Oedipa Isn't Your Typical Woman from the '60's....

Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 was written in the 1960's. There are many music and drug references from the time throughout the novel to help put it in this setting. Another staple of the 60's was the subservience of women to stay in the home and out of the work setting, caring for the children they are expected to bear. Oedipa, the main character of The Crying of Lot 49, is not the typical woman from the '60's, yet she struggles to escape from this pre-molded life.
To begin, the reader is given a glimpse of Oedipa's life with Pierce, the deceased for whom Oedipa is executing a will. She reminisces about how sad she felt standing in front of a painting, realizing that "Pierce had take her away from nothing, there'd been no escape." As mentioned in class, the second page lists three ways that Oedipa tries to "escape", they fail. These are staring at the "TV tube", speaking "the name of God", and feeling "as drunk as possible". Unlike those servile housewives from the '60's, Oedipa is searching for more.
Another fact that gives us this non-conformist view of Oedipa is how she does not have any children. At one point in the novel, she goes to visit Professor Bortz, and his wife asks Oedipa, "how did you manage to get away from yours [kids] today?" This implies that women at Oedipa's age were automatically assumed to have children. Because Oedipa does not have children, she always at least has a man, which is a necessity in this era to become pregnant. Because this was the popular feeling at this time, Oedipa is distraught when she realizes that the men in her life are gone. She says, "...they are stripping from away, one by one, my men. My shrink...has gone mad; my husband, on LSD...has passed, I was hoping forever, for love; my one extra-marital fella has eloped with a depraved 15-year-old; my best guide back to the Trystero has taken a Brody. Where am I?" It is like Oedipa is going around with this Nancy Drew business trying to find out about a secret mail carrier service only to escape the pressures of the responsibilties assumed upon women of the time. However, once there isn't a man in her life, it is almost as if she loses hope that she will ever have children. As also mentioned in class, she has sex with many men in the book, but the one time she actually does go to the gynecologist to get checked for pregnancy, she does not go back for her follow-up appointment. She simply believes that the Trystero has consumed her and that it is more a part of her than any pregnancy could be. She is a very lost and confused woman, and I just hope that with the absence of Lot 49 in her life, she will cease to make contrived connections.

So the first chapter's a little strange...

Not going to lie, I had to read the first two pages of this book three times. Reasons behind the confusing context of this book are the sentence structure and word/name choice. For example, the whole first page is practically one sentence. It begins with "One summer" and ends at "honorary" 8 lines later. In addition, the names I suppose are references, but most of them are odd. The main woman is named Oedipa, which may be a reference to Oedipus, who married his mother and shot his father. Also, Oedpia's husband is called "Mucho Mass", which is Spanish for "much more". I'm not sure what this means yet, but it all will probably have some kind of comical significance in the story. Another confusing thing is that there are many ambiguous references. For example, the deceased Pierce fellow says that Wendall Mass (Mucho Maas!) needs a visit from "The Shadow". This "shadow" is referenced to again on the next page. It says, "The shadow waited a year before visiting (12)." What does that mean?
The thing I enjoyed most about this first chapter was reading about Mucho Maas and his crazy insecurities about jobs. The way he describes the used cars he used to buy from people at the lot is poetic. For instance, Pynchon writes that maybe if he had worked in a junkyard, Mucho could have stood it because "the violence that had caused each wreck being infrequent enough, far enough away from him, to be miraculous, as each death, up till the moment of our own, is miraculous." The passion with which Mucho hates the lot is so extreme, it makes me wonder why Oedipa married him...but then again, maybe he's her son.

Roles & Meaning within Faulkner's 'There Was a Queen'

Each of the characters in Faulker's There Was a Queen, all women, have a specific role placed on them because of the absence of men in the house. The first person the audience is introduced to is Elnora, the head slave of the Sartoris household. Her role in this story is that of a guardian. She claims that she can solely care for Miss Jenny, that she "don't need no help", especially not from "no outsiders from town." When she says this, she is referring to Miss Narcissa , the woman who married and bore the son of Miss Jenny's nephew.
Miss Narcissa is the antagonist of the story, though it is not obvious at first. Her name is very close to the word narcissist, which is someone who has excessive vanity. This description plays out through her obsession with the secret love letters. Also, it is suggested that Miss Narcissa is indirectly responsible for Miss Jenny's death. As the outsider of the family, no one in the house likes her, not even her own son, as is suggested when he insists that he didn't miss her while she was in Memphis.
Miss Jenny is the "queen" that I believe Faulkner is referring to. Her silver hair is described several times in the story, as are the Carolina window panes that she first brought to Mississippi in 1969. These window panes are a symbol for Miss Jenny's own life. When she first came to Mississippi, they are of "colored glass". However, on the day that Miss Narcissa returns from Memphis, the window fades as the sun sets, and the "woman's silver head faded, too." This foreshadowing continues when Miss Jenny asks for her hat, a black bonnet that she promptly places atop her head. After this, she tells everyone to eat supper without her as she sits by the now "sparse and defunctive Carolina glass." And, finally, Elnora finds her "motionless" and "beside the dead window." Rather than saying that Miss Jenny is dead, Faulkner describes the window as dead. Because of all these things, Miss Jenny represents the life and heart of the household, and the narcissist and outsider kills it.

Meaning behind The Young Housewife

William Carlos Williams' The Young Housewife suggests many sad things about the life of the poem's main object, the housewife, through subtle detail. Also, I believe there to be a secret and intimate relationship, or "potential sexual contact" (Barry Ahearn), between the speaker and the housewife.
In the first stanza, Williams describes the housewife as moving around "in negligee". This is significant because it leaves the word "negligee" for further interpretation than just a nightgown. For instance, the sound of negligee sounds very much like neglect. Though this is not its meaning, the sounds are similar. In addition, the word right after negligee, which is also the last word of the second line, is "behind". This gives an connotation of shame and neglect, which complements the association of negligee and neglect.
Other details that add to the housewife's despondent state is how she "stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in/ stray ends of hair." In addition, the speaker compares her to a "fallen leaf", and at the end of the poem he speaks of the "noiseless wheels" of his car running over "dried leaves". This suggests that the author is metaphorically describing the housewife as a crushed and lifeless spirit.
The details and images Williams writes also allude to a possible sexual relationship between the speaker in the poem and the housewife. The very beginning of the poem reveals that the speaker is observing the housewife "at ten A.M." This is fairly late in the morning. If the housewife has children old enough for school, they would have already left. Also, her husband would probably have already left for work. Thus, 10 A.M. appears to be a time for intimate interaction between the housewife and the speaker. In addition, the things he specifically notices about her can be interpreted sexually. For example, she is "uncorseted", meaning that the speaker is noticing her upper body.
As already mentioned, the housewife is compared to a dried, "fallen leaf" that eventually gets run over by the speaker's car. Because of this, I believe that the speaker and the housewife are past lovers who were forced to end their affair because the housewife succumbed to the fear of her husband discovering her and her lover. Throughout the poem, the speaker describes a disheveled, dispirited housewife going about her daily work, yet as he passes her he bows and smiles. He still sends her a fond and warm greeting because he remembers past times.