Sometimes a Great Notion

Viv’s background story is distinct from that of the Stampers. While the Stamper family is sprawling and has a long, well-known history, Viv is a blank slate. She is an orphaned girl with ambiguous, mysterious motivations, desires, and dreams—ones even she does not fully know or understand. In the conversation she and Hank have after they first make love, she describes yearning for “the Somebody. Whoever he someday turns out to be” (176). The implication of this longing is that Viv is hoping a man will rescue her, a desire that explains her willingness to abruptly drop everything in Colorado and go live with Hank in Oregon. However, her decision to escape without a plan for the future means that even after arriving in Oregon, Viv “still was obviously without a world truly her own” (182).

Viv’s beauty, strength of character, and loneliness in Oregon echo those of Lee’s mother, Myra. Lee is captivated by the idea of Viv even before meeting her. By spying Viv naked through the hole in his bedroom wall, Lee’s curiosity takes on a significance that is both voyeuristic and deeply psychological. Viv’s nakedness recalls Lee seeing, through the same hole in the wall, his mother and Hank make love years ago. Viv’s appearance has a profoundly sensual effect on the aesthetic Lee, who obliquely experiences it again when he and Hank share the delicious lunch Viv prepared for them. Hank playfully references Viv’s sexual appeal by noting the other workers or “snakes […] always looking to share Viv’s dessert” (213).

Lee is eager to prove himself a man, wanting to be an equal to his older and more powerful brother. Lee throws himself in to logging work, which is harsh, exhausting, and strikingly different from the intellectual—and seemingly effete—work of graduate school. Lee is desperate to show that he is a true member of the hardy Stamper family and overcome his feelings of anger and belittlement. It is not surprising that soon enough Lee will decide to prove that his masculinity measures up to that of the rugged Stampers in another way—through sexual conquest of Viv.