Place, Objects, Gender, And Class: Slater Mill And Virtual Light Essay, Research Paper
Place, Objects, Gender, and Class: Slater Mill and Virtual Light
Places where people live and work and the objects that people own define and express their gender and class. This idea is evident in industrial America, in the era of Slater Mill, and post-industrial America, particularly in the novel Virtual Light by William Gibson.
In the novel, descriptions of the high-class parties and the rich, lavish, and spacious workplaces all pertain to men. The men work in their high-rise towers away from the noise and environmental pollution of the city. Chevette Washington is a female living in the ghetto part of the city of post-industrial San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, which connects the city of San Francisco to Oakland. In one instance, Chevette, a bicycle messenger, steals the famous black lenses at a party in a building where she is making a delivery. She also mentions seeing men looking very handsome in their powerful looking suits, yet the women at the party are just Tenderloin women: call girls. In high-class society, the only women seen are call girls.
The place where women work expressed their gender during the industrial era and this is still the case in the post-industrial era of the United States in Virtual Light. In Virtual Light, men rule the corporate world. Women s work places in post-industrial America are loud and busy, as in the streets of a big city such as where Virtual Light takes place, in San Francisco. Chevette and the Tenderloin women work on these loud and busy streets.
The same can be said about Slater Mill. Located by a river in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Slater Mill was a cotton mill where the decibel level must have been dreadful for the women working there. One of these machines running creates an extremely unpleasant noise; when the mill was full of these machines the sound must have been unbearable. These lower-class women suffered through these working conditions and lived in their crowded apartment homes like the building on 77-79 Williams Street in Providence. The male owners enjoyed the profits and resided in their spacious country homes, such as John Brown s home on historic Benefit Street, also located in Providence (John Brown was not a mill owner, he was a slave owner, however mill owners were certainly as wealthy as Mr. Brown).
The idea of place as a home is very important to two particular women from the industrial and post-industrial era: Chevette Washington from Virtual Light and Sally Rice, a mill worker whose letters were published in a book called New England Mill Village. Sally Rice left her home at a young age, as Chevette does, to pursue her independence. Both young women established new homes and formed new families away from their original homes. Chevette Washington and Sally Rice formed a woman s sphere as Dolores Hayden says in her book Power of Place. Dolores Hayden also says that, territories are defined by gender Chevette Washington and Sally Rice s territory certainly was.
Objects validate gender as well in both the industrial and post-industrial eras in the United States. A similarity exists between Sally Rice and Chevette Washington. They both see their individual purchases as a way of expressing their independence. Sally Rice demonstrated her independence in the letters, published in the book New England Mill Village, which she wrote to her home. As a post script (P.S.) in one letter she remembers to tell her family how she purchased a bonnet, seal skin shoes, and yards of calico. She implies in the letter that she can make a living without her family s assistance. Sally Rice moved away from home and had now become an independent woman.
Chevette Washington, in Virtual Light, demonstrates an attitude similar to that of Sally Rice s. The novel mentions a few times how happy Chevette is when she purchases her motorbike with her own money. Three weeks and she d be able to purchase her first serious bike. That was magic too. This quote from the novel communicates how amazing and important it is for Chevette to possess something of her own. The novel mentions the bike many times throughout the novel; it is Chevette s only real possession. When she loses it she is very upset; she lost an object that she held very dearly.
Class is another aspect of life that is expressed by place and object in both Slater Mill and Virtual Light. In the industrial period when Slater Mill existed, place expressed class by the difference in where people lived. Referring back to the example on homes in Providence, where the industrial revolution began, an enormous difference exists between the homes of the high-class mill owners and the mill workers. The high-class mill owners owned homes such as the one on 357 Benefit Street, an enormous house with a large yard. These yards provided the high-class with a barrier to outside world, such as the apartment building on 77-79 Williams Street. The mill worker who lived in these apartment buildings lived a much different life than his boss, the mill owner. Contrary to 357 Benefit Street, the mill worker and his family had no such barrier; there was no peace. The places that provided the luxury of space were not available to the mill worker; it was something reserved for the high class.
In the post-industrial era that is Virtual Light, space is also a luxury not shared by those who are lower class who are represented by the tenants of the Bay Bridge. The tenants of the Bay Bridge are former homeless people. After an earthquake hit the city (San Francisco) the bridge was no longer navigable for automobiles so these new residents formed a community on the bridge. The novel describes the make shift apartments as very small and compact. In these places there is not much space; three people resided inside the apartment where Chevette lived and she slept on the floor. Meanwhile, high-class citizens reside in their homes in the suburbs of San Francisco, which are very spacious and luxurious with only the finest objects in life. They are very distant from the ghettos such as the Bay Bridge.
The high and low classes of both the industrial and post-industrial era did not share a place as a home. The only place that would ever be shared by both classes was the workplace and this was under very different circumstances, with the lower class people the employees of a higher class employer. At the end of the day, both groups went home to very different places. As Dolores Hayden says, quoting a middle-class African-American lawyer named Loren Miller, Jr., As teenagers, we knew not to drive into Compton, to Inglewood, not to drive into Glendale cause you would just be out, with your hands on top of the car, LAPD did the same thing. You got too far south on Western, they would stop you. Similar sentiments must have been felt by an individual living in the apartment building on 77-79 Williams Street. Don t go over down to Benefit Street, the police will stop you. The same for Virtual Light, Do not leave the bridge and head into parts of the city, or the suburbs. The individuals that lived in these separate places were also in different worlds. As Dolores Hayden says, territories are defined by, class.
Object expresses class in both the Slater Mill/industrial era and the post-industrial era of Virtual Light as well. In the industrial era of Slater Mill, the high class was distinguished by its possessions through such things as classical literature, and machinery that allowed tedious everyday tasks to be done quickly and effortlessly. They owned artworks, expensive textiles, and the materials with which their homes were constructed were expensive. Referring once again to the example of the homes of Benefit Street John Brown s house contains fine wooden floors and shiny wooden staircase handrails, beautiful rugs, libraries filled with books, and fine furniture. These were the objects that would be found in the home of an upper class individual in the industrial era, but not in the apartment home of a lower class mill worker. The home of a lower class mill worker only had the essentials needed to live. The few textiles they owned certainly were not expensive and the rate at which these were purchased was not as high as the wealthier upper class; other things such as rugs, libraries, and fine wood floors were non-existent.
In the post-industrial era of Virtual Light, object expresses class in a very unorthodox manner. Objects are in fact possessions of the lower class. They possess scavenged objects, such as a wrench that said that said BMW on the side a crumbling cardboard box of those flat black things that had played music once, a bag of plastic dinosaurs. There are more than just these objects. Gibson writes, If something didn t sell, like the plastic dinosaurs, than it just went back into stock
The high class possess what post-industrial society values most, not an object but information. As the back cover of the novel says, pure information is the greatest high. Pure information was exactly what the VL (Virtual Light) lenses provided. Information is so valuable that people would kill for it, which is exactly what the owners of the glasses were prepared to do to Chevette Washington, if necessary, in order to retrieve the VL lenses. Whoever possessed pure information would rule much more than just the post-industrial United States, they would rule the post-industrial earth.
These leaders of the industrial and post-industrial world were wealthy men. Gender contributed to men s wealth as women were reduced to living in places and owning objects beneath the quality than those of men. Men s wealth was visible through the objects they possessed. The lavish places where they lived marked their separation from lower-class individuals. This is confirmed in Slater Mill and William Gibson s Virtual Light.