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WINNING_VESPER

                                  August 10, 2004
                                                 
Reading Casino Royale (1953)                     
by Ian Fleming, I find that                 SPOILERS
Fleming's bond is simultaneously 
more sexist than his screen 
counter-part, but also less 
of a total bastard...

           
           
     And then there was this pest 
     of a girl.  He sighed. Women were                   ((Amazing
     for recreation.  On a job, they got                 typo: I had
     in the way and fogged things up with                "goffed" for 
     sex and hurt feelings and all the                   "fogged".))
     emotional baggage they carried 
     around.  One had to look out for 
     them and take care of them.  -- p. 27       Signet 
                                                 paperback
                                                 edition.
           
     This was just what he had been 
     afraid of.  These blithering women 
     who thought they could do a man's 
     work.  Why the hell couldn't they stay 
     at home and mind their pots and pans 
     and stick to their frocks and gossip 
     and leave men's work to the men?  -- p. 82
                                     


By the end of the book he's 
thinking about proposing 
marriage to the woman under      The rather 
discussion here.                 elegantly 
                                 named Vesper.

Two sides of the same coin: 
the macho world-view may 
look down on women's abilities,                           
but with it also comes a             Some versions of these              
sense of responsibility,             attitudes unaccountably    
women must be cared for.             manage to justify -- or    
                                     shrug off? -- domestic     
                                     violence against women, but
   Delany makes the                  other versions of it are as
   point that Emma                   hostile toward it as the   
   Peel appeals to                   feminists are.             
   male fantasies                                                   
   of escaping                       There's no honor in     
   domestic                          attacking the weak. 
   entanglement:                     
   the playmate                      
   that doesn't    
   need anything            
   from you.        
   
                        
                        
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