Re: Esmé quibbling leaking into Authorial Intent

But look at what's happening. We have two competing, legitimate, contradictory
meanings:

"housewife" = (only) woman who doesn't work outside the home.

"housewife" = woman who doesn't work outside the home but does work inside the
home. This use of the word "housewife" should be contrasted with...what?
Trophy wife? I can't think of word to describe it, but housewife is here
contrasted with a married woman who neither works inside nor outside the home -
she presumably has maids do her laundry and cleaning, she's a member of the
leisure class, occupied with nothing but vain pursuits.

What you fail to see is that words, in context, tend to have only one
appropriate meaning, but in actual use (and by intention), usually only have
one.

The reader has to select, then, the most appropriate definition, because all are
implied but only one is "intended." This leads to ambiguity, multiple readings,
etc.

The association of this second image with Seymour's wife, when Seymour couldn't
possibly afford a woman like this (being a military man of middling rank) is
certainly _not_ in the text in my reading.

As a result, I didn't quite understand Tim's response to me. Again, though, we
understood the same sentence differently because we were coming to it with
different contexts, different assumptions -- both about what "housewives" were
and about who Seymour's wife was. Neither of these were "inherent in" the
original text, but brought to it by each reader.

Jim

"L. Manning Vines" wrote:

> Jim said: "The meaning of your text resided outside the language of your
> text -- namely yours and Scottie's experience, which was different from
> mine. 'Housewife' has never meant anything to me other than a married woman
> who didn't work outside the home."
>
> Yet also: "Seymour's wife was married, and didn't work outside the home. To
> me, that's the definition of a housewife. The word does carry other
> connotations that may or may not apply."
>
> Housewife has never meant anything to you but a wife who doesn't work
> outside the home.
> You know that the word does carry other connotations that may or may not
> apply.
>
> ?
>
> Perhaps Tim's use of the word was not your preferred use, but being aware of
> the use that isn't your standard one counts as meaning something.
>
> The meaning of his text resided well within it, and knowing the language as
> well as we do, it was accessible to us.
>
> -robbie
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Received on Tue Oct 29 11:51:37 2002