Ethan of Athos March 24, 2009

Lois McMaster Bujold

When I bought this book (I admit it was the day before class) I was definitely amused by the cover… and I agree with Dr. Jones that it is the cheesiest cover that we have encountered in this course. But, I must admit that I really enjoyed Lois McMaster Bujold’s book, and I like it even more because it only took a short amount of time to read it, lol! So far in this course this is the first all-male utopia planet, and it was nothing like I expected. The birth of the baby boy at the beginning reminded me of a TLC episode of A Baby Story (minus the uterine replicator) when the father exclaims that the baby’s birth is a miracle! I found several items in this book that reminded me of other books we have read in this course. The first interesting thing that I found was that the men of Athos reminded me of the women from Herland in that they found having and raising children as a supreme honor to be achieved. Secondly, an issue that this book holds in common with Native Tongue, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The slave and the free  is that women are held in suspicion and are treated with contempt. Thirdly, I was reminded of Native Tongue  and the issue of baby experimentation. This is seen when Terrence Cee is explaining his life story to Ethan and explains the process of his birth : “The telepathy complex was refined in vitro, twenty generations in five years. The first three human experiments to have it spliced into their chromosomes died before they ever outgrew their uterine replicators. Four more died in infancy and early childhood of inoperable brain cancers, three of some subtler failure to thrive” (p127). 

I found this book to be entertaining and fairly unpredictable. At first, and especially after reading the back cover, I really thought that Ethan and Quinn were going to have a romantic relationship with each other (sorry to ruin it if you haven’t read it!) and that he would never return to his all-male planet. I was wrong. But I was right in the sense that she will become the mother of his future children, just not the way I had originally thought. I didn’t see the whole Helda-scrambling-the-mail incident coming either, but I found that very funny.

Although this book is seemingly simplistic as compared with the other books of this course, it still deals with complicated issues such as relationships between men and women and views on homosexuality. I definitely would be very interested in reading more of Bujold’s books.

The Handmaid’s Tale March 24, 2009

I found Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to be an interesting, but disturbing read. I enjoyed how Atwood created such a realistic character in Offred that readers can really connect with and empathize for. What I found to be disturbing is the way she made the change in the United States to the Republic of Gilead to be believable and realistic. After reading this book, I began to wonder why it stood out to me as being more realistic than The Slave and The Free and Native Tongue.  I came to the conclusion that it must be because Atwood mixed Offred’s rememberances of her own life in today’s world (or more correctly the 1980′s, but that’s close enough) into the her current life in Gilead. Most female readers would feel very uncomfortable picturing themselves in Offred’s place… at one time a successful university student and career woman with a husband and child… and now basically a sex slave in a twisted triangle (that might be a little dramatic, but thats how I see it!). Native Tongue began with showing government amendments that changed women’s rights in “the past,” but the women in the story are so far removed from the actual time period that the rights removal occured that it makes the story seem just that… a story (of course the added elements of aliens and the weird baby experiments add to that unrealisticness). Offred’s continued rememberances into her past force readers to recognize that only a short time has actually passed since her life drastically changed. These rememberances force readers to consider that life isn’t always a safe walk in the park… in fact, drastic changes have and will continue to occur in this world. We can only hope and work towards a different life than that which is portrayed in this book.

In addition to this dreary consideration of the world’s instability, I did find amusement (ok, maybe a dark hilarity) in the idea that the Aunts were telling the women-in-training who were becoming handmaids that their position would in time become a position of honor with the next generation. I found this idea amusing because the children that the handmaids were having were being raised by the Wives of the Commanders. These children would be taught by their mothers to disdain the handmaids (ironically their own mothers), which to me, doesn’t seem to support the aunts views. I just found this “teaching” to be ridiculous.

Native Tongue March 10, 2009

Unlike The Slave and The Free, I really liked reading Suzette Haden Elgin’s book Native Tongue. Although the women are not treated as badly as the women in The Slave and the Free, the theme of female suppression is definitely continued. This book interestingly begins by showing the futuristic Articles XXIV and XXV from the United States Constitution that revoke women’s suffrage rights along with all their other rights, which is set in the distant past of this story. Women are again totally controlled by men and they are looked down on as lesser beings: “never, never for an instant, lose track of the knowledge that when you interact with a woman you interact with an organism that is essentially  just a rather sophisticated child suffering from delusions of grandeur” (Elgin 110).  In this book, the power of language is another important theme. The Linguists’ power and mysteriousness comes from their knowledge and their use of languages, both human and alien. In this book, I also found interesting the idea of the power of listening. Michaela is adored by the men surrounding her because they perceive her to be a wonderful listener. Michaela uses this ability to exercise ultimate control over the dominating men in her life–she gains their trust and then kills them. Although the women in this book are suffering under total patriarchy, they are seen as being just as competent as the men surrounding them, in fact, some are definitely more competent, such as Nazareth.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? February 10, 2009

James Tiptree

I enjoyed this short story about three men who are lost in space. They have somehow unknowingly skipped forward into the future and are trying to get back to Earth. Although they are unable to come into contact with Houston, they are contacted by a spaceship with a crew of women (although one of the women actually looks like a man, which confuses these men). They are told that it is now over 200 years in the future and that Houston is no longer the space center. After realizing that these women are their only hope for survival, the three men make a dangerous escape from their spacecraft. While on board the women’s ship, the men quickly realize that things have changed and that there is no longer men on earth. They also come to realize that the women are cloning themselves in order to populate the world.

It is sad to say that like Terry in  Gilman’s Herland, one of the men, Bud, is also a dominating sex-crazed idiot. He creates a disturbing scene in which he basically rapes one of the women. Needless to say, he is not a likeable character. Dave is also not a likeable character in that he represents a rigid form of patriarchy in which women need to be forced into submission to men. He also brings a form of violence onto the peaceful ship by using his gun. Lorimer is similar to Herland’s Van and Jeff. He becomes friends with the women and attempts to learn about their modern society. But, Alas, he recognizes at the end that he and the other two men are not to return to Earth…

When I finished reading this story, I was pretty sure that there was no way that James Tiptree, Jr. was a man (I’m not really sure why I thought this… but I did), and so I googled him. Sure enough, Tiptree was a pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon.  Sheldon was a very interesting woman. She was in the army from 1942-1946, where she met her second husband Huntington Sheldon and they left to start their own business together. In 1952, she and her husband were invited into the CIA, until 1955, at which time she went back to college. Apparently she was bisexual and she stated the following on this topic: “I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up” (wikipedia).  She used Tiptree as her pen-name from 1967 until her death in 1987. It was not known that Tiptree was a woman until 1977.  On May 19, 1987, Sheldon(71 years old) first killed her 84 year old husband and then herself. They were found hand in hand; there was also a suicide note that had been written years earlier and saved for when it was needed. Sheldon had suffered years from emotional issues and she had also attempted suicide several times.

February 5, 2009

Hey! Here is the link to my website on The Disappearance.

The Disappearance January 20, 2009

Philip Wylie

Philip Wylie’s The Disappearance was like reading what was going on behind the scenes of the 1950′s show “Leave it to Beaver”. I pictured Paula Guant and all her female acquaintances as looking similar to June Cleaver. But this book did not keep up the perfect appearance of life in the 1950′s, instead, it gave detail to the stressful times that the people were living through. The fore running issue in this book is the inequality between men and women. Although women have been able to vote since the 1920′s and they were also able to obtain a good education (as seen in Paula’s case), they were still basically useless when all the men disappeared. This uselessness is first seen when the women attempt to listen to the radio but found there was no broadcasters: “The engineers,’ Paula whispered. ‘They’re all men, so far as I know. Without them, they can’t broadcast, can they ?” (p30).  These women in this book basically appear to be arm candy for their husbands. In the third section of this book, the women begin to bash men and blame them for their circumstances, and this is where Paula makes a great statement about men and women inequality: “We were forever being told we were equal–and forever being kept from behaving equally. We were brought up to think of ourselves as independent–and then forced into dependence. Look at us now! We don’t even know enough to do more than barely exist!” (p287).

Other issues of the 1950′s as seen in this book are racial segregation, as seen in the separate quarters of Miami where Black people lived in and is also seen in that Hester and her family lived in tents in Paula’s backyard. Also, people lived in constant fear of atomic bombs and radiation. This book also showed the rocky relationship between communist Russia and the United States, which would also increase the whole atomic bomb threat/scare.

Herland January 19, 2009

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an interesting story that tells of a secluded all-female society that has been discovered by three male explorers. These three explorers each have different expectations of what they expect of this female society; Jeff believes it will be a peaceful sisterhood, like a nunnery (p7), but Terry and the narrator Vandyke believe that it is impossible that the women would get along. They also believe that everything will be very primitive and dirty (p7). I must say that I felt slightly guilty while I was reading this because I couldn’t help but agree with Van and Terry about the expected cattiness of the women (even though I already knew that Jeff was the closest to being right because of the back cover) but memories from my girlhood and onward suggests that it would not be the most pleasant place to be living (no offense to any female readers… actually you may probably agree that an all-women society sounds like the perfect setup to the world’s largest cat fight!). Needless to say, Gilman’s perspective of an all-female society was refreshing and without any type of social drama, except for the attempted rape by Terry at the end. When they men had expected monotony, pettiness, jealousy, and hysteria they actually found social inventiveness, social consciousness, sisterly affection, and a high standard of health (p69). It was amusing that the men initially kept wondering where all the men were being hidden, because it was unthinkable that the women were doing so well without them. What is interesting about Herland is its complete lack of sexuality, which makes glaringly obvious the abundance of sexuality in our male/female society. Terry represented an aggressive and selfish type of sexuality that did not mesh well with the Utopia’s sisterly affections.

Herland

Hello world! January 19, 2009

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