From: C.L. Everett (seaelle@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 16 2005 - 00:30:59 BST
Marsha--I get a little of what you're saying. I'd say she has balls or guts
rather than quality (as judged by our culture not her own internal
experience). She's a tough girl--there are many in the homeless,
drug-addicted and *working* professions like that. But our culture has no
respect for them. In a different world, a different culture I'd say you
might be right, women would/could be respected for all the same reasons as
men but the sad truth is that they're not and women must live inside that
circle that men have created and described for them, which includes the
status quo *suggestions* of how they approach their sexuality, what they are
allowed to do with it.
Not only don't the men like Lila, the women don't either and yet the
narrator character "gets away" without even being critiqued in his role as
the sexual mirror to Lila. His sexual behavior is just as base but gosh, he
gets to *think*, so our attention is diverted from his behavior as a slut.
But then who calls a man a slut, anyway? It's not even on our radar to make
that critique. What Lila might have been had Lila only been written to have
a brain.
C.L.
On 8/15/05, MarshaV <marshalz@charter.net> wrote:
>
>
> Dear C.L.,
>
> Hear the words of Lila:
>
> ""Well you've completely misunderstood what I'm asking these
> questions for," the Captain said.
> "No, I haven't. I've completely understood it just exactly
> right" Lila said. "all men do that. You're no big exception. Jerry did
> it. Every man does it. But you something. It won't work."
> "I'm not trying to destroy you," he said.
> "That's what you think. You're just playing around the edges,
> aren't you! You can't go to the center of me. You don't know where the
> center of me is!"
> That set him back.
> "You're not a woman. You don't know. When men make love they're
> really trying to destroy you. A woman's got to be real quiet inside
> because if she shows a man anything they'll try to kill it.
> "But they all get fooled because there's nothing to destroy but
> what's in their own mind. And so they destroy that and then they hate
> what's left and they call what's left. 'Lila,' and they hate Lila. But
> Lila isn't anybody. That's true. You don't believe it, but it's true.
> "Women are very deep," Lila said. "But men never see it. They/re
> too selfish. They always want women to understand them. And that's all
> they ever care about. That's why they always have to try to destroy them."
> "I'm just asking questions," the Captain said.
> "Fuck your questions! I'm whatever your questions turn me
> into. You don't see that. It's your questions that make me who I am. If
> you think I'm an angel then that's what I am. If you think I'm a whore
> then that's what I am. I'm whatever you think. And if you change your
> mind about me then I change too. So whatever Richard tells you, it's
> true. There's no way he can lie about me."
> Lila took the bottle and took a swig down straight. "The hell with
> glasses," she said. "Everybody wants to turn Lila into somebody else. And
> most women put up with that, because they want the kids and the money and
> the good-looking clothes. But it won't work with me. I'm just Lila and I
> always will be. And if men don't like me the way I am, then men can just
> get out. I don't need them. I don't need anyone. I'll die first. That
> just the way I am."" (Lila. - end of chapter 14)
>
> Lila doesn't have quality, Lila is quality. Lila is life!
>
> Marsha
>
>
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