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We Always Treat Women Too Well was first published as a purported work of pulp fiction by one Sally Mara, but this novel by Raymond Queneau is a further manifestation of his sly, provocative, wonderfully wayward genius. Set in Dublin during the 1916 Easter rebellion, it tells of a nubile beauty who finds herself trapped in the central post office when it is seized by a group of rebels. But Gertie Girdle is no common pushover, and she quickly devises a coolly lascivious strategy by which, in very short order, she saves the day for king and country. Queneau's wickedly funny send-up of cheap smut--his response to a popular bodice-ripper of the 1940s--exposes the link between sexual fantasy and actual domination while celebrating the imagination's power to transmute crude sensationalism into pleasure pure and simple.… (more)
User reviews
Queneau transposes the action to Dublin in 1916, the Easter Rising, where a group of amateurish rebels has occupied the Post Office. They've cleared out most of the British workers unharmed, have shot two, and are settled in to return fire with the British and die nobly for their cause - an Ireland free of British rule - when they discover Gertie Girdle, who'd been hiding in the lavatory. Some of the rebels want to kill Gertie, but their leader thinks that brutalising an innocent female postal worker would tarnish their reputations, and that Gertie must remain alive and unsullied. After she is raped by one of the rebels, Gertie manages to ensure her survival by seduction, and she is hard to resist. She's the antithesis of Miss Blandish.
We Always Treat Women Too Well shouldn't be funny. The Easter Rising isn't funny; the violence is gruesome; Gertie is raped many times; there's even an instance of necrophilia. Perhaps it's the exuberance of the violence that makes it impossible to take seriously, plus the awareness that the bad taste is the point. The absurdity piles on: the ineptitude of the rebels with their catch-cry of "Finnegan's Wake!"; the fact that the Irish names and places all came from Ulysses; the British officer named Mountcatten.
We Always Treat Women Too Well was an entertaining read, but as an introduction to Raymond Queneau it probably isn't the best choice, so I'm planning to follow up with The Sunday of Life.