'King Rat' and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe's stories

David Stockhoff · 09 Mar 2011, 03:06 · from 2011-March.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2011 22:06:59 -0500
Subject: (urth) 'King Rat' and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe's stories
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A little bit of analysis is all that is needed on your second point.

Accepting that the moral of King Rat is that "misogyny pays" ... OK, so 
what? (So does dramatically entertaining torture and execution, for an 
expert at the trade, in a certain other fictional world resembling 
medieval Europe.)

Well, look that the world King Rat lives in, in which "misogyny pays." 
Do you like it?

Point made. Wolfe does not support misogyny.

On 3/8/2011 9:57 PM, Thomas Bitterman wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 5:39 PM, Daniel Petersen 
> <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com 
> <mailto:danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On a wholly different note, have you all read the latest Silk for
>     Calde blog post on Wolfe?  A really well reasoned article on this
>     issue of misogyny in Wolfe:
>
>     http://silk4calde.blogspot.com/2011/03/king-rat-and-abuse-of-women-in-gene.html
>
>
> A couple of flaws stand out from the others.
>
> First, the author of the essay writes: "Wolfe generally avoids using 
> his protagonists or narrators to proclaim his own beliefs".  If this 
> is true it is incumbent on the essayist to find other means of 
> defending Wolfe from these charges of misogyny.  He does not, but 
> picks a single character (Silk) in a single scene to make his point.  
> The essayist provides inadequate reasons to accept his initial point 
> (after all, there are plenty of good novelists that use their 
> protagonist to proclaim the author's beliefs) and no reasons to accept 
> his example as an exception in Wolfe.
>
> To further muddy the water, in regards to the story under question 
> (King Rat), the essayist provides an excellent example of where the 
> actions in the story are both misogynist and rewarding.  The moral of 
> the story would seem to be "misogyny pays", regardless of any 
> (nonexistent in this case) protestations to the contrary by the 
> protagonist (whom, after all, we cannot trust to reflect the author's 
> intentions).
>
> And second, the essayist writes: "We are /meant/ to be horrified by 
> the sordid nature of this man...".  No contextual evidence is provided 
> to support this reading.  This despite an earlier section titled 
> "DEPICTING THE ABUSE OF WOMEN: TEXT AND CONTEXT".
>
>     DOJP
>
>
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