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Re: SIGNS: Paragraphs 1-3]
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> "fault-finding light"
>
Glaring sunlight or even less glaring light is experienced as fault-finding
often by women and by those constantly appraising women's looks (and a load
of pink and mauve powder always is judged and is experienced as uncanny, and
is seen as a mask or masquerade, and is pondered both consciously and
unconsciously (no matter what VN correctly or incorrectly thought or knew of
Freud at the time), and VN is directly addressing the appearance and
self-consciousness and also other people's judgments about how they look,
regarding the two women in the passage, and someone else's impression of how
they look. Given the costuming of women, make-up and adornment, and
people's visual and philosophical fascination with this aspect of the
appearance of women, and of always looking at women or "the feminine" (and
supposedly excluding men and "the masculine" from this scrutiny) and always
commenting on women's looks, "fault-finding light" finds itself in this
context, but why it is in this story remains mysterious. Although if you
consider it with other things about the mother that I have mentioned in
earlier posts, it becomes less mysterious. VN wants readers to think about,
among other things, so-called "sexual difference" and seems to have some
feeling for some of the predicaments of "women".
Barrie Karp
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> "fault-finding light"
>
Glaring sunlight or even less glaring light is experienced as fault-finding
often by women and by those constantly appraising women's looks (and a load
of pink and mauve powder always is judged and is experienced as uncanny, and
is seen as a mask or masquerade, and is pondered both consciously and
unconsciously (no matter what VN correctly or incorrectly thought or knew of
Freud at the time), and VN is directly addressing the appearance and
self-consciousness and also other people's judgments about how they look,
regarding the two women in the passage, and someone else's impression of how
they look. Given the costuming of women, make-up and adornment, and
people's visual and philosophical fascination with this aspect of the
appearance of women, and of always looking at women or "the feminine" (and
supposedly excluding men and "the masculine" from this scrutiny) and always
commenting on women's looks, "fault-finding light" finds itself in this
context, but why it is in this story remains mysterious. Although if you
consider it with other things about the mother that I have mentioned in
earlier posts, it becomes less mysterious. VN wants readers to think about,
among other things, so-called "sexual difference" and seems to have some
feeling for some of the predicaments of "women".
Barrie Karp
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm