New Leaf July 2018 Discussion • Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

That's persuasive. I was fixated on the gender issue and didn't pay attention to the age issue.

I think the stories are extremely dismissive of women and girls, as I posted upthread. This is one of the reasons I dislked them.

Women who venture out of their homes do so at their peril. The one woman who does something bold and heroic--Lavinia--gets no credit for it; the boys are annoyed by what she did.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I think the stories are extremely dismissive of women and girls, as I posted upthread. This is one of the reasons I dislked them.

Women who venture out of their homes do so at their peril. The one woman who does something bold and heroic--Lavinia--gets no credit for it; the boys are annoyed by what she did.

Well, I think that’s how it was - and in some places, it still is. At the same time, there was Great Grandma, up on the roof repairing the shingles. So I suspect that women were probably out and about, doing a lot more than Doug (or Bradbury as a boy) ever noticed.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Well, I think that’s how it was - and in some places, it still is. At the same time, there was Great Grandma, up on the roof repairing the shingles. So I suspect that women were probably out and about, doing a lot more than Doug (or Bradbury as a boy) ever noticed.

I'm willing to admit that I'm probably seeing this through a modern lens, but it still annoys me that when females do appear in the stories, for the most part they're old, they're silly, they're witches, they're victims, they're cruel.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I'm willing to admit that I'm probably seeing this through a modern lens, but it still annoys me that when females do appear in the stories, for the most part they're old, they're silly, they're witches, they're victims, they're cruel.

I had a similar reaction, but I also suspect that was the reality for a 12 year-old boy in 1928. Girls, women, didn't count. Except for Grandmas. In another year, it would be different.

[Bookpossum]

They are balanced out by the boys’ mother, who went looking for Doug despite her fear, Lavinia asserting her right to walk home and then fighting and beating The Lonely One, and of course the aforementioned Great Grandma, who turned her hand to anything and knew how to die with grace and kindness, giving Doug wise advice on how to live his life.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

They are balanced out by the boys’ mother, who went looking for Doug despite her fear, Lavinia asserting her right to walk home and then fighting and beating The Lonely One, and of course the aforementioned Great Grandma, who turned her hand to anything and knew how to die with grace and kindness, giving Doug wise advice on how to live his life.

And don't overlook Lena Auffman, who saw the truth about the Happiness Machine and renounced it.

[Bookpossum]

Ah yes, she was absolutely right about that.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

I had a similar reaction, but I also suspect that was the reality for a 12 year-old boy in 1928. Girls, women, didn't count. Except for Grandmas. In another year, it would be different.

At which point he would still likely be confining them to a specific feminine role in relation to himself, rather than seeing them as fully functioning human beings.

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

They are balanced out by the boys’ mother, who went looking for Doug despite her fear, Lavinia asserting her right to walk home and then fighting and beating The Lonely One, and of course the aforementioned Great Grandma, who turned her hand to anything and knew how to die with grace and kindness, giving Doug wise advice on how to live his life.

Mom was fulfilling her mom role, caring for the children.

Lavinia was being incredibly dumb in walking home alone. I don't see that as evidence of her being strong, just stupid. The tacked-on bit about her killing the Lonely One is evidence of strength, but it IS tacked on, and in any case, the boys don't respect her for it. She's ruined their fun and excitement (so what if their fun requires women to be murdered?).

Originally Posted by issybird

And don't overlook Lena Auffman, who saw the truth about the Happiness Machine and renounced it.

Yes, but the takeaway there could be that women are only happy in the home when they don't know what they could have had, so keep the blinders on. Just like the takeaway from the Green Machine story could be that women shouldn't seek adventure.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by Catlady

and in any case, the boys don't respect her for it. She's ruined their fun and excitement (so what if their fun requires women to be murdered?).

They're 10-12 years old. They probably didn't have a realistic idea of what was going on with the Lonely One. It was like a game to them. I know when I was growing up (1980s and 90s about an hour from where this guy lived) I was well insulated from the true fright and horror of what was going on in the world. I had heard of the Green River Killer but it was always in the abstract. Do you really think their parent's were letting them get enough gory details to really understand what was happening?

Also, note that Doug, the one who was there when Lavinia found the body, did not have the same reaction as the other two boys. Unfortunately he had seen the horrors of our world and was forced to realize how awful the world can be and what the "monster" he used to think was entertaining actually was. I know I hope my kids never have to grow up that fast!

The only real illustration I can think of that shows the difference between what the kids probably thought and what Doug ended up knowing is from religion. Hopefully that is ok.

To me, the growing up that Doug had when he saw the body and got some understanding is like the difference between growing up hearing that "Jesus died on the cross" (which really doesn't mean much to someone who doesn't have the experience to understand what that meant) and watching Jesus die on the cross in "The Passion of the Christ". Just hearing it versus seeing how brutal that death probably was is an entirely different thing. Before you "know" what happened, after watching, you knowwhat happened.

[Bookpossum]

I agree on both counts: the parents wouldn't have told their children what the Lonely One was actually doing, and children don't normally understand such horrors.

Look at the way they think wars, shoot-outs in Westerns, or swordfights in films such as The Three Musketeers are exciting. Some people of course go on thinking such things are exciting, but they are perhaps lacking in imagination or in some of life's grimmer experiences.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

They're 10-12 years old. They probably didn't have a realistic idea of what was going on with the Lonely One. It was like a game to them. I know when I was growing up (1980s and 90s about an hour from where this guy lived) I was well insulated from the true fright and horror of what was going on in the world. I had heard of the Green River Killer but it was always in the abstract. Do you really think their parent's were letting them get enough gory details to really understand what was happening?

This is another example of Doug seeming much younger than 12. When I was growing up, by that age I was VERY aware of murder and murderers, from movies and books and tabloids. Maybe because girls generally grow up knowing they're vulnerable.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by issybird

I thought there was a disconnect between the Colonel as time machine and Mrs. Bentley whose memories were discredited. My explanation is that the Colonel was remembering great events while Mrs. Bentley only held onto personal history and I have some sympathy for that, and for Mrs. Bentley's husband's advice to her to let the past go. However, and I say this with some trepidation given the battle in the Three Musketeers thread, I think that was due in part to the gender divide and that's a little more unsettling. It was natural that the boys would thrill to the memory of battles, but girls' lives are of value too, but perhaps not so much for the 12-year old Doug. Girls mostly figured tangentially at most in these stories.

I agree about the divide. However, I didn't think that Mrs. Bently was treated differently because she was a woman. I think the disparity is in the fact that it was little girls who were the source of her misery. The little girls were patently awful. They didn't believe in old age and were only interested in being given things. I found this an interesting contrast with the boy's innocently portrayed desire for new shoes at the beginning of the book.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

I agree about the divide. However, I didn't think that Mrs. Bently was treated differently because she was a woman. I think the disparity is in the fact that it was little girls who were the source of her misery. The little girls were patently awful. They didn't believe in old age and were only interested in being given things. I found this an interesting contrast with the boy's innocently portrayed desire for new shoes at the beginning of the book.

That could get back to the gender divide, as Doug earned his new sneakers, kind of. But I think it's mostly age-related, as Dazrin pointed out upthread.

And for what it's worth, the horrible little girls were the agent for Mrs. Bentley's epiphany. After a lifetime of living for her stuff, she was happier having jettisoned it all and sitting on the porch eating ice cream.

[issybird]

More on the gender divide - I copied the following quote from Leo's ruminations on a Happiness Machine:

A machine, now, to help boys change from peach fuzz to briar bramble, girls from toadstool to nectarine.

Doug still regards them as toadstools, but this is his last summer for it.

The quote also encapsulates what the Happiness Machine is: Time. Dandelion Wine is simultaneously about stasis (it's summer now; it's always been summer) and about its ineluctable passage. The paradox is that it's the awareness of passing time that gives "now" its savor, down to the ice cream motif. There's the horror of Mrs. Tarot, imprisoned unchanging for centuries.

I liked this passage about holding time at bay:

It was this then, the mystery of man seizing from the land and the land seizing back, year after year, that drew Douglas, knowing the towns never really won, they merely existed in calm peril, fully accoutered with lawn mower, bug spray and hedge shears, swimming steadily as long as civilization said to swim, but each house ready to sink in green tides, buried forever, when the last man ceased and his trowels and movers shattered to cereal flakes of rust.

There are echoes there of Fitzgerald's:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I really think this is a wonderful book, with more lights and shadows and depths than are evident on first glance, and the whole is much more than just a cobbling together of shorts.

[Bookpossum]

I agree: the main themes seem to me to be time and memory. The last trip on the trolley is another example of these themes, as it goes on beyond the last stop down to the lake on the overgrown rails. I loved that section.

At the same time, there is that Buddhist idea of living in the present moment and savouring it - enjoying the ice-cream for itself, not thinking about what you are going to do next. The book itself is one to savour and enjoy, not one to rush through so you can get onto the next one on your TBR list.