>Sean suggested
>
> Hopefully, though, people would mean that, yes, those women
>are powerful and not read anything else into it like "and that's as
>powerful as women should get" or "and they're blessed to be that powerful". If
>I were to read anything into these kinds of statements, I'd hope itcould be:
>yes they're powerful, and it's a start and I recognize that at
>the same time as I recognize that they're still not 'powerful' enough
>because they're not considered equal with men's 'power'.
>
>I was actually trying to get at the way the kind of women's power under
>discussion is set up as dark and shadowy and sinister, and extremely scary,
>and that these characteristics--which are presumably those of any group which
>has means of gaining some access to acknowledged authority by manipulating
>key individuals (e.g. attitude towards eunuchs at the Byzantine court)--tend
>to be seen as those of all women in relation to power.
That the B.G. power is dark and sinister I'll grant, and I'm not sure why
Herbert whose women to fill the roles. Maybe they just fit. However,
there are still some pretty powerful Fremen women who aren't dark or
sinister, just formidable and therefore pretty scary, not just to men but
to anybody.
-Sean
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:50 PDT