{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6635", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 6635, "subject": "Short Story 100: In Looking-Glass Castle", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2014-08-21T14:48:50+00:00", "last": "2014-08-21T14:48:50+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-08-21T14:48:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 100: In Looking-Glass Castle", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "“In Looking-Glass Castle” first appeared in 1980 in *TriQuarterly* and is\nreprinted in *Storeys from the Old Hotel. *\n\nSUMMARY: In a female dominated United States, men, considered pigs, are\nhunted and scorned. Reproduction is undergone through cloning. A\nmathematician working for an important space project moves to West Cocoa\nBeach, Florida, (Cocoa Beach was a minuscule Florida village until the\nspace program brought an influx of workers) and buys a house whose previous\nowner died under somewhat suspicious circumstances, drowning. She finds a\nfew volumes of fiction written by men behind the accepted female authored\ntexts in her library and also realizes that some of her food is\ndisappearing. Eventually, she confronts the bearded man who seems to live\nin the shadows of her house, but does not turn him in. He begins to leave\nher small gifts, such as books by Lewis Carroll. Eventually, the police\nsearch her house, and she takes the first opportunity to escape by\naccepting a position on a boat. Even there, she sees the face of the man\nbelow deck.\n\nCOMMENTARY: Perhaps Wolfe’s definitive exploration of the aggressive\nfeminist philosophy which desires exactly the same method of power and\ninfluence as that stereotypically sought by men, “In Looking-Glass Castle”\nis complicated by the enormous number of allusions for such a short story.\nMany of them are probably irrelevant on a plot level (for example, the\ngifts of *Sylvie and Bruno* and *Pillow Problems*, two books by Lewis\nCarroll, are almost certainly present to highlight the real reference at\nwork in the title, *Through the Looking Glass* (and *Alice in Wonderland*)).\nIn addition to the overwhelming drowning imagery, as can be seen in the\nliterary allusions discussed below, we can extrapolate fairly easily that\nDaisy will not long survive the end of her story. As a microcosmic\nreflection of her self-destructive society, several of the themes are quite\nclearly explored in Daisy’s character.\n\nDaisy is a female mathematician who must hide her status as a doctor from\nthe public, but for all her book knowledge, she wonders if her car is made\nof aluminum or fiberglass. This lack of practical understanding is mirrored\nin her society, which treats everyone with suspicion. It understands the\ncold theory of how things work without understanding specifics of happiness\nand fulfillment (such as the idea that if one is lonely and unfulfilled,\none can simply take a cell scraping and beget a clone). That car also\nserves as a simple metaphor — the old fashioned cars cannot long survive\nthe corrosive atmosphere, and neither can old fashioned women. Daisy isn't\ncertain which type of vehicle she has, nor is she certain which type of\nwoman she is. When she mishears “the sisters got her” for “the cistern got\nher” when she inquires as to the fate of Jane, the previous owner, coupled\nwith the necessity of hiding her degree, we see that there is very little\nsolidarity or trust left. Instead of a supportive sisterhood, all\nrelationships are suspicious. While the logic the man uses to keep her from\nturning him in may be spurious (blaming her for knowingly harboring him),\nthere is enough truth in his claim that his denouncement of her would\nlogically have disastrous consequences.\n\nMention of sympathizers in the North and the fact that the male-authored\ntexts of Maupassant and Kafka are found in the library read to pieces\nforces us to make an interpretive choice. Did the previous owner, Jane\n“Something”, read those stories until the pages fell out on her own, or is\nthe man who lurks in the shadows of the house real? When Daisy is\nconfronted with the man at last after suspecting his presence, they have a\nfairly long discussion, and she asks if he killed the previous owner (who\nrefused to clone herself and probably resisted other aspects of the\nsociety). By my reading, Jane was in love not with any real man, but with\nthe idea of them, and was a true “sympathizer” mentioned in the text, who\nread those books. When her ideals became obvious, her sisters killed her.\nThus, the idea and imago of man leads to her murder. When asked if he will\nkill Daisy in the same manner, he replies in the negative (see unanswered\nquestions below). Jane was murdered by her sisters for embracing the idea\nof man. It seems more likely that Daisy, in trying to flee, is more prone\nto self-destruction, a different kind of death.\n\nDaisy is actually not a true sympathizer — she fears loneliness and having\ntoo much responsibility. When Char Cavallo dies of a heart attack, we see\nsome of the unnatural stress which has been created by this system. When a\nnew woman comes to the apartment, Daisy offers to let her stay in the house\nrent free, “but the new woman was attractive and had, it seemed, better\noffers.” Daisy can't even attain the companionship she craves by opening\nher house for no charge.\n\nOf course, the possibly imaginary male serves as a mouthpiece criticizing\nthe entire ideology of this brand of feminism, which seeks to take the\npower of the masculine and then eliminate males as unnecessary: “The sphere\nof logic has never been the world of women and men. If we can manage to\nforget it, we can both be free, or at least as nearly free as we are\ncapable of being. ? [Logic] should serve us, and not master s. Don't you\nagree, for example, that if we both wanted the same thing, we could not\nboth have it. Look, here's a slice of bread — we could divide it between us\n— evenly, or by some complicated formula you would work out. But if we both\nwanted the whole slice, could we both have it” Both eat it?\n\nThe critique of the all female society inherent in the text is strong:\nDaisy must balance her loneliness with the need to seek companionship, and\nshe is forced unnaturally to think of other women as a man would: “She was\nquite good looking, Ms. McKane thought — though perhaps a little too old. —\nHer left hand was beside her leg, where the agent could touch it easily if\nshe wished. She did not.” The same games that men and women play with each\nother are found in this new society, and Daisy is exasperated by having to\nassume the more masculine role because of her relative lack of\nattractiveness. Her horrors are of solitude and loneliness: “of running\ndown on a lonely road, and so many roads were lonely now.” She wonders if\nshe “can find someone to live here with [her]? and can’t clone herself, for\nshe knows that ?unless [she] can find someone to share the house, there’d\nbe no one to look after the baby.” She even finds herself forced to pay for\na meal after being invited to lunch as a matter of course with no offer of\nsplitting the bill, and thinks to herself, “How is this better?”\n\nWhen Wolfe comments that the society is based on those of bees or ants in\nhis introduction to *Storeys from the Old Hotel*, the large size of Pearl,\nthe woman across the street, seems something like the increased size of the\ninsect queen, and she has actually reproduced in the fashion accepted by\nthis society. However, this process is repugnant to Daisy because of her\npersonal revulsion for Pearl, and the “eccentric” Jane also refused it,\nthough perhaps for different ideological reasons.\n\nIt is quite clear that the society’s entire basis is suicidal, and that\nDaisy serves as a mirror to show its effects. In seeking to suppress and\neliminate the male figure, the society still operates in almost the same\nexploitative way, except some of the females like Daisy must abandon their\nfeminine roles and serve more masculine ones or be left alone. Has this\nforced Daisy to conjure a fantasy? In many ways, while the work is\nrealistic in nature, many of the allusions are to fantasies. Indeed, the\nfinal literary allusion, to *Cradle of the Sea* by Joan Lowell, was\npublished as a memoir in which the main character fabricated an entire life\nraised on the sea, with the ship finally sinking as she swum to shore with\nkittens clinging to her back. *Through the Looking Glass* is a similar\nphantasmagorical fantasy, a dream reality where things in the real world\nhave cognates through the mirror but are not necessarily physically real.\nWhen Daisy moves to the house in Florida, her size is emphasized, just as\nat the beginning of *Alice in Wonderland*, when Alice eats or drinks to\nshrink or grow to gigantic proportions:\n\n?[The house] was uncomfortable as a garment too large is uncomfortable by\nits very looseness. She had felt big and clumsy in her tiny Boston\napartment Now she herself was tiny,without force, without impact in this\nhulking structure. She made noise for the sake of noise and found herself\nwondering — if someone were not pounding her front door. — She seemed to be\neating too much and felt sure it was in a subconscious effort to grow\nlarger.\n\nSomething is missing in her life and her subconscious is working to make\nthings “fit”. In this scene in *Alice in Wonderland*, the tears shed a\ngiant cause a flood which almost drown her later, and this theme of\ndrowning is repeated again and again in Wolfe's story. At first Daisy\nthinks the woman across the street is speaking of the previous tenant of\nthe house who capsized in a boat, when in fact the woman's cloned daughter\nPearl IV perished in that fashion. Daisy dwells on the idea of “Jane\nrolling dead, naked in the surf”, though in reality she as been thrust down\nthe cistern out back. This fall also seems to resonate with Alice's fall\ndown the rabbit hole into a world that has some nightmare qualities. Daisy\nresolves to get a cat (Alice’s experiences in *Through the Looking Glass*\nbegan by playing with her white and black kittens).\n\nCertainly the death of the Char Cavallo, with the name which means black\nnight or black horse, summons the scene in *Through the Looking Glass* when\nAlice is threatened by the red knight. Is there really a white knight to\nsave her in this reality?\n\nAny attempt to brand the man as a phantom of Daisy’s conscious must\nconfront her claim, “You killed the other woman — the one before me”, to\nwhich he responds, “Indirectly and unintentionally, yes.” When she first\nhears him, she thinks, “the sound was so devoid of stealth that as soon as\nit had died away she felt sure it had been a waking dream, a phantom of\nhearing.” When the police cannot find any trace of her male guest, his\nreality really does seem to be that of Daisy's fantasy (like the fabricated\nmemoir *Cradle of the Sea* — a fantasy masquerading as reality, or Alice's\ndream, with real objects inspiring a dream fantasy).\n\nIronically, the spaceship that Daisy is working on is called the *Aphrodite*,\nthe goddess of love and procreation (though it is perhaps fitting that in\nat least one origin story she arose when Uranus' genitals were cut off and\nthrown into the sea). The nautical ship on which Daisy finally embarks is\nnamed after a famous Australian opera singer, Frances Alda, reputed to have\na strong temper and bitter wit. Her attempt to escape is frustrated: “In\nthe darkness below deck she glimpsed the stowaway's bearded face.”\n\nThe final effect of attempting to flee but seeing the man's dark face\nunderneath lets us see that Daisy's attempts to truly escape him are\nimpossible. We can expect that she, too, will drown, but by her own hand in\nan attempt to escape the that which cannot be fled. When she steps into\nlooking-glass castle, she sees in a distorted mirror the things which have\nbeen missing from her life — it is not a true man she sees, but the absence\nlurking inside her, given form. For a looking-glass is nothing but a mirror\nto behold the self.\n\nLITERARY ALLUSIONS:\n\nOf course the female authors represent the canon with the male figures\nexcised or cut out, so there is perhaps little thematic purpose for their\npresence (Jane Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, Flannery O?Connor, and\nDorothy Parker) . However, there are three male authors referenced: the\nshort stories of Guy de Maupassant and Kafka, as well as the works of Lewis\nCarroll.\n\nIn addition, the poem “Harp Song of the Dane Women” by Kipling is misquoted\nby Daisy as “Go to the old gray window-maker.” The poem is important\nbecause it seems to summon the allure of the killing sea (which is the ?old\ngray widow maker), for whom men would leave their women. Clearly the word\nwidow no longer exists in Daisy's society.\n\nWhat is a woman that you forsake her,\nAnd the hearth-fire and the home-acre.\nTo go with the old grey Widow-maker?\n\nShe has no house to lay a guest in\nBut one chill bed for all to rest in,\nThat the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.\n\nShe has no strong white arms to fold you,\nBut the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you\nOut on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.\n\nYet, when the signs of summer thicken,\nAnd the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,\nYearly you turn from our side, and sicken?\n\nSicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.\nYou steal away to the lapping waters,\nAnd look at your ship in her winter-quarters.\n\nYou forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,\nThe kine in the shed and the horse in the stables\nTo pitch her sides and go over her cables.\n\nThen you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,\nAnd the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,\nIs all we have left through the months to follow.\n\nAh, what is Woman that you forsake her,\nAnd the hearth-fire and the home-acre,\nTo go with the old grey Widow-maker?\n\nWhile it is impossible to pin down only one of probably 300 short stories\nof Guy de Maupassant as being of particular import, fortunately I am\nfamiliar with one that has an eerie kind of resonance — one of his fantasy\ntales, called “The Horla”. The narrator lives by the water and waves at a\nthree masted ship, and soon finds that someone is living in his house,\ndrinking his water. Believing himself to have gone mad, he tries to travel\nand escape his situation before seeing a mesmerist. The mesmerist makes a\nwoman believe a playing card is a looking glass. He even flirts with the\nidea of poisoning the unwelcome guest in his house: “How could I kill Him,\nsince I could not get hold of Him” Poison? But He would see me mix it with\nthe water; and then, would our poisons have any effect on His impalpable\nbody? (Maupassant 25)\n\nHowever, the nature of the Horla is vastly different from the man living in\nDaisy’s house, unless he represents a physically stronger other: “One might\nsay that man, ever since he has thought, has had a foreboding and a fear of\na new being, stronger than himself, his successor in this world, and that,\nfeeling him near, and not being able to foretell the nature of the unseen\none, he has, in his terror, created the whole race of hidden beings, vague\nphantoms born of fear” (Maupassant 19).\n\nHe even comes to see the thing in a looking glass: “Behind me was a very\nhigh wardrobe with a looking-glass in it, which served me to dress by every\nday, and in which I was in the habit of inspecting myself from head to foot\nevery time I passed it. So I pretended to be writing in order to deceive\nHim, for He also was watching me, and suddenly I felt, I was certain, that\nHe was reading over my shoulder, that He was there, almost touching my ear”\n(24). The narrator beholds the phantom in the looking-glass, because it is\nvery possible that the phantom is the narrator's own broken mind. After\nburning down his house, the narrator’s final conviction is that, “I suppose\nI must kill myself.” (27)\n\nWith all those similarities, there are still enough differences to remain\nuncertain as to its impact on Wolfe’s story, and perhaps it is the\nattempted suicide of Maupassant after a descent into syphilitic madness\nthat we should take away from reference to his stories.\n\nThe connection to Kafka is even more nebulous and speculative. The\nalienation and reaction to a man become a bug or vermin in a household\nmight evoke the feeling of “Metamorphosis”, or even the presence of the\ndeath boat in “The Hunter Gracchus” carrying the long dead titular\ncharacter, wandering aimlessly and eternally over the seas after falling to\nhis death. In his introduction, Wolfe says that he imagined the society\nbased on that of bees or ants, with their strong eusocial groups dominated\nby a queen and female workers. Perhaps this is enough for the Kafka\n“Metamorphosis” reference — human society transformed into something\ninsectile. The Wolfe-wiki takes this analysis in a different direction, and\nclaims “In the Penal Colony” is the relevant Kafka story because of its\ntotalitarian state with harsh punishments. It also posits “Mademoiselle\nPearl” as the relevant Maupassant story, when an old maid is chosen as\nqueen for twelfth night. This is also possible.\n\nThe attempt of a pawn to become a queen as is indicated in the movements of\nAlice in *Through the Looking Glass* certainly resonates with the story, as\nDaisy even quotes the White Queen. If there is any specific chess move that\nis being used here, I think that it involves the threat of the Red Knight,\nwhich is thwarted by the White Knight. In Wolfe's story, the Queen has\ngotten rid of all her knights.\n\nWhile the writings of James Tiptree Jr and Joanna Russ are never explicitly\nmentioned, there is certainly a sense that the zeitgeist following their\nfeminist SF promoted an environment for the writing of “In Looking-Glass\nCastle.”\n\nBorski’s claim that Edith Berg indirectly references Alban Berg’s *Wozzack*\ngoes a step too far for me. We have enough imagery of drowning and the sea\nto avoid having to resort to name magic.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nThe kindle version of *Storeys from the Old Hotel* has an interesting\nchange from my published print version. The answer he gives to her\nquestion, “Will you kill me the same way?” is ?Not. In the print version,\nhe says, “No.” The question is of course loaded anyway. If he says yes, he\nwill kill her. If he says no, it won’t be in the same way. Which answer is\nmore definitive, “not” or ?no?? Is there truly any grammatical distinction\nbetween these two answers?\n\nWhile the very title “In Looking-Glass Castle” evokes all the chess imagery\nand the obvious Alice references, it still describes a castle that is\nprimarily a mirror. Alone in the house, has Daisy just begun to see herself\nand her own frustration and fears? If the Maupassant story “The Horla” is\ntruly one of the sources, where a kind of progressive insanity leads to\nsuicidal self-destruction, then we can assume, beyond the idea that she\nwill kill herself, that the man haunting her is quite probably a\nmanifestation of her own fears and desires.\n\nIf he isn’t a part of her subconscious, how does he know to avoid the\npoisoned food and where does he hide? If he IS a part of her subconscious,\nhow did he indirectly kill the previous tenant? Does sympathizing with the\nplight of suppressed men and what they represent constitute enough on our\nphantom's part to claim that he actually indirectly killed Jane?\n\nThere is one point when the man claims that if Daisy tries to hurt him,\nthen that would be the only thing that would make him stop being afraid of\nher. Is this a complicated way of saying that she can only hurt him by\nhurting or killing herself?\n\n\n CONECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nThe society depicted in *There Are Doors* is one that is dominated by\nfemales by a trick of biology rather than by choice and is far more\nsympathetic than the social order in this story, but the fascination Wolfe\nhas with a matriarchy in the later part of the 1970s (“Many Mansions”) and\nthroughout the 1980s (the exploration of the war between the triple goddess\nand mother earth in the Soldier series, in addition to other short stories)\nfades as his career unfolds. Often criticized for putting females in\nsecondary roles or depicting them as sexual manipulators or objects, here\nwe have his most blatant depiction of women in power, but the theme, that\nattempting to change our nature to conform to society's expectations is\ndestructive and perhaps suicidal for the soul, is not as vitriolic as many\nmight first claim — the critique is of a very particular type of militant\nfeminism which appropriates masculine power and eliminates rather than\nengenders and embraces.\n\n\n Maupassant, Guy. “The Horla”. *Hyperfiction*. 2010. Web. 21 August 2014.\nhttp://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Horl.shtml" } ] } ] }