I just got finished with “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls”. I loved the book, it was pretty funny all the way to the end. Dr. Ames is one funny guy. I hated the ending though, and found some simalarities to “Job: A comedy of justice”.
The number one thing that sticks out the most is his characters constantly joking about “beating” the wife.
“Don’t make me beat you”
“Remind me to beat you later, woman”
“I’ll beat you, woman”
And several other variations. Granted I have only read three of his books, the two mentioned above, and “Stranger In a Strange land”. I don’t recall any of his characters saying anything about beating their woman in SIASL, but it strikes me as odd that two different characters in entirely different books both have the same idosyncrasy.
I find it a bit unsettleling even in the joking manner that it is portrayed. I wonder about Heinlein himself, and really feel sorry for his wife.
As an avid Heinlein fan, I can tell you that I can spot right away which books he was getting along with his wife during and which not. Try Farnham’s Freehold next, if you want a great example of the latter.
I love that guy, even his really crappy work, but, BOY! I wouldn’t have wanted to be married to him.
RAH never spoke or wrote much about his first wife but the impression is that their divorce was not entirely amicable. OTOH, he was always profuse with praise when he spoke of Ginny, his second wife. He seemed to have a genuine respect for her. I seem to remember him referring to her judo lessons in one essay so I doubt he ever laid a hand on her, considering his ill health throughout most of his adult life.
As far as your take on Farnham’s Freehold, Nymysys, maybe it was just leftover spite toward the first wife; in the book, Farnham ditched his wife for a new companion, not unlike what happened IRL.
Just to get it over with, I’ll make the obligatory “Heinlein was a Nazi” comment. No discussion of Heinlein is complete without it. Here goes (note: this comment does not reflect my own personal opinion of Heinlein, but is only to maintain a sense of order in the world):
I saw the movie of Starship Troopers, and it really struck me as being fascist. I mean, look at the uniforms and stuff, and all the rampant militarism. Heinlein must have been a Nazi to write something like that.
I’ve always had mixed reactions to Heinlein’s treatment of women. On the one hand, he often had women that were strong and capable, and his male characters treated them with respect because of it, i.e. admiting the woman knew more about math, or piloting a spacecraft. And he did this well before the woman’s liberation movement was off the ground–in Glory Road, his fantasy swashbuckler written in 1963, Star fights alongside the hero, Gordon, she’s an intelligent, working woman, much respected for her wisdom. On the other hand, and let’s stay with Glory Road for the example, Heinlein cavalierly talks about beating women–in this book, the hero threatens to spank Star with her own sword, and later does spank her with his hand. Granted, this is somewhat in the context of sexual play (and no one should argue that Heinlein did not allow for equality among the sex drives–his women always liked sex as much as any man, a thought few writers seem to get even today!), but they were having a true argument when he spanked her. Plus, although Star is in effect the leader of the 20 Universes (think Empress), is much older and better educated than Gordon, she willingly submits to being subservient to him as her husband, even melting like a schoolgirl in the face of his disapproval–all because she loves him!
The only way I’ve found to resolve the dichotomy is to think that heinlein respected women as a class, but not as individuals. I’ve known people who were quite prejudiced against a certain race, true bigots, who nevertheless has personal friendships with individuals of that race (often excusing this friendship by saying that the friend was “not like most of his race”, not lazy or stupid, etc., ). I think Heinlein was the inverse–liking the group, disliking the individual.
It’s just the way some people joke. Me and my wife joke about beating each other all the time, I am constantly threatening to black her eye if she gives me any more ‘sass’, and in return she makes even worse threats towards me. It means nothing.
I haven’t read any Heinlein in a while, and his later books don’t appeal to me as much as his “juveniles,” but as I recall, he always “put a woman on a pedestal so that he could look up her dress,” so to speak. Here he is, speaking of military officers and doctors, and then slipping in the female pronouns when we’re not looking, and then there he goes, always commenting on what gorgeous, sexy, George Petty pinup babes all the women are. All of 'em - there are no ordinary-looking women in his universe, IIRC. Not to mention the “spanking” comments, or the way Friday survives being raped by enjoying it - eeeeyikes!
He’s such an odd character. I wonder if his saber-rattling militarism was some sort of emotional response to having been (honorably) discharged from the service because of his health problems (something like what happened with John Wayne), and wanting to be this robust, heroic figure when he was often fighting ill health.
Yeah, but in some of his stories didn’t he make the claim that all women are in fact beautiful, even ones who are not conventionally attractive?
If you say so. I don’t remember. That Bob - he loves the ladies!
Read the book. Completely different story. Names and places the same, otherwise no similarity. I loved the book. Hated the movie at first as a piss poor filming of the book. Once I started thinking of the movie as a completely unrelated story with coincidentally similar names, I could watch the movie for itself. If you take the movie at face value, then yeah, you might make an argument for fascism. On the other hand, it is so extreme that I took it as a parody ridiculing militarism.
In more than one book. “Time Enough for Love” springs to mind. I think the actual word he used was “pretty,” meaning that the woman is attractive because her of physical features, as opposed to “beauty,” which includes her personality and the way it shows on her features.
As far as his attitudes towards women, kindly remember that Heinlein, for all his progressive qualities, was a product of his times. He was born in 1907, and many of his best books were written in the 1950s and 1960s. Judged by today’s standards, he is sexist. Judged by the standards of his time, he was quite enlightened in his treatment of women.
“To the moon Alice! To the moon!”- Ralph Cramden
Badtz Maru has nailed it-- it’s just lovey-dovey stuff between couples.
As for Heinlein’s characters in different books having the same mannerisms, well, that pops up a lot, and not just in Heinlein’s work. As I recall David Eddings seems to have a stable of about 2 dozen characters-- all he does is file off the names, get them to like different colours, and bam here’s a brand new fantasy world.
Dean Koontz is really bad about doing the same thing, although his stable has far less than 2 dozen characters. There’s basically the obsessive, psychotic, yet very intelligent villain, the Quiet Loner with a Dark Past, the extremely comptetent sassy woman, and the extremely shy woman who was treated like dirt all her life yet is extremely beautiful.
Yes, the same thing is true in our household. My husband has actually spoken the words quoted in the OP to me many times, along with other “threats” and I’m always telling him “don’t make me hurt you” and the like. It means absolutely nothing in a relationship where both people love and respect one another and would never raise a hand in anger. It’s just play.
On the other hand, if we didn’t have that relationship, it wouldn’t be funny and it wouldn’t be tolerated. He knows I’d leave in a hot minute if he ever hit me in anger (as opposed to play.)
There’s a bit of a generational thing going on here, isn’t there? Domestic violence is a hot trigger these days–not something you can joke about anymore. Whereas in the past it was a little more acceptible. Somone mentioned “Pow, Alice, straight to the moon!” Think you’ll ever hear that kind of thing on Must See TV?
Heinlein seemed to like spanking. In addition to previous examples, the main character gets off on it in I Will Fear No Evil.
And, on prettiness: “. . . real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make him quite unmanageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset.” (Guess who said that!)
You could argue that. Of course, Heinlein didn’t write the screenplay, Ed Neumeier did. Paul Verhoeven, of course, filmed it, after deliberately not reading the book, so as not to limit his “artistic vision”.
Given Verhoeven’s oeuvre, it’s possible to argue not only that he’s a fascist, but that he’s a mediocre fascist.
And you do not remark upon his seeming fetish for freshly blooming 13 year olds??
A little more “ick” than quasi-sexual banter about beatings, JMHO.
Whoa, I was just mocking those who do consider Heinlein a Nazi, especially those who think so due to the travesty that is the movie version of Starship Troopers. There’s this thread over in GD, for example, where tclouie makes a similar statement to what I said. After a while, he was convinced that Heinlein was not a fascist, but that he was a racist. After that was disproved, he argued that he was a dirty old man.
I have indeed read the book, and hated what Verhoeven did to it, but that’s another thread.
Fair enough. I may have come on too strongly, for which I apologize. Consider my response to be the obligatory defense against the “Heinlein was a Nazi” charge 
No, not all of them. Miss Grew in Podkayne of Mars is a fat and unattractive woman, though superficially quite charming. And the heroine (I’ve forgotten her name) in Farnham’s Freehold is described as quite plain and “horse-faced.”
I don’t clearly recall if any physical description was given of Mum in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but I imagined her as being gaunt, middle-aged and hatchet-faced, so obviously I didn’t notice any description of her being pretty.