who has access to the full range of music, food, sexual pleasure and conversation denied the sisters.  They may not even know how they are being used  regarding Austra since Johann seems to be the master manipulator there.
> >
> > On Feb 5, 2015, at 7:34 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> >
> > > Well-Chosen Quotes from GR and:
> > >
> > > "This is how it's done here - the heady mixture of sex, commerce and
> > > power - sanctified in a way that brothels clearly aren't, can never
> > > be. The link between master and slave is sex-slave, Austra's telling
> > > him. When in Rome ...
> > >
> > > And with this sex-slave-power-commerce trip going on in a sea-port
> > > populated by rowdy sailors, how can it not affect even the wives and
> > > daughters?"
> > >
> > > Laura
> > >
> > >
> > > This is a well-said, as usual, way I would read it too...to me most of
> > > the scenes in M & D are very like many of the scenes in GR....that
> > > irreal, idea-containing ahistorical novel.
> > > -
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> >
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