The Women of Beulah (or Woman Town a la Boys Town) have removed a breast each in emulation of the ancient Amazon warriors. At first I didn't like this on the grounds that it seemed a little too forced and self-conscious; on second thought, however, it makes perfect sense. It isn't Carter trying to make them symbolically into Amazons, it's the women purposefully trying to duplicate the Amazons' symbolism themselves (yes, even though Carter's the author). The single masectomies also indicate how deeply body modification and surgical transformation figure into the culture of Beulah, prefiguring what happens to Evelyn.
The preponderance of womb imagery gets to be a bit oppressive after a while. We get it. All the rooms are spherical, they subject Evelyn to pinkish lighting and muted sounds as though penetrating the membranes...
And we're introduced to Mother, self-made goddess of four breasts. A super-scientist who has purposefully transformed herself into a mythical creature. I love the opening description of her, emphasizing Hindu Goddess traits which (1) serve to break up the overwhelming dependence on Western and European mythologies and (2) recalls the man whose apartment Evelyn sublets in New York; the man is a student who runs off to India to escape the apocalypse and find some greater spiritual meaning. This reinforces the possibility that Mother is a positive bringer of change...
Only of course she isn't, not really. Mother is an example of Carter suggesting that gender equality is the only true path and that a Matriarchy is as bad as a Patriarchy. Beulah is clean, efficient, balanced, et cetera, but there's also a coldness (interesting, given traditional views of women as overemotional) and a failure to pay attention to Evelyn's rights of self-determination (especially biological). Mother's actions and decisions on behalf of Evelyn, always condescending to the stupid little man, play well into and parallel his own behaviour toward Leilah earlier in the book and every time a man (or a another woman, as part of the greater social structure) tells a woman she has to keep the baby, or she has to get an abortion, or she's going to be circumcized, and on and on and on. As much as Evelyn's transformation into the new Eve is potentially quite positive, the only excuse for Mother's actions is that she is a goddess, and that there are special dispensations for the divine. Conventional morality does not play into it and mortals must simply submit to the wild desires of the Gods.
Christian's students rebelled against the book at around this point, in particular because of the castration scene. Frankly, as castration scenes go this one was quite tame. Cock and balls off in one sentence, and a particularly flat one at that. The whole sequence -- Mother's rape of Evelyn and the castration itself are actually a low point in Carter's prose work in the novel, but I suppose that can be justified by Evelyn being in a drugged up state and rather removed from the whole process. Not sure what you could find fuss about because it wasn't presented in a visceral fashion.
I question the validity of Mother's plans; they store Evelyn's seed so that it can be used to impregnate Eve, but wouldn't that cause weird genetic disorders and be not unlike inbreeding? On the other hand, if they can completely remodel a body and make a working woman's body out of a man's, with all the appropriate chromosomes, well, they can probably get around it. Eve is to be the new Madonna and deliver parthenogenetically.
Other examples of modern parthenogenesis - James Morrow's Only Begotten Daughter with Christ's Half-sister (another messiah figure) being produced by a father and God-as-Female. Alan Moore's Cobweb character, a pulp heroine who made love with her female companion through each generation to set up the next pairing.
Evelyn becomes the new Eve, beautiful and idealized because all women in Beulah consulted on what would make the perfect Woman, and s/he mirrors the hermaphrodite statue in the beginning of the book, at the alchemist's apartment. Female on the outside, sure, but there's still a "cock in [his] head" when he looks at herself and becomes aroused. The delight of touching a clitoris is enhanced by it being his own clit. Evelyn and Eve coexist at this point, and continue to, although Eve is rather amnesiac and disconnected from Evelyn's narration.
Eve escapes into the desert, feeling like "a hero, more like Evelyn" again because - well, shit! What does Evelyn do every time? He runs away, and now s/he does. And running away from a "perfect" female society, Eve stumbles onto an imperfect one when s/he is taken and raped by the mad poet Zero, the Nihilist Nothing-Man who hates Tristessa, the actress who crops up throughout the book as Evelyn's patron goddess and Eve's template. Zero's got a harem, poor girls who engage in forbidden lesbian sex at night when Zero can't see them. Pregnancy is not a concern because he's sterile, something Zero blames on Tristessa's all-consuming feminine wiles. She's a succubus, having stolen his virility. He wants to track down the aging, reclusive actress to rape and kill her, in hopes that this will restore his powers and repopulate the Earth. He's a bit like a really awful version of Bacchus.
More later...