Tanya Wood wrote:
>> Jessica also
>>channels most of her energies into her son: the mother figure self-
>>sacrificing so that her son can become a real hero. And how about
>>Irulan's misery because Paul doesn't love her? She channels all that
>>repressed passion into books and language, but 'really' just desiring to
>>be a 'real' woman (ie loved and desired by Paul).
Sean Johnston wrote:
>Isn't that what mothers do in their mother context: make sure their kids,
>male or female, do better than they? As for Irulan, I felt pretty bad for
>her, too. She, I can say honestly, was a true pawn, but I still don't see
>that as sexist, just sad for her.
The point about Jessica being that the "mother context" is the context in
which she is placed most often in the books. You have said before, Sean,
that a parent's most important priority ought to be his/her children.
Frankly, I don't agree. When I was growing up, I never had the impression
that I was the cherished center of my parents' existence, but I never felt
that they were bad parents because of it. Of course they wanted me to
succeed. They supported me economically for the first 15 or so years of my
life and were sympathetic and interested when I had things to say. But
after all they were simply people, like me, with their own interests and
hobbies.
Parents like mine are fairly common in fiction -- but primarily as
fathers, not mothers. In a book of intrigue such as Dune, it would take a
lot of work to imagine what it would have been like if Jessica had been
portrayed differently, but it is certainly possible that Frank Herbert
could have written the story in a different way. Let me make a very
stretched analogy by comparing Dune to A Door Into Ocean. In aDiO, the
character of Merwen is portrayed as a builder of consensus, a rallying
figure for the Sharers in a time of world-threatening crisis, analogous
(stretching...) to Paul Atreides. She is also a mother and source of
advice, analogous to Jessica. Two roles in one person! In that book she is
not forced to choose between the two. Both are quite important to her, and
she seems to act well in both roles.
With the many possibilities in mind, my thinking is that even if
Jessica could not have been both messiah and mother, she could have had a
little more selfhood. Not that I am decrying Dune -- in its paranoid way, I
found it interesting and entertaining. I even liked the second book, though
I never read any further than that. I was not offended by the portraits of
women I found there, but it also seemed that Herbert was not very aware of
gender issues.
-- Janice
-----
Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT
http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm
Listening to: Radiohead - OK Computer
"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin
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