PEACE: Sherry vs. Doris

Roy C. Lackey · 31 Oct 2002, 00:51 · from urth-v0210.mbox · original

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From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
Subject: (urth) PEACE: Sherry vs. Doris
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 18:51:05 -0600
Message-ID: <urth-v0210-1998 at digest.urth.net>
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mantis (no capital; likewise alga and hartshorn) wrote:
>The more realistic level of the joke is that the sister has prostituted
>herself (a native has wined, dined, bedded, and paid her) and the
>immigrants are too naive to understand such prostitution, for any variety
>of reasons (for example, they always got the same in the old country and
>were still treated like dirt).
>
>This is a curious joke to come from a girl who has just prostituted herself
>for purposes of blackmail!
>
>But it also matches well with what we know about Doris: as a pretty yet
>mundane girl in the carny world, her roles are limited to using her body
>for titilation or outright prostitution, and she is treated like dirt.  But
>if she were a freak, she would be an aristocrat among the carnies.
>
>I make this parallel not to link Sherry and Doris as being the same person,
>or even related, but being both young women feeling pressure to prostitute
>themselves.

Other than age, I don't see that the two girls have much in common. Doris is
ostensibly an orphan; Sherry is not. Doris has "victim" written all over
her, whereas Sherry is anything but. Judging by Charlie's account, Doris is
naive, not only sexually (Charlie said that someone would have to tell her
how she could show she was grateful for Tom Lavine's failed gallantry), but
she didn't know better than to wear her new clothes "with the labels still
on". Sherry is, by her own mother's account, a very "forward" girl (as
demonstrated by her blowing Weer a kiss while on the stairs of her home, to
say nothing of her seduction of Weer), fully prepared to use her "magic
ring" to make all her wishes come true. In Doris's place, Sherry would have
soon been queen of the midway, had she wanted to be, or, more likely, been
on the first bus out of town, and with money in her pocket, to boot.

-Roy

--=20

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