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

Daniel Petersen · 09 Mar 2011, 08:14 · from 2011-March.txt.gz

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From: danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com (Daniel Petersen)
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2011 08:14:53 +0000
Subject: (urth) 'King Rat' and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe's stories
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Clarification:  that urth post heavily criticising the Silk for Calde blog
post on the abuse of women was *NOT* from me - that is, not from 'DOJP'
(Daniel Otto Jack Petersen) - though somehow in the cutting and pasting my
initials ended up directly at the bottom of his ('Thomas Bitterman')
comments.

Interesting observations though, Thomas.  But not exactly a generous reading
of Silk for Calde's case.  I think Stockhoff's comment effectively answers
your second point about 'King Rat'.

DOJP (really this time)

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 3:06 AM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> 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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