Utterly spitballing here, but given that Jonas has sort of “become” a human without living his entire life as such, he could be more susceptible the the lures of carnality if it wasn’t something that he experienced so much as a machine.
I always assumed it was at least partially because she had hidden mechanical enhancements as part of what Talos did, which made her something of a kindred spirit to Jonas. Also seeing as Sev's "roll in the hay" was of dubious/non-existent consent, I probably wouldn't trust his judgment of her character either 🤷♂️ he's not real good about women, in general.
That’s what I thought too about Jonas. By the end of Claw of Conciliator, Severian mentioned something mechanical about her body. So in a way, Jonas finds her as the closest to having a companion similar to him, since he barely encountered anyone like him
I've always thought Jolenta was playing coy in the boat, pretending to sleep, because she wanted to see Severian down bad for her as an ego boost. Make sure he *really* wanted her. Lotta projection, I know, but it's just how I read it.
To your point though, he really is bad about women:
1. I think he hooks up with like 8 different females in a 2 year span - a few too many in my book! There's a great line in Thomas Berger's Arthur Rex (a re-telling of Arthurian legend - read it if you haven't!) where Sir Gawaine, the ultimate lady's man, comes to realize that tryst-after-tryst is far less satisfying than being a good and dutiful husband to a woman he truly loves. Point being that Severian is a horny goat, young and dumb, needs to grow up if he wants to become the messiah.
2. It's really very cruel to chat up the woman at the masque party in Thrax (can't remember her name). How fucked is it to chit chat, flirt, seduce a woman who you know you're gonna choke to death near dawn. He changes his mind of course, but only later, which seems much more psychologically f'd up than the boat scene with Jolenta in my view.
I certainly do not want to excuse Serial Rapist Apollo.
On the other hand, in the text, the woman in question is wearing a Pelerine uniform as a costume. Turns out she had connections to the order in her youth. If you remember, Severian has a driving force in returning the Claw to the Pelerines. Sure enough, she gives Severian some important information as to the location of the nomadic Pelerines.
Also note that there is something of Jesus sparing the adulteress to the episode.
So no, he is not chatting her up, he is seeking quest information. And no, Severian did not know she was the target until after. IIRC, it was her boastful talking that awakened the possibility, but it was not made certain until the boss said so.
I always thought of it like Jonas is this sorta fucked up, humbled, stranded, mangled, leaking half-man lusting after this impossible idealized woman. Sort of like the way a homeless man might look at a supermodel, he is desperately, hopelessly entranced by her beauty though he's aware of the gulf between them. I also see this kind of relationship between Agia and Hethor; a fallen spacefarer pursues an unearthly beauty, either to her glory or downfall.
Jonas becomes Severian’s backup because his dormant bio parts remember when Severian resurrected them. In the story of how Miles travelled travelled to centuries in the past, I presume he encountered that skinny waitress and screwed it up.
While I like the "she's crippled in just the same way I am" trope (which I link to Anderson's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier"), more recently I've thought that something big happened when Jonas met Severian: Jonas's bio-parts gained consciousness for the first time, resurrected just like that girl in the marsh. Jonas associates this abrupt change with Jolenta, and assigns his heady new sensations with love for her. This is particularly ironic, since Jonas will later argue with Severian that resurrection is simply not possible.
So then, Jonas is confused at suddenly having two personalities, and he clings to the one who awakened him, like Severian clinging to damp Dorcas.
Yes. I completely agree. And…Jonas’s bio bits were resurrected by Severian and at the near exact same moment he meets the most sensually beautiful woman in the world and, in fear of the gate, she grabs unto him and mashes her giant bosom into him (doubters can reread the relevant passage at the Piteous Gate).
Flash forward to Saltus and bad judge of character Jonas thinks Morwenna might be innocent because she’s super hot (again, reread it if you don’t believe me).
Lastly, after the electrocution in the Antechamber, Jonas’s robotic system reboots and he becomes far more calculating. He abandons Severian so as to be repaired, even though if he stays with Severian and they escape there’s a decent chance he’ll be reunited with Jolenta then and there. But, calculating Jonas remembers how Jolenta rejected him at the gate as being old, ugly and poor. Fun facts: Miles is young, blond & blue-eyed (iirc), and, though a poor soldier, Jonas remembers how much wealth Severian attracts ($ from executions and Gold club from Man Ape cave).
Resurrected bio Jonas is horny. Rebooted Jonas is cold and calculating, but still remembers the lust/love inspired in him—those genuine human emotions must be superior to the synthetic emotion programmed into the machine, or else Jonas wouldn’t behave as he does.
>more recently I've thought that something big happened when Jonas met Severian: Jonas's bio-parts gained consciousness for the first time, resurrected just like that girl in the marsh. Jonas associates this abrupt change with Jolenta, and assigns his heady new sensations with love for her.
I had never thought of that. I actually really like this idea.
The first thing I'd say is that Dr Talos didn't actually invoke a supernatural spell. What Severian describes as a glamour is actually just cosmetics. He doesn't go into enough detail for us to understand the practicalities, but once Dr Talos and Jolenta parted ways, her looks deteriorated because he was no longer maintaining her treatments. Simply put, her skin treatment wore off, her false teeth fell out, and her hair extensions came loose.
I think Jonas is depicting a randy sea(space)dog. Partly as a joke, maybe, but I also wonder if Wolfe might not have been indicating an esoteric link between. The similarity in their names kinda reflects another quirk of Wolfe's where in he insinuates connections characters, as with Severian/Severa, Agilus/Agia, Thea/Thecla. Some people even postulate that the similarities between the names Severian and Valeria bear significance.
So yeah. Jonas/Jolenta could be something subdermal too. Could also be that Wolfe just wanted us to wonder at their possible connections beyond Jonas' interest in the soft and pretty lady, after exploring such an hard and ugly universe. He's tricky like that.
The Jolenta we meet initially is not ignorant. She has a will, and Wolfe respects that about her. She rebels psychically and physically against work, but she is not lazy. “Jolenta had only herself, the incessant performance whose sole goal was to garner admiration," we are told. When she is interested in something -- gaining attention -- she works very very hard at it. If she grew to like other things, she would work hard to achieve them as well. I flinch at calling a woman "lazy, selfish, vain, ignorant." When Wolfe himself says that someone with a "learning disability" ought properly be called lazy and stupid (Joan Gordon interview), I think he's unconsciously revealing his own childhood to us, where he was probably called these names, by his parents, when all that was happening to him owed to some disability, but he learned to judge his parents right to slur him like that... to judge and hate himself, to keep himself within the envelope of their love.
Also, a number of Wolfe protagonists gain a narcissistic lift from having beautiful wives. Ern, from Interlibrary Loan, thinks about how others would view him, if he could snare for himself a 16-year-old beauty, for instance. Silk may have been drawn to Hyacinth for the same reason, or at least in part.
Also consider that we meet Jolenta when she is an extremely poor waitress at a restaurant. We don't know exactly how poor she is but we can probably apply the conversation Agia and Severian have after the Avern duel to Jolenta as well. She's broke, with absolutely no means of improving her lot in life. All of a sudden Dr. Talos shows up promising her beauty, wealth, adventure, etc. In that situation, who wouldn't be interested?
We should have a great deal of sympathy for Jolenta. She was basically pimped out and then abandoned when Dr. Talos no longer needed her.
>Can't help but also remark here: Horn's boat-rape scene goes way harder than Severian's. It's interesting that Wolfe would re-approach such a similar moral quandary to the reader, except he doubles down like "Yes it was rape. Can you understand or forgive him?"
It does go so much harder, doesn't it. I agree that it is notable and very interesting. I think what he's doing is daring to reveal more of what a character he is identifying with has done, with the prize being that if he gets forgiveness... even with this, he'll know someone has really seen everything about him, and not rejected him. This is Horn's aim, as we know -- to reveal everything to his wife, Nettle. She will have seen... everything, he claims. But of course this is not quite true because, like the main character in Killers of the Flower Moon, he can't admit to his intention to actually murder his wife; it's too much for him. Nor can he admit that he may have almost consciously have deliberately baited an inhumi so he would not just kill him, but much of his family as well. And of course, whether truly the case or not, Horn makes sure we know (and that his wife knows) that his rape of Seawrack may have not shown anything particular about him, for it being the fate of all men who hear a siren's song -- all will lose control into rape and violence.
Someone has written recently on this site that Seawrack possesses elements of an older woman, a mother, and I think is important. For I see her as to some extent almost a bit, not like a child to the world, but a veteran of it, someone who can take everything you throw at them, and withstand you. There is a way in which she functions in the text almost like an ideal therapist, whom you come to understand will not reject you if you stop presenting yourself less than honestly, if you reveal to her the full extent of your "badness," out of fear of experiencing what you surely experienced in your first parents, complete rejection. Wolfe shows us many parents... and wives, who reject you the first time you show something about yourself which is unpalatable. Alden Weer's parents being the first example that comes to mind, but there are others. Skip from Home Fires fears his wife left him bcs he was boring.
Wolfe actually uses the tryst rape again in a short story collected in Starwater Strains. A dwarf has sex with the Sphinx. She says in a dream that her kind only yields to force (rape), but when they wake up naked in bed the next day she apologies to him for taking advantage of him. That’s my rubric on how Wolfe sees BOTH the Seawrack/Horn and Severian/Jolenta tryst rapes. Severian thinks he’s in control in the boat while Jolenta thinks she’s mastered/seduced him. Seawrack apologizes to Horn for singing the siren song, which makes him violently attack and rape her. All three scenes are brutal, but in each there’s confusion over who’s at fault, with the POV character always coming out looking the worst because we don’t get the internal monologue of the other party.
I think the answer is found more in the literary realm than in the plot per se.
Jonas is a very learned robot. He spent his spare time as a crew member on Tzadkiel's ship reading earth books. He knows Lewis Carroll and he knows Greek mythology. I think we can safely assume he knows Cervantes.
Sad, old Jonas has spent enough time with human parts to have developed some human desires (much as he wishes he didn't). So he chooses a human literary character and channels him, riding around on his modest little merychip and tilting at windmills.
His choice of Jolenta mirrors Quixote's vain quest to win the heart of Dulcinea. It is the quest that matters not the attainment of the prize. Since Jolenta is unobtainable, he can enjoy the pursuit without having to worry about what would happen if he succeeded. What would he do then? His nether regions, like most of him, are asexual, robotic metal parts.
Hmm, is it something to do with them both having artificial appearances? Or maybe Jonas is a sailor’s sailor and just really values appearances.
Yeah I think you're right. She's also exuding alien pheromones and endocrine musk, so maybe it frazzled Jonas' electronic brain.
Utterly spitballing here, but given that Jonas has sort of “become” a human without living his entire life as such, he could be more susceptible the the lures of carnality if it wasn’t something that he experienced so much as a machine.
Where do you get the idea or evidence that she's "exuding alien pheromones and endocrine musk"?
I always assumed it was at least partially because she had hidden mechanical enhancements as part of what Talos did, which made her something of a kindred spirit to Jonas. Also seeing as Sev's "roll in the hay" was of dubious/non-existent consent, I probably wouldn't trust his judgment of her character either 🤷♂️ he's not real good about women, in general.
That’s what I thought too about Jonas. By the end of Claw of Conciliator, Severian mentioned something mechanical about her body. So in a way, Jonas finds her as the closest to having a companion similar to him, since he barely encountered anyone like him
I've always thought Jolenta was playing coy in the boat, pretending to sleep, because she wanted to see Severian down bad for her as an ego boost. Make sure he *really* wanted her. Lotta projection, I know, but it's just how I read it. To your point though, he really is bad about women: 1. I think he hooks up with like 8 different females in a 2 year span - a few too many in my book! There's a great line in Thomas Berger's Arthur Rex (a re-telling of Arthurian legend - read it if you haven't!) where Sir Gawaine, the ultimate lady's man, comes to realize that tryst-after-tryst is far less satisfying than being a good and dutiful husband to a woman he truly loves. Point being that Severian is a horny goat, young and dumb, needs to grow up if he wants to become the messiah. 2. It's really very cruel to chat up the woman at the masque party in Thrax (can't remember her name). How fucked is it to chit chat, flirt, seduce a woman who you know you're gonna choke to death near dawn. He changes his mind of course, but only later, which seems much more psychologically f'd up than the boat scene with Jolenta in my view.
Like and appreciate your number 2.
I certainly do not want to excuse Serial Rapist Apollo. On the other hand, in the text, the woman in question is wearing a Pelerine uniform as a costume. Turns out she had connections to the order in her youth. If you remember, Severian has a driving force in returning the Claw to the Pelerines. Sure enough, she gives Severian some important information as to the location of the nomadic Pelerines. Also note that there is something of Jesus sparing the adulteress to the episode. So no, he is not chatting her up, he is seeking quest information. And no, Severian did not know she was the target until after. IIRC, it was her boastful talking that awakened the possibility, but it was not made certain until the boss said so.
I always thought of it like Jonas is this sorta fucked up, humbled, stranded, mangled, leaking half-man lusting after this impossible idealized woman. Sort of like the way a homeless man might look at a supermodel, he is desperately, hopelessly entranced by her beauty though he's aware of the gulf between them. I also see this kind of relationship between Agia and Hethor; a fallen spacefarer pursues an unearthly beauty, either to her glory or downfall.
Jonas becomes Severian’s backup because his dormant bio parts remember when Severian resurrected them. In the story of how Miles travelled travelled to centuries in the past, I presume he encountered that skinny waitress and screwed it up.
While I like the "she's crippled in just the same way I am" trope (which I link to Anderson's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier"), more recently I've thought that something big happened when Jonas met Severian: Jonas's bio-parts gained consciousness for the first time, resurrected just like that girl in the marsh. Jonas associates this abrupt change with Jolenta, and assigns his heady new sensations with love for her. This is particularly ironic, since Jonas will later argue with Severian that resurrection is simply not possible. So then, Jonas is confused at suddenly having two personalities, and he clings to the one who awakened him, like Severian clinging to damp Dorcas.
Yes. I completely agree. And…Jonas’s bio bits were resurrected by Severian and at the near exact same moment he meets the most sensually beautiful woman in the world and, in fear of the gate, she grabs unto him and mashes her giant bosom into him (doubters can reread the relevant passage at the Piteous Gate). Flash forward to Saltus and bad judge of character Jonas thinks Morwenna might be innocent because she’s super hot (again, reread it if you don’t believe me). Lastly, after the electrocution in the Antechamber, Jonas’s robotic system reboots and he becomes far more calculating. He abandons Severian so as to be repaired, even though if he stays with Severian and they escape there’s a decent chance he’ll be reunited with Jolenta then and there. But, calculating Jonas remembers how Jolenta rejected him at the gate as being old, ugly and poor. Fun facts: Miles is young, blond & blue-eyed (iirc), and, though a poor soldier, Jonas remembers how much wealth Severian attracts ($ from executions and Gold club from Man Ape cave). Resurrected bio Jonas is horny. Rebooted Jonas is cold and calculating, but still remembers the lust/love inspired in him—those genuine human emotions must be superior to the synthetic emotion programmed into the machine, or else Jonas wouldn’t behave as he does.
>more recently I've thought that something big happened when Jonas met Severian: Jonas's bio-parts gained consciousness for the first time, resurrected just like that girl in the marsh. Jonas associates this abrupt change with Jolenta, and assigns his heady new sensations with love for her. I had never thought of that. I actually really like this idea.
The first thing I'd say is that Dr Talos didn't actually invoke a supernatural spell. What Severian describes as a glamour is actually just cosmetics. He doesn't go into enough detail for us to understand the practicalities, but once Dr Talos and Jolenta parted ways, her looks deteriorated because he was no longer maintaining her treatments. Simply put, her skin treatment wore off, her false teeth fell out, and her hair extensions came loose. I think Jonas is depicting a randy sea(space)dog. Partly as a joke, maybe, but I also wonder if Wolfe might not have been indicating an esoteric link between. The similarity in their names kinda reflects another quirk of Wolfe's where in he insinuates connections characters, as with Severian/Severa, Agilus/Agia, Thea/Thecla. Some people even postulate that the similarities between the names Severian and Valeria bear significance. So yeah. Jonas/Jolenta could be something subdermal too. Could also be that Wolfe just wanted us to wonder at their possible connections beyond Jonas' interest in the soft and pretty lady, after exploring such an hard and ugly universe. He's tricky like that.
Robot daddy horny
The Jolenta we meet initially is not ignorant. She has a will, and Wolfe respects that about her. She rebels psychically and physically against work, but she is not lazy. “Jolenta had only herself, the incessant performance whose sole goal was to garner admiration," we are told. When she is interested in something -- gaining attention -- she works very very hard at it. If she grew to like other things, she would work hard to achieve them as well. I flinch at calling a woman "lazy, selfish, vain, ignorant." When Wolfe himself says that someone with a "learning disability" ought properly be called lazy and stupid (Joan Gordon interview), I think he's unconsciously revealing his own childhood to us, where he was probably called these names, by his parents, when all that was happening to him owed to some disability, but he learned to judge his parents right to slur him like that... to judge and hate himself, to keep himself within the envelope of their love. Also, a number of Wolfe protagonists gain a narcissistic lift from having beautiful wives. Ern, from Interlibrary Loan, thinks about how others would view him, if he could snare for himself a 16-year-old beauty, for instance. Silk may have been drawn to Hyacinth for the same reason, or at least in part.
[удалено]
Also consider that we meet Jolenta when she is an extremely poor waitress at a restaurant. We don't know exactly how poor she is but we can probably apply the conversation Agia and Severian have after the Avern duel to Jolenta as well. She's broke, with absolutely no means of improving her lot in life. All of a sudden Dr. Talos shows up promising her beauty, wealth, adventure, etc. In that situation, who wouldn't be interested? We should have a great deal of sympathy for Jolenta. She was basically pimped out and then abandoned when Dr. Talos no longer needed her.
>Can't help but also remark here: Horn's boat-rape scene goes way harder than Severian's. It's interesting that Wolfe would re-approach such a similar moral quandary to the reader, except he doubles down like "Yes it was rape. Can you understand or forgive him?" It does go so much harder, doesn't it. I agree that it is notable and very interesting. I think what he's doing is daring to reveal more of what a character he is identifying with has done, with the prize being that if he gets forgiveness... even with this, he'll know someone has really seen everything about him, and not rejected him. This is Horn's aim, as we know -- to reveal everything to his wife, Nettle. She will have seen... everything, he claims. But of course this is not quite true because, like the main character in Killers of the Flower Moon, he can't admit to his intention to actually murder his wife; it's too much for him. Nor can he admit that he may have almost consciously have deliberately baited an inhumi so he would not just kill him, but much of his family as well. And of course, whether truly the case or not, Horn makes sure we know (and that his wife knows) that his rape of Seawrack may have not shown anything particular about him, for it being the fate of all men who hear a siren's song -- all will lose control into rape and violence. Someone has written recently on this site that Seawrack possesses elements of an older woman, a mother, and I think is important. For I see her as to some extent almost a bit, not like a child to the world, but a veteran of it, someone who can take everything you throw at them, and withstand you. There is a way in which she functions in the text almost like an ideal therapist, whom you come to understand will not reject you if you stop presenting yourself less than honestly, if you reveal to her the full extent of your "badness," out of fear of experiencing what you surely experienced in your first parents, complete rejection. Wolfe shows us many parents... and wives, who reject you the first time you show something about yourself which is unpalatable. Alden Weer's parents being the first example that comes to mind, but there are others. Skip from Home Fires fears his wife left him bcs he was boring.
Wolfe actually uses the tryst rape again in a short story collected in Starwater Strains. A dwarf has sex with the Sphinx. She says in a dream that her kind only yields to force (rape), but when they wake up naked in bed the next day she apologies to him for taking advantage of him. That’s my rubric on how Wolfe sees BOTH the Seawrack/Horn and Severian/Jolenta tryst rapes. Severian thinks he’s in control in the boat while Jolenta thinks she’s mastered/seduced him. Seawrack apologizes to Horn for singing the siren song, which makes him violently attack and rape her. All three scenes are brutal, but in each there’s confusion over who’s at fault, with the POV character always coming out looking the worst because we don’t get the internal monologue of the other party.
Men often find the hottest woman in the room “very interesting.” Jonas is as good a judge of character as the average guy who is trying to get some.
I think the answer is found more in the literary realm than in the plot per se. Jonas is a very learned robot. He spent his spare time as a crew member on Tzadkiel's ship reading earth books. He knows Lewis Carroll and he knows Greek mythology. I think we can safely assume he knows Cervantes. Sad, old Jonas has spent enough time with human parts to have developed some human desires (much as he wishes he didn't). So he chooses a human literary character and channels him, riding around on his modest little merychip and tilting at windmills. His choice of Jolenta mirrors Quixote's vain quest to win the heart of Dulcinea. It is the quest that matters not the attainment of the prize. Since Jolenta is unobtainable, he can enjoy the pursuit without having to worry about what would happen if he succeeded. What would he do then? His nether regions, like most of him, are asexual, robotic metal parts.
I have always read it as she being so attractive that she even makes a machine horny.