Making Money Discussion *Spoilers*

[BaldFriede]

I must say I don't share the problems many people seem to have with !Making Money". These golems lay underground for centuries. For a golem centuries mean nothing, so it certainly does not bother them to be buried again. And nobody really knows what a free golem really feels; after all the free golems go working 24/8 just as they did before they were freed, only they doit to free other golems. So the Umnian golems will certainly have no problem in ling underground again.
That golems tick a bit differently can clearly be seen when one looks at Gladys. "She" starts getting ideas after reading books. But although golems are not stupid per se she has a certain naivety towards books: She believes anything she reads in them. This is very reminiscent of a small kid learning to read, and in a certain way golems are like kids.
my favourite moment of the book, by the way, is Angua playing with the squeaky rubber dog toy.

[Jan Van Quirm]

From the text itself, after Spike begins to tell him how she worked at the Cabbage Growers' Cooperative.

"It wasn't a bad job," said Mrs. Dearheart. "In our office we had to inspect drafts and checks. Looking for forgeries, you know? And one day I let four through. Four fakes! It cost the bank two thousands dollars. They were cash drafts, and the signatures were perfect. I got sacked for that. They said they had to do something, otherwise the customers would loswe confidence."

This makes it quite clear that Spike did not deal directly with Moist at all. She was in a back office, and her job was to verify that the checks were real, after someone else (a teller or bank manager) received them. Notice that she never said, "I took four checks as a teller, inspected them, and passed them." She never saw Moist, and Moist never saw her. So your original assumption holds no water.

*buffs nails* bored now... OK - so he never saw her before, whether or not that's a typo and that was her mother who worked in the back office... PMSL Sorry couldn't resist.

It's still down to his motivation and modus operandi and I'm not budging from that so lets just drop the argument 'cos we're never going to agree on it.

my favourite moment of the book, by the way, is Angua playing with the squeaky rubber dog toy.

That was one of the best ones yes!

With the free, or about to be freed, golems I think for readers and for the characters in the book, there's a tendency to 'Disneyfie' them and impose human attributes on them in the same way that trolls and dwarves are treated as 'regular' people = human people.

As you say, no traditional/unfreed golem gets past its chem and the Umnian NRG ones are primitive in that they are specialised in the terms of how and/or who they obey. Unless someone who qualifies tells them to be aggressive, they're not a threat except in terms of causing an obstruction. If nobody knows how to issue instructions then they're totally safe in that they're not going to do anything.

For freed golems like Gladys, they all seem to go through some kind of identity crisis to some extent with Dorfl's emancipation taking a very philosophical turn in terms of belief and behaviour to fellow sentients. I think this is really interesting and in some respects, perhaps there is some kind of rebirth or baptismal-like personal re-evaluation involved whereby the golem tries to find a new path in place of their chem. So why not chose to be a 'female'? Gladys' attitude to Moist is maternal more than romantic I thought, so in terms of attitude it's just another take on their relationships with the people closest to them (in this case the original one of working with the PO ladies and not because Gladys wants to be a womanly golem). Mr. Pump went from Probation Officer to bodyguard. Dorfl chose atheism which is quite a good path for a peace officer

Perhaps it's the fact that emancipation for a golem also involves them 'reinventing' themselves for themselves? Something has to replace the chem to give them purpose in common with all sentient beings. The NRG golems have chems that are sealed, so presumably cannot be changed without destroying them or rendering them inoperable, so effectively they are more akin to robots in that their purpose/programming is inviolate. They have no purpose other than to do as they are bid by an acceptable person wearing something shiny - which could be the PO golden suit or a Watch/soldier's breastplate and a working knowledge of Umnian? Unless someone can reprogramme them they're stuck as slaves buried in the ground.

[raisindot]

Gladys' attitude to Moist is maternal more than romantic I thought, so in terms of attitude it's just another take on their relationships with the people closest to them (in this case the original one of working with the PO ladies and not because Gladys wants to be a womanly golem). Mr. Pump went from Probation Officer to bodyguard. Dorfl chose atheism which is quite a good path for a peace officer

Sorry to do text-picking on you again, but Gladys did have the golem equivalent of romantic feelings toward Moist. They weren't maternal at all. Everything she does for Moist, from pressing his pants to bringing his newspaper to getting him his breakfast are the actions of a lovestruck person. Now, she learned this all from the books she had been reading that suggested that a woman's role was to be subservient to a man, and Moist was the most obvious target for her affections because he was a man in power. The best evidence of her romantic interest is when he finally tells Gladys that Spike is his fiance. The 'red lights' in her eyes dim a bit, signifying disappointment.

And Mr. Pump did not change his vocation on his own volition. His chem orders were to keep Moist from leaving the city but it's also highly likely that he was ordered to serve as Moist's bodyguard as well. If it wasn't, he never would have rescued Moist when he Moist was almost 'drowned' in the avalanche of letters at the beginning. Vetinari wanted Moist to succeed, even if he didn't care all that much whether Moist lived through it with all his parts attached.

The point here is that 'newly freed' golems like Gladys (as opposed to Dorfl) are heavily influenced by human words. In her case, by the words she hears from her female coworkers and the books they give her to read. Remember that Gladys 'became' a female after Mrs. Maccalariat (sp.) objected to what she thought as 'male' golems using the women's privvy. That golem that became Gladys started wearing a dress and that started its whole gender identification journey.


J-I-B

[Jan Van Quirm]

... but Gladys did have the golem equivalent of romantic feelings toward Moist. They weren't maternal at all. Everything she does for Moist, from pressing his pants to bringing his newspaper to getting him his breakfast are the actions of a lovestruck person. Now, she learned this all from the books she had been reading that suggested that a woman's role was to be subservient to a man, and Moist was the most obvious target for her affections because he was a man in power. The best evidence of her romantic interest is when he finally tells Gladys that Spike is his fiance. The 'red lights' in her eyes dim a bit, signifying disappointment.

If you'd left it at this re Gladys then you'd have made a better argument Jeff. Your last parag however confirms my argument that freed golems naturally drift towards whatever company they keep and in 'her' case it's the female PO staff under the powerful aegis of Ms. Macclariat (spell too but the status title is more accurate as any Mr. Macca would definitely have to share the trousers if not surrender them altogether...). She's already on the 'mummy/homemaker' road there for definite with perhaps some recommended reading material in the female staff R&R suites which leads her into more dubious arenas.

As for the quote above - I'll take your cultural background into account here... . Since when do most of Terry's female heroes go around pressing his pants [to] bringing his newspaper [to] getting him his breakfast ? PMSL Also to assert that these are the actions of a lovestruck person RPMSL No. No. And no. Sorry my dear cosseted formerly small young male person - that's what mummies DO without a cross or resentful word. As for the dimming of the eyes - well that is something a lad with your upbringing should know - when has any other woman ever been good enough for their son?

Seriously, there's no reason to suppose Gladys is aspiring for either spouse or motherhood status because 'she's' a golem. She may learn behaviour suitable to her task assignment but its far more likely that any jealousy felt was geared towards Moist wanting someone else to take over her working role. So rejection yes, but probably not on any emotional basis whatsoever - we're anthropomorphising again that's all.

With Mr. Pump - I don't see there's any clash of opinion here although I wasn't certain whether 'he' (because golems don't have to have gender) was actually freed at that point? As we both have observed he's simply following his chem and Vetinari's parameters in how Moist must serve out his probation - in A-M and in fulfilling his 'punishment duty' as Postmaster. Everything Mr. Pump does is implicit in his chem's remit and his actions as bodyguard are simply a result of how Moist succeeds in general but mostly in his other, more subliminal probationary condition as Vetinari's chief irritant for Reacher Gilt (call it agent provocateur if it makes you happier ), which of course meant that he would also need protecting as well as keeping in line. A Probation Officer's role is to counsel, observe, report and where possible prevent a paroled prisoner from abandoning the conditions of his release. Normally this would not include saving his life as a regular thing but for golems this is simply fulfilling the terms of their chem and with Moist's testing, wittingly or not, those instructions to the max Mr Pump has do the Rambo thing as well...

Gladys and Dorfl the same - all their actions are job-relevent 'homework' and self-improvement in respectively needing to be the best housemaid, watch and parole officer they can be. If we are to start anthropomorphising golems then this is the equivalent of the character trait of pride in themselves. By their nature golems are workalholics and, as we all know, romance has nothing whatsoever to do with that - it's just natural, pure, naked power-tripping to be the best of the best.

[raisindot]

... but Gladys did have the golem equivalent of romantic feelings toward Moist. They weren't maternal at all. Everything she does for Moist, from pressing his pants to bringing his newspaper to getting him his breakfast are the actions of a lovestruck person. Now, she learned this all from the books she had been reading that suggested that a woman's role was to be subservient to a man, and Moist was the most obvious target for her affections because he was a man in power. The best evidence of her romantic interest is when he finally tells Gladys that Spike is his fiance. The 'red lights' in her eyes dim a bit, signifying disappointment.

As for the quote above - I'll take your cultural background into account here... . Since when do most of Terry's female heroes go around pressing his pants [to] bringing his newspaper [to] getting him his breakfast ? PMSL Also to assert that these are the actions of a lovestruck person RPMSL No. No. And no. Sorry my dear cosseted formerly small young male person - that's what mummies DO without a cross or resentful word. As for the dimming of the eyes - well that is something a lad with your upbringing should know - when has any other woman ever been good enough for their son?

Since there are so very 'romantic' relationships in DW books, it's hard to say WHAT (other than sex) the female heroes do for their men, other than Sybil who certainly performs quite domestic actions such as doing his laundry and cooking his burnt crunchy bits...as matronly as she is, I don't quite see Vimes mistaking her for his mum, however.

Although, in terms of your central assertion that only mums do the kinds of domestic things that Gladys did for Moist, then I'd have to say that there truly is a cultural divide between Britain and America and one that truly surprises and delights me to have discovered.

For I thoroughly applaud the idea that, according to your assertion, British women who are interested in romantic engagements with men, whether it's their bosses or the objects of their crushes, are so 'liberated' and such feminists that they never try to impress these objects of their affection by doing anything so sordidly 'maternal' as taking care of their drycleaning, bringing them coffee, or providing them with the day's Wall Street Journal.

Obviously, you're all far more advanced than we here in the states are. Until around the 70s or so, men expected their secretaries or girlfriends or suitors to do these things before marriage and many men still expected their wives to do these things once married. And, actually today many men still DO expect their suitors/girlfriends/wives/secretaries to do these things. Fortunately, a great deal of these women are smart enough to tell these men to bugger off. It's nice to know that all British men now know better than to expect this kind of maternal treatment from their lovers/suitors.



J-I-B

[Jan Van Quirm]

You are soooooooooo literal!

It's nothing to do with feminism at all! - you said...

Everything she does for Moist, from pressing his pants to bringing his newspaper to getting him his breakfast are the actions of a lovestruck person.

Those are the actions of a female who's got over being lovestruck quite some time ago (Lovestruck is 2nd stage attraction - well 3rd perhaps after WOW and scraping your chin off the floor and then hanging around waiting for him to notice you - some kind of verbal interaction has to have taken place anyway ) and has gone onto the consolidation stages in showing the prospective long-term mate she's a keeper on the domestic front - like a mum...

I won't expect you to understand all that given your comments about dry cleaning etc *pats your head very hard*, but ask your wife and she'll explain better than I can perhaps A golem would certainly understand the trouser-pressing, newspaper smoothing etc because that's practical - it has nothing whatsoever to do with being in love or fancying you are, even if you're capable of having those emotions

Like males, the last thing on a female's mind whilst they're falling for a love object is putting slippers by the fire and keeping the glassware shiny - plumping cushions perhaps, but only in the bedroom and they're about to or have just squashed them up a lot and plumped away on them without the 'L' In present day Britain (and the US I daresay) doing the domestic chores is strictly something that couldn't happen until a couple are at least 'going steady' but in the equivalent time-frame (vaguely victorian/dickension) domestic bliss was something that didn't come into the courting equation in any way until after the wedding (or at least co-habitation as even then a piece of paper wasn't always needed). Then, yes - being a domestic godess was a proper expression of love or if they were rich enough the ordering the servants to do it.

Trust me, on this basis whatever romantic mush Gladys was reading away from the PO ladies domain, she would have been reading about post-marital, maternal or servant duties. Professional pride was wounded at the most (aside from the comedy aspect naturally) - golems aren't that naive and if she was, well what you don't know you don't miss. She'll have got over it quickly enough

[raisindot]

Jan, we're never going to agree on this one, but I'm going to give this a final go.


Gladys is a GOLEM. What do golems do? They WORK. They measure the value of their worth by the WORK they do. Since have no possessions and no sex appeal, the only thing they have to OFFER is the value of their work.

For whatever reason, Glady believe that she is smitten with Moist, and not in a maternal way at all. There is nothing you can say to convince me that the act of her eyes fading when he tells her he is engaged to Spike is anything other than the reaction of jilter suitor suffering unrequited love. If you don't buy this, read the text afterward, where Moist feels terrible for smiting her smittenness, but realizes that it has to be done. If Gladys was simply acting in a maternal way, he never would have needed to say this to her. She could have continued to act like the mom while he got it on with Spike.

Because Gladys doesn't have sex appeal (or even understand what it means), and because golems measure their value in terms of the work they do, the things she does for Moist--pressing his pants, making him lunch, bringing him the newspaper, and all that--are, in her literal golem mind, acts of love because she doesn't know how to express it in any other way.

And if you don't think these kinds of 'work-as-a-love-offerings' happen in real roundworld life, think again. In school, when I was growing up, boys always were offering to 'carry girl's books' or 'do their homework for them' or 'walk them home.' Obviously, these were done partly to build worth, and partly to spend time with them. This doesn't stop when people become adults, either. Richard Nixon, when was trying to court his future wife, who wasn't all that keen on him at the time, used to chauffer her and her date to their dates, while he pitifully pined in the driver's seat. Lady Bird Johnson was able to woo LBJ from the many other women he was dating by cleaning his apartment and cooking him dinner nearly every night.

From a personal note, on my second date with my future wife (who was still dating around) I fixed her a five course meal made entirely from scratch, which she managed to survive without too much internal damage.

Not a single thing about any of these actions that puts them in the category or maternal or paternal behavior. Both people (and golems) often use the currency of labor as a means to prove their value in the eyes of the person they're smitten with. This is as old as humanity itself. The difference is, that golems can only show their affection in terms of work, since that is really all they know.

J-I-B

[Jan Van Quirm]

Jeff darling - we do agree and are singing from the same hymn-sheet on this - you just forgot your reading glasses and have a softer, kinder heart.

We've both said it - Gladys is a golem and doesn't know what love is all about. Moist is also anthropomorphising like crazy, possibly because he's so great at 'reading' people and sees her as being hurt, whilst trying to demolish her 'crush'. She IS hurt, but over her services (love-gifts if you must), being spurned as she sees it.

Actually there is a kind of gender element here in that Gladys is simply too good for these menial house-servant roles. She is in fact more suited to a butler/housekeeper role and if Moist truly was that clued up 'she'd' make a great Gentleman's Gentleman as his valet. Then Gladys could iron his pants and even his newspaper (to get the creases nice & sharp and smooth out the other crinkles - they really used to do this! ) to her heart's content...

Feel better about this now?

[raisindot]

Feel better about this now?

I think Pooh said it best in a different thread:

There's nothing wrong with my .......um....er....... what was I talking about.?

J-I-B

[BaldFriede]

I never had the feeling Gladys has a crush on Moist. She has just discovered she is a woman and does all that women are supposed to do according to the book she read. Then, after having read the book Adora gave her, she changes her attitude to "modern woman". That's all; no crush on Moist whatever.

[raisindot]

I never had the feeling Gladys has a crush on Moist. She has just discovered she is a woman and does all that women are supposed to do according to the book she read. Then, after having read the book Adora gave her, she changes her attitude to "modern woman". That's all; no crush on Moist whatever.

Again, I must ask: If so, why does the 'fire' in her eyes glow dim when Moist tells her he is engaged to Spike? If she were 'doing all that women are supposed to do' and had no emotional pining for him, PTerry would not have put this line in. If Gladys had no 'feelings' for Moist at all, she would have responded something like, "It is Very Good That You Are Engaged! I Would Be Very Happy to Iron Ms. Dearheart's Dress And Bring Her a Newspaper As Well And Bring You Two Some Sonkies."

Remember, too, that shortly after this 'rejection,' Spike and Moist are very concerned that Gladys, in her disconsolation, was going to turn Mr. Fusspot into stew as revenge. When they confronted her in the kitchen, Gladys even acted a bit like a jilted suitor when they saw her stirring the pot and gave Spike a little bit of talkback when Spike told her to let them inspect it. the souppot. In fact, Spike had to use her best "golem command" voice to get Gladys to obey her, something Gladys obviously did not want to do.

Glady's actions in these scenes is not one of a servant or a housemaid doing their chores. They're the actions of an unrequited admirer. Now, whether these are Gladys' own emotions or whether she was'programmed' to act this way after reading the outdated books on etiquette is up to question. Golems are capable of feeling something like emotion--in GP, Mr. Pump knew enough about what pleasure and happiness meant to say that meeting Moist inspire both feelings in him, Gladys, aided by books and interactions with female postal workers, would certainly be able to develop golem approximations of affection, jealousy and resentment.

If this wasn't an important thing, Pterry would never have included the Gladys subplot in the book. But he does, to contrast the "thinking" golems like Gladys from the mindless automatons of the golden (NRG) army.

J-I-B

[BaldFriede]

Ah, but does she really have the crush or is she mimicking it? Now don't get me wrong; it is not as if I think Golems are incapable of emotion. But all Gladys knows about love is from a book, and she behaves by the book. Mark how drastically her attitude changes as soon as she has read the book Adora has given her.

[raisindot]

Ah, but does she really have the crush or is she mimicking it? Now don't get me wrong; it is not as if I think Golems are incapable of emotion. But all Gladys knows about love is from a book, and she behaves by the book. Mark how drastically her attitude changes as soon as she has read the book Adora has given her.

Ah, see, that's the key question that's very difficult to answer. Since golems are influenced by words written or spoken by humans more than anything else, you'd think that she is mimicking the crush, based on her conversations with the other postal women and the books she was reading. But it's hard to know.

It's also hard to know whether she became receptive to Spike's feminist literature simply because Spike recommended it, or, because Gladys, having had her spirit crushed by believing the effectiveness of the words in the "etiquette books," was more receptive to these new ideas 'new ideas' that would help 'ease her pain' by showing her she didn't need a man to be self-actualized.

That's what's so fun about these books. Pterry never truly gives the answer, leaving enough vagueness for posters in DW forums to make their own conjectures.



J-IB

[Jan Van Quirm]

Jeff - stop anthropomorphising!

She's reading stuff to do with her job and it's all about doing it to the best of her ability. She's associating mainly with women and so of course she's observing and taking notice of what entailed in how the people who do the work she does go about it. She's wanting to do it all herself as perfectly as possible - Spike has to be forceful with looking in the pot because she's insulting Gladys' work, not because she was 'feeling' vengeful.

On an emotional and human basis Gladys is a gigantic animated china teapot that does the housework FFS! (Giving physical and domestic comfort wherever she goes... ). Possibly she's a Denby teapot rather than a Meisen one (heavyweight and hard-wearing)

She and Moist assumed that Gladys would cook Mr. Fusspot - why the hell would she do that? That isn't how a good cook and homemaker works. It wouldn't have even crossed her mind to cook a dog - any dog. What she might have done was ban Mr Fusspot from jumping on the furniture or walking across a wet kitchen floor but for matters culinary dogs wouldn't feature in any way. It's all to do with the work - anything else is all in Moist's and Spike's heads because it's funny (just about now *yawns*).

[Dotsie]

Jeff - stop anthropomorphising!

Do you really believe though that a golem is just the sum of its parts, or is it more than that? If a golem can feel shame, or anger (feet of clay), why can't a golem learn to feel love?

It might have only been a non-serious juvenile crush, but Gladys is just learning. It wouldn't surprise me to hear of a golem wedding at some time.

So yes, I agree with Jib.