Disarming SeawrackWhorl

OK, all of you people who think Wolfe always has a reason for everything he writes (you know who you are!), what is the reason for Seawrack's missing right arm? I find it rather odd that having her arm mangled and then amputated, doesn't seem to bother Seawrack very much. Even odder is the way she adapts instantly to having no right arm. She is not unbalanced, even at first, or inconvenienced in any way we are told about. She can swim just as well as ever, apparently. It also doesn't seem to bother anyone else that she has only one arm. It certainly doesn't make her any less desirable to Horn or any other man. Not that it should, but I think it might put some men off. No one even seems to be curious about why she is missing an arm or how it happened, which strikes me as being quite against human nature. Is Seawrack really missing an arm or is Horn being mislead somehow? ("Prepare for mind control!" -Evil, in the film Time Bandits.) William Ansley *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

One thing it made me think of was the Venus de Milo, especially re: the story about her arms in PEACE. Perhaps Mother arranged for her to lose her arm, knowing this would make Horn less suspicious of her (if beauty doesn't get 'em, go for sympathy). At the end of OBW, I pity Seawrack, and think no ill of her, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the hints dropped and Krait's evident distrust of her may indicate that she's less innocent and good than she seems. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32