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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
     for recreation.  On a job, they got
     in the way and fogged things up with
     sex and hurt feelings and all the
     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 point            other versions of it are as
   that Emma Peel appeals            hostile toward it as the
   to male fantasies of              feminists are.
   escaping domestic
   entanglement: the                 There's no honor in
   playmate that doesn't             attacking the weak.
   need anything from you.



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