6/01/01

I am not a science-fiction fan. I do not like Star Trek and I must confess I felt not a twinge of excitement seeing the first slanted words plane down the screen during Star Wars Episode I. My thesis research forced me hesitatingly into an examination of criticism of SF (mainly by women) and the related utopian/dystopian genre. Many texts mentioned 1984 and Brave New World, the canonised ‘classics’ of dystopia; I also kept finding references that hailed Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time as a feminist classic of the genre with which I was, ashamedly, not familiar. It is a book situated between the familiar 1970s present and an imagined utopian future; it contains aspects of SF but also much which is recognisable, so that the story satisfactorily attracted a reader with my wary tastes. For this reason alone I would recommend Piercy’s novel, although her greater achievement lies in the novel’s politics. First published 25 years ago, Piercy’s vision of the future, and the text’s feminist political slant, are still crucial arguments. Woman on the Edge of Time presents a critical analysis of the contemporary world, in the manner of politically cogent utopia/dystopia.

Piercy’s protagonist is Connie (also Consuela or Conchita) Ramos, labelled as marginal by the many different categories which identify her: female, obese, approaching 40, Mexican-American, poor, separated, a past alcoholic and drug-addict, infertile following a forced hysterectomy, unfit mother, with a history of mental illness. Following a fight in which she injures her niece’s pimp, Connie is unfairly imprisoned in a mental hospital. Here, Connie is forced to live a life without dignity, under the power of doctors, ward nurses, the brother who signs her over for experimentation, and the drugs which pacify her and the other inmates. The hospital becomes a dystopian space similar to the futuristic world imagined in Huxley and Orwell’s dystopias: technology, medicine and even language become the tools of all-seeing autocrats. The hospital staff desire complete control over the patients, all of whom come from what society identifies as its dangerous margins. For example, electroshock therapy is used to ‘cure’ a homosexual patient of his reactions to pornography. Because of the close supervision over the patients’ routine lives, resistance is difficult; even ‘little rebellions’ (112) like stepping out of the lunch line result in punishments.

This world is contrasted against a utopian world that Connie experiences as a ‘catcher’, someone who is receptive enough to receive communications from the future. At first Connie mistakes this ability for a sign of her own madness, but eventually learns to accept as a reality the utopian community of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts in the year 2137. Initially, she feels resentment about the repeated communications made to her by Luciente, her contact from the future, because they seem to indicate, as she has learned throughout her life, that she can be controlled: ‘Passive. Receptive. Here she was, abandoning herself to the will of one more male. Letting herself be used’ (52). As her contacts with Luciente’s community become easier, Connie witnesses a future which is an improvement on the one in which she resides in the 1970s present and comes to think of her Mattapoisett acquaintances as family.

Connie’s first impressions of the future are that it has ‘gone backward’ (125) instead of evolving. People’s lives are lived closer to the earth; agriculture is the top priority and all of the future world’s practices are more ecologically sound than those of the late twentieth century. Waste and pollution are avoided at all costs. As a stranger in Connie’s time, Luciente is shocked to find out that the ‘horror stories in our histories’ of the late twentieth century are true: ‘food was full of poisonous chemicals, nitrites, hormone residues, DDT, hydrocarbons, sodium benzoate, preservatives’ and ‘you put your shit into the drinking water’ (54). The future world is run completely democratically so that all questions are debated within and between communities, even questions of specialised subjects such as genetics, defence, and art, so that no single person or group has authority over any aspect of life.

As public life is without authority, so is private life in the future. Traditional categories of gender, sexuality, race and age have been eradicated. The future utopians (like the present day dytopians in the hospital) speak an unfamiliar language which lacks gender pronouns. This creates great confusion for Connie. The end of gender categories also results in the end of sexual division of labour between the families; babies are born from bottles, and biological males are mothers, with the ability to breast-feed (this is just one instance of futuristic technology which locates the novel within traditions of science fiction). Each community has a unique cultural identity shared by all its members no matter what their skin colour. Young children and the elderly work as valued equals with important roles. Piercy’s future community maintains variety and diversity but avoids the hierarchical arrangement of divisions practised in Connie’s time. As one who has suffered from the powerlessness allotted to her gender, race, and class, Connie might be expected to blindly revel in this future of equality. However, she reacts with suspicion, and her criticism intelligently indicates the potential for power that exists within a politics of difference. She remarks that ‘In my time black people just discovered a pride in being black. My people, Chicanos, were beginning to feel that too. Now it seems like it got lost again’ (103). She angrily wonders ‘what was special about being a woman’ in the future if men could breastfeed; ‘how dare any man share that pleasure? These women thought they had won, but they had abandoned to men the last refuge of women’ (134). Piercy’s presentation of the new world of complete equality takes into account the powers that must be sacrificed ‘in return for no more power for anyone’ (106), and through Connie’s criticisms indicates that those sacrifices will not be painless or simple.

Connie eventually makes a place for herself in this future world, but she is never of that time. The questions that she asks and the observations that she makes in Mattapoisett help shape her identity, so that she feels empowered to overcome the categories imposed upon her and to challenge the world as it exists in her own time. The lengths to which hospital staff, and people outside it, go to control others and create a sense of powerlessness in their victims is illustrated clearly in Piercy’s descriptions of life in 1970s America. By comparing the compassionate responsibility that the Mattapoisett community feels towards its members and to all creatures implicitly criticises the greed, ecological irresponsibility, and abusive behaviour of all of those in power in Connie’s world. The novel criticises public abuses of power, in medicine, science, industry, the social services, racist police, but also the private abuses that occur between individual men and women: abusive boyfriends, pimps, brothers like Connie’s whose desire for personal power guides him to disavow his sister and treat her as a Chicano housemaid for his Anglo wife.

Piercy’s examination of power politics and her use of utopian/dystopian conventions are important as well as imaginative; the novel’s examinations question the motivations for and ramifications of using genetic modification in food and in humans, for example, discussing issues of power in aspects of life which are as pertinent today as they were when the novel was first published. Woman on the Edge of Time also traces Connie’s increasing awareness of her own identity; her contacts in the future (and in the hospital) teach her the different ways women may take power for themselves within and outside of mainstream mechanisms of control. Witchcraft, war, suicide and meditation are among the alternatives suggested to Connie as possible means of escape and empowerment. In the end she determines her own course. In this way, Piercy’s novel inspires readers to think critically of their own time, and to consider the need to challenge the powers that remove control and dignity from human life. Luciente explains that the future in which she resides is only one possible one which can result from the world as it exists in Connie’s time. Piercy implies that our actions in the present will determine whether or not we move toward a Mattapoisett-like future of equality and sound ecology, or something even more technologically sinister than the hospital environment which Connie inhabits.

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Women’s Press Classic edition, published London: The Women’s Press, 2000. Originally published New York: Knopf, 1976.

Editor's Note:

While I've got your attention, I want to say something about Ashlie's opening statement of "not being a fan of science fiction." Most people who say this believe that Sci-Fi IS the Star Trek, Star Warks, Terminator type movies & fiction ONLY. This is so not true, sci fi is a huge genre, which does contain the typical space opera (the above mentioned films/fiction) stuff associated with it, but also contains incredible and worthwhile other work. And, as Ashlie discovered by reading Piercy's novel, there are these incredible feminist works that explore politics in a science fiction setting-- which allows for incredible things to be done with the world as we know it, or would like to know it, or are afraid of knowing it. I would like to list here a number of other "women's sci fi" books that anyone interested in feminism, but not the typical "SCI FI" that you think sci fi is, to check out. For the purposes of this site, I'monly listing books by women, and ones that specifically deal with women's issues. There are a lot of great speculative fiction novels that have feminist ideals, that are by men and women, but that are not specifically about gender... so you'll have to find those yourself.

The funny thing is that science fiction is one of those genres where exciting work can and is being done with a feminist slant-- but it is still a world that is largely associated with and dominated by male writers and readers. This is why, if you do a search for sci fi, you'll find mostly male authors, and those women who are represented will fall here and there, like tokens to the large group of women who read the stuff. So if women who are interested in breaking down stereotypes and imagining a better world don't support those sci fi writers who do this, then it will remain a closed shop... so get out there and read, darn it!

Herland is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic nineteenth-century feminist utopia. And you thought she only wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"...	Joanna Russ' The Female Man. Russ is an incredible writer, whose non-fiction feminist theory, How to Supress Women's Writing is also a must-read.
Think Klingon (a language of war) is the only language ever invented? Think again. Suzette Haden Elgin (read an interview with her on the site) explores a woman-created language that expresses "a woman's way of knowing," linguistics, and patriarchy in this classic Native Tongue. There are several more novels in the sequence, but this first one is the best.	The Gate to Women's Country Tepper's novel explores a post-apocalyptic world where women & men live in controlled contact with each other, with most men separated after puberty in "men's country"
The Handmaid's Tale. Margaret Atwood explores a dystopic theocracy, and the relationship of a woman who is reduced to mere biology.	Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness is about a world where gender as we know it doesn't exist. Thus, it explores the biases the male explorer brings with him.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. This book explores a not-so-distant possible future, and the young women who finds strength in her vision of space as a future for human kind. But there is much more here than just that-- it's a fabulous book, and one that is the kind that I wish I had written. The sequel, Parable of the Talents, traces her history years later, from the perspective of her daughter.	Wild Seed Octavia Butler. A little more like the typical Sci-fi-- but still a great exploration of women's issues, from one of the few African American writers in the genre. It has quite a few sequels, so if you like the characters you encounter, you can follow them in more than one experience.

Now, for a great couple of collections. These two anthologies are great for getting your feet wet. They contain stories that deal with issues from a housewife's growing frustration with her limited choices (in "The Heat Death of the Universe") to rape issues, to body issues...

Women of Wonder: The Classic Years : Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s. This is a collection of some of the best from women out there. The stories explore feminism in amazing variety. The older one is my favorite, because some of the best writers in the genre are represented. If you read the first and like it, also check out the more contemporary version called Women of Wonder, The Contemporary Years : Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s.

There are a lot more, but once you get started on these, you'll find the rest on your own... and you won't ever say "I don't like sci fi" again. Instead, you'll know that sci fi is a huge genre, which includes lots of different types of work-- and if you haven't explored that work, you'll know to be open to new options.

If you have questions about this list, or want more recommendations, write to us.