Notes on Sex and Gender Roles in Neuromancer

• "Molly dissecting her crab with alarming ease" (71) --- there is the sense that Case is surprised that Molly is so comfortable and competent.
• "girls looked like tall exotic grazing animals.... metallic hooves" (71)-- girls become animals even on the subway; they seem to be described as inferior and animalistic.
• the holographs on wrists of the business men and the Christian Scientists (71)-- very graphic and derogatory
• "even with the cast" it was like watching Molly "dance" (85)-- sense of awe for Molly that Case doesn't seem to have for any other woman including Linda Lee.
• Molly's signals with Finn (88) -- Once again Case takes note of Molly's secrets and her extra knowledge.
• "Baby" (89) Case calls Molly "baby"
• "...must take care. In Turkey there is isapproval of women who sport such modifications." (89)-- This is an antiquated view on women for our time, even though women except for Molly are decribed as being inferior throughout the novel.
• "In Turkey, women are still women" (91)
• King's private whorehouse (94) -- Women as inferior
• "Can't get off sexually unless he knows hes betraying the object of his desire... And they have to love him first." (96) -- Women as objects to be manipulated
• even "Wage had vices, lovers" (97)
• "No games" (102) -- Molly in command again
• "Gotta play house." (104) -- Molly in command
• Molly is concious and awake before he knows there is some form of danger (108-109)--
• "Linda might have money" (117) -- Case goes to Linda for money, cigarettes and sex.
• Case meets the girl at the sushi restaurant. (133)

Setting

 

The settings in Neuromancer changed as the location of the novel changed. The novel is set in the future but from the three passages I chose, it is easy to distinguish not only the states of the settings but also Case’s state of mind. We were told to pay close attention to the first line of the novel, “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” The combination of the grey static and the sense of a television being obsolete and dead set up the future as a place full of outdated, broken technology which was neglected as newer technology emerged. In fact, the areas of new technology the such as the clinics are described as “black” which stands for underground but also gives a sense of sleekness in comparison to the greyness of “a dead channel” and Ratz’s teeth which are “a webwork of East European steel” and are grey instead of white. In fact, whiteness is categorized with the grey as “gulls wheeled above drifting shoals of white styrofoam.” There is nothing natural left in the world which seems to have been turned into a landfill of old, fried technology just as Chase sees himself when we meet him. The Chase we meet initially is more like burnt out technology attempting to keep out of the landfill that he lives in. It is not until he is repaired by Armitage’s new technology that the setting begins to change.

When Chase returns to a place like “home” it is spacious and mostly empty, very different from the tiny coffins he rented in part one of the novel. With his improved pancreas and liver he is also unable to process the drugs and alcohol he became so dependent on while struggling to stay alive. His feeling of being home, however is not only linked to the “large… empty” room but also linked to the new technology he has been given and the sense that he is no longer fighting against becoming an obsolete piece of technology that has been dumped in the landfill.