Subject: (urth) DOORS: men and goddess

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 08:31:42 +0000

mantis wrote:
>So in Otherworld most men die between the age of 14 and 21, let's say.  Any
>man who survives beyond these years is either asexual or possesses an iron
>will or is simply too frightened.  And the breeding population isn't a
>minority, it is just that the men are winnowed out so early that adult men
>are a numerical minority.

You would think so, but if you look back at the total of Otherworld
individuals noted by Green you'll find that the majority are males.
(Red-faced man on street, clerk in doll hospital, mounted policeman, men in
mental ward, Sheng, Pille, conspirators, W.F., boxers, cop and firemen after
explosion, hotel clerk and bellboy, Mama's sons, Klamm's bodyguards, prop
man at theater, both taxi drivers, etc. And most of the females Green noted
were in traditional female jobs--nurses, waitresses, clerks, hairdresser. I
don't know what this means for Otherworld society, but there it is.

>The ice queen, ah.  My view of her is changing . . . today I see her, and
>all the doll-attackers as following a model of the goddess which just
>happens to be wrong, according to the goddess herself.  That is to say: the
>ice queen is enacting the behavior of Cybele, and the stained glass that
>Roy was bugged by (sorry Roy, the short answer was "Love-goddess-with-spear
>is far more ancient than Greek myths -- it is more like Ishtar and those
>other fierce Middle Eastern goddesses of Love & War") is an example of the
>wrong model being enshrined.  Because Cybele loved Attis and became
>insanely jealous when he fell in love with a mortal princess, so she caused
>his insanity, which made him cut himself: but in TAD Lara says this was all
>a mistake and misunderstood, which I take to mean that Lara is more like
>Aphrodite, and the Otherworld church is focused on Cybele.
[snip]
>I dunno.  Fanny's excitement is very odd to me . . . it marks her, somehow,
>but as what?  A visitor, maybe.  Or an Aphrodite devotee in a world of
>Cybele worshipers.  (Ooops, these two options aren't that different.)

Right; the two are one. If we *must* peg TAD to THE WHITE GODDESS (a point
I'm not willing to concede; Wolfe has admitted to not even finishing reading
stories/books he was passing judgement on for some contest; I find the
prospect of him plodding through such a tiresome tome of tortured
scholarship for so little reward to be incredible), then we must look at the
larger picture of the Goddess as Graves (and his ilk, such as dear old Joe
Campbell <g>) saw her. From virginal nymph to hideous crone and every stage
in between, she is *the* goddess. There's only one. If Wolfe didn't write
TAD with that in mind, then he wasn't taking his cues from Graves.

Chapter XXXIV of Frazer's THE GOLDEN BOUGH (abridged, one-volume edition) is
instructive. There may be found, in the Attis rituals, music such as that
noted by Green at the parade, as well as mention of the everGreen pine-tree,
and even priests of Cybele with "little images suspended on their breasts",
mindful of Sheng's root. Green was at the tail-end of the parade; who knows
what had gone before?

Green knew only the Aphrodite persona of Lara. She showed signs of the
bitch-goddess, and she hinted at her darker side at lunch, but Green was
either oblivious or hadn't thought it through. Lora *Master*man, indeed. She
seems to have cared even more for Captain Billy than Green, yet . . .

    "How long did you stay with him?"
    "Until he sailed. By that time I had fallen ill and had to be left
behind." (279)

Wolfe says it only that one time. Goddesses don't get sick, unless it's
'morning sickness'.

-Roy

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 17:25:14 +0000

>don't know what this means for Otherworld society, but there it is.

Yep.  If this is "The Planet of the Apes," then where are all the "apes"?!
Could it be that the capital city of the nation has a high concentration of
a numerical minority?

Roy quoted me and wrote:
>Right; the two are one.

Oops, I was trying to avoid that misreading!  I meant that "a Visitor" and
"an Aphrodite worshipper" would be virtually identical in the hypothetical
Cybele-world.

That Cybele and Aphrodite are the same is a different statement which I'll
address next.

>If we *must* peg TAD to THE WHITE GODDESS (a point

Graves often shows three, and they usually come in this order:
1) white goddess (crecent moon waxing) the love goddess
2) red goddess (full moon) the mother goddess
3) black goddess (new moon) the death and prophesy goddess

Green himself intuits three in chapter 7, titled "Lara, Tina, and Marcella":
1) dark scent amber, sultry, spice: Marcella (light red hair)
2) daring, seductive, ravishing: Lara (dark red hair)
3) light scent ripe pears and apples, a pink flower: Tina (dark red hair)

It might just be my own idiosyncracy, but I do not see the Graves list and
the Green list lining up: in the Green list I do not see a mother or a
crone, I only see the white goddess in three aspects (from oldest to
youngest).  If you want to say that Tina is virginal nymph and Marcella is
black goddess of deathland, I guess you can do that, but then you'd be
going along with my Overwood = Deathland thing. <g>  (And I find it hard to
consider Lara as a red goddess, despite her hair color. <g>)

Lara has all sorts of pseudonyms, and she doesn't flinch when Green says
she is Marcella and she is Tina (but Tina flinches).  Yet Lara claims to be
not Cybele as we know Cybele.

Maybe it is just me, but I see a rather large difference between a Love
Goddess (Aphrodite) and a Fertility Goddess (Cybele), even as I recognize
that both lend themselves to orgiastic celebrations.  If the focus is on
Babies, then imho she is a Mother Goddess (a red goddess), and what we see
of Otherworld is built upon babies and Mother Goddess and not Love.

Since Wolfe seems to have an interest in battles between different
goddesses, it is perhaps too easy for me to think along these lines.

>mindful of Sheng's root. Green was at the tail-end of the parade; who knows

Hmmmm.  To anticipate: you mean that the parade started off with the black
goddess, then had the red goddess, and finally the snow-white goddess?

>Wolfe says it only that one time. Goddesses don't get sick, unless it's

A few points.  Even while I argue above there is a difference between such
similar goddesses as Cybele and Aphrodite, still I want no one to
mistakenly think that I'm claiming Aphrodite is infertile or a pre-mother
-- she has had children (Eros/Cupid and Hermaphrodite being only two), but
that detail did not/does not change her sphere from Love to Motherhood or
Fertility.  So Lara could have been pregnant by Captain Billy and in my
book she would still be Aphrodite, not Cybele, as I'm making the
distinction between them.

FWIW I don't think that Lara was really sick.  The text is pretty clear
about how Lara works -- she finds the guy, she shows him a wild time, she
leaves him "sad and alone on the cold hill side" (to paraphrase "La Belle
Dame sans Merci").  What happens next is up to the man: he can "pine" away
and die of anguish (like Attis, like the nameless knight of "La Belle
Dame," and I presume like Captain Billy), or he can follow Lara into the
deadly hedge maze, a labyrinth in which she always dances a few steps ahead.

When Lara says she didn't want Attis to die, I take it as (possibly)
meaning not that she wanted him to be immortal (i.e., he would never die),
but rather she did not want him to follow her into the deadly maze (where
he would die sooner in life than if he stayed on Earth), so she
purposefully did not give him the hints on how to find the doors.  Then he
cut himself and she was upset.

=mantis=

Sirius Fiction
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
http://www.siriusfiction.com/

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From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 17:39:02 +0000

Mantis postulated about Roy Lackey's observation that Green met mostly men
in Otherworld:

<<<Yep.  If this is "The Planet of the Apes," then where are all the
"apes"?!
Could it be that the capital city of the nation has a high concentration of
a numerical minority?

...or just that, as in the real world, members of the lower class (in
Otherworld determined by gender, not $$$) mostly are responsible for doing
society's menial jobs.  

Wolfe in that now-famous interview went on record as saying that he didn't
think there would be that many differences between a goddess-driven world
and our own, and that more likely is why there's no real rhyme or reason to
how many men Green meets.

- Shell

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 03:35:10 +0000

> From:
> "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>

> don't know what this means for Otherworld society, but there it is.

There may be more reproductional derrangements in the Otherworld than is 
spelled out.
It's possible that many men and women are infertile or lacking in 
libido, some or
all of the time, or perhaps all of either sex could be "ready" only for 
a small
period of time, or go through a period of unreadiness and then are ready 
from then on.
This would explain there being numerous men and women present in 
non-reproductive roles,
the parade as a means of hooking up newly ready women with newly ready 
men, and the dolls as kind of coaxer for boys who are slow in showing 
signs of getting ready, or as a secondary service; if they can't serve 
as a father, they can serve the Goddess. It's also possible that a 
single man can fertilize multiple women; either by artificial 
insemination, dividng the single sample, or, since according to the 
play, the man doesn't die immediately, by multiple ejaculations before 
death. The dying state doesn't seem erotically conducive, but 
electroejaculation is a possibility....

-- 
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law

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From: Tami Whitehead <razorkittee at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2003 05:50:38 +0000

As I said before, after reading Doors, I just sat and
scratched my head for several days. It took 3 Star
Trek novellas to purge my grey matter and bring me
back to sense of normalcy (an entirely subjective
state for me, and if I seek it, then I am truly sick
<wink>)...be that as it may...

Sex without women in This World usually leads to
varying stages of homosexual behavior. Why not in
Otherworld? (And Wolfe is not above using homosexual
behavior in his tales, as in Latro's little faun boy
that the Spartan general was hot for) Guys may have to
adapt, but they rarely go without...

And what about masturbation? If it were me, and my
life were on the line, I think I could get by quite
well, er, manually. 

I think there is something else going on. I think it
has less to do with ejaculation and more to do with
actual congress, so to speak, with the Goddess or her
handmaidens. Someone else suggested I think that the
Act was more to do with giving oneself to the Goddess
much as Attis did, with knowledge of what would be
required in return, and with the Goddess pitying him
even though she still required it (ok, chicks are
weird, and I can say that because I am a chick, and
always pleased when men are willing to die to sleep
with me. I am just not that strict in enforcing it
<wicked grin>This is just a guess. But I do think it
has more to do with the "giving" of the sacrifice to
the Goddess than having sex with regular women, sorta.
Then again, I am just guessing. I like to think I
understand about the Goddess Consuming, but then
again...

Tami

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 22:43:02 +0000

> don't know what this means for Otherworld society, but there it is.

It's odd, but there are some considerations which make it more plausible.
For one thing, for every dead father there's a woman who is a mother, and
probably a mother with one or more young children.  So a lot of women are
presumably at home with their children.  For another, Fanny tells Green:
"Nature ... gave you men more strenth than most women, and what's much more
important, more drive, more ambition." (151)  I imagine Wolfe would agree
with this sentiment.  And then the bits of Otherworld we see through Green's
eyes are hardly representative of Otherworld society as a whole: a
psychiatric ward, a boxing arena, a theater where subversive plays are
performed, and various marginal enterprises.  (As I remarked before, we
hardly see any children, though there must be loads of them.)

I suspect that Wolfe's own attitudes towards women also have something to do
with their relative absence.

--Adam

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