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.