Miller Time; McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Ladies of "Easy Virtue" I have known

‘Tis the season and all that; parts and parcels of “the greatest story ever told”. But speaking of which and of the Miller family,

Mrs Miller

in particular, and their far-flung empire, I’m reminded of the book “A Canticle for Leibowitz” by one Walter M. Miller, Jr., this passage fragment (from recollection) in particular:

“… a tale about a farm girl named Eve, and a travelling salesman named Lucifer (a bringer of light and knowledge according to some of his publicists) ….”

Moot of course exactly how all of that ties together — may take half-a-dozen chapters to do any sort of justice to the topic. But, again considering the season, a thread that might tie those chapters together is the Madonna-whore dichotomy: Mary, mother of Jesus versus Mary Magdalene — “companion” of Jesus or prostitute, depending on who’s writing the advertising copy, not that I’m throwing stones in either case. But moot also how that bears on the question that has exercised the talents of many pundits, philosophers, and political opportunists over the last year — i.e., “what is a woman?” — and whether the two Marys are two ends of a very large “gender” spectrum — so to speak — or just “kissing cousins”, the two bookends being somewhere over the horizons, east and west of Eden.

But one thing of note in all of that is that many if not most of the “civilizations” that have come down the pike over the last one hundred rather “blood-stained” centuries is the effort expended to harness, control, and use women’s sexuality for one “reason” or another. Though part and parcel of that is, of course, the effort to do likewise for men’s sexuality. Can’t build an empire if one doesn’t have enough foot soldiers to spread one’s “Truth” throughout the galaxy …

In any case, that is not to say that there aren’t both dark and enlightening aspects to both sides of that dichotomy. Relative to the darker aspects, on the one side we have “megaloid momworship” as Philip Wylie, author of Generation of Vipers, once put it:

Meanwhile, Megaloid momworship has got completely out of hand. Our land, subjectively mapped, would have more silver cords and apron strings crisscrossing it than railroads and telephone wires. Mom is everywhere and everything and damned near everybody, and from her depends all the rest of the U. S. Disguised as good old mom, dear old mom, sweet old mom, your loving mom, and so on, she is the bride at every funeral and the corpse at every wedding.

And on the other side of that dichotomy, Canadian poet Robert Service had some damning insights:

For life is not the thing we thought, and not the thing we plan;
And Woman in a bitter world must do the best she can —
Must yield the stroke, and bear the yoke, and serve the will of man;

Must serve his need and ever feed the flame of his desire,
Though be she loved for love alone, or be she loved for hire;
For every man since life began is tainted with the mire.

As for more enlightening and useful aspects of both sides, that will have to be a topic for another day.