(urth) Wolfe: Misogynist or Realist?

Mo Holkar / UKG lists at ukg.co.uk
Thu Oct 19 02:08:31 PDT 2006


At 19:06 18/10/2006, Dan'l wrote:
>For what it's worth, Dick himself eventually decided that the image 
>of "the dark-haired woman" in his writing was all about his twin 
>sister, who died shortly after birth.


Mmm... I've never found that a psychologically convincing explanation 
for this particular aspect of his writing (although clearly the 
missing-twin theme does emerge elsewhere). It seems to me that Dick 
shied away from confronting the influence of his relationship with 
his rather domineering mother.

But maybe it's wrong of me to feel it's OK to psychoanalyse Dick 
because he's not around any more, when I'd be reluctant to examine 
Wolfe the same way ;-)


> > Positive images of women to put alongside these negative > ones 
> are very rare -- so I think it's fair to describe this writing > as 
> having a misogynistic trait, albeit a fairly tightly-focused one.
>
>Positive images of women in Dick? H'mmm. I think most of his 
>characters, male and female, are "positive," just not "heroic." If 
>you'd said this about, say, Barry Malzberg, now...


Sure, you're quite right. I was using a lazy shorthand of implication 
-- meant to say something like "images of women engaging positively 
with the male protagonist", as contrasted to the dark-haired woman's 
activities.

Mo



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