Part II (Chapters 11 through 17)

MadArchitect · Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2006 1:47 am Post subject: Part II (Chapters 11 through 17)

Use this thread to discuss the first third of Part II, beginning with chapter 11 and ending with chapter 17.

Edited by: MadArchitect at: 11/2/06 1:49 am

MadArchitect

Reading chapter 12 today, I had another thought about the themes running through the novel, this one from a very different angle than the one we've been discussing in the earlier threads. Rose talked about ways of viewing the novel from a somewhat feminist perspective (although I don't think you necessarily have to be feminist to recognize the problematic nature of the woman's situation). What occurred to me today was that the novel could also be read as symbolic of the kind of malaise and angst and otherwise independent man can feel in a very domestic marriage. Maybe that's an element in the story that I should have seen all along, but it really hit home today in reading the solicitous way the woman deals with the man's strategies for escaping.

The two characters almost seem emblematic of a dichotomy between a particular idealization of men and a particular idealization of women, one emphasized, perhaps, by their conflicting attitudes towards sand. The man wants to preserve a certain rootlessness; he wants to be a wanderer and an inventor. The woman, by contrast, is very domestic; she's a trapper, and (as opposed to the man's tendency towards invention) a tidier.

I think that's one interesting way to look at the story because it's a scenario that, nominally at least, seems to be played out a great deal in modern life. You have all these men who value their perceived independence and waywardness, who fall in love and get married, only to feel stifled and to long for some form of escape. But marriage is a socially ordained institution, and once the man has entered into the domestic situation, society aligns itself against the breakdown of that unit. I don't know how common that scenario is in real life, but it does seem to me that we act it out on a regular enough basis so that it's a familiar story, even if quasi-mythical for all that.

Are those ideas compatible with the ideas Rosemary and I were talking about in relation to earlier chapters? Maybe; and if they're not, then we need not necessarily latch onto one set of ideas to the exclusion of another. Anyway, there they are, for your consideration.

irishrosem

Quote:
The man wants to preserve a certain rootlessness; he wants to be a wanderer and an inventor. The woman, by contrast, is very domestic; she's a trapper, and (as opposed to the man's tendency towards invention) a tidier.

Mad, this is incredibly interesting in light of how the book ends. I hadn't considered the inventor aspect of the relationship, and how invention is related to innovation. (I probably missed it because it's such a boy theme... ::03

) I won't give away spoilers, just let me know when you get there. I think you'll know what struck me.

MadArchitect

The bit about inventions occurred to me in part because it's a theme in the only other Abe book that I've read, "Kangaroo Notebook". The main character works for a company that (if memory serves) produces stationary. At the start of the novel, the protagonist has just invented the title object, a notebook with a cover pocket designed to carry a smaller notebook. And then, seemingly unrelated, he start growing radish sprouts in the place of leg hair. Which leads to a subterrainian journey. Complete with vampire nurses. Needless to say, it's a much more bizarre novel than "Woman in the Dunes" but it struck me that invention is a theme that runs through both -- and a very apt theme for an author whose work is so novel and inventive.

I hit another couple of chapters today, and this line in chapter stood out to me: "But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaningless of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home."

The narrator had just scanned the newspaper for some mention of his own disappearance, and found a hodgepodge of world events that, ultimately, had little significance for him personally. I found myself wondering what newspapers really communicate to people -- at least on the 99% of occasions like this one, in which nothing reported really has any direct effect on your circumstances at the time.

And maybe it also gives us some clue as to the narrator's view of domestic life -- I take the quote to be a shift to the narrator's point of view, and not Abe's own comment on domestic life. "LOVE YOUR HOME", then, serves as a kind of paliative for the realization that all of the news in the world doesn't add up to a meaningful life. But I get the sense that he inwardly sneers at the idea that a rich home life is really meaningful. Rather, it's a kind of false compensation, a distraction that keeps you from dwelling too much on the ultimately unimportance of everything.

One other thing just occurred to me. All of this is couched in the continuing description of sand sifting into everything. So maybe the sand is, for the narrator at least, indicative of the way this dissatisfaction slips into his home life, and seems to dirty up everything.


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