By Iren Plastinina
In this paper I shall put these novels into the context of Science Fiction as a genre, compare how they approach the topic of gender and illustrate how the approach each takes reflects the time in which it was written. Finally, I will venture my opinion about their intention in writing these novels.
Gender, in any given culture and in a social context, proposes that there are constructed functions of conduct, activities, and characteristics regarded as correct for men and women. Sex, on the other hand, represents the biological definition of men and women and how they differ physically. In our world, the latter will not vary much; no matter what type of society, but aspects of gender may well diverge significantly. However, in a different reality or an unknown future like those found in a science fiction novel, this may not be the case.
Ursula Krueber Le Guin, in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1968) and Margaret Eleanor Atwood in A Handmaid’s Tale (1987) have written science fiction books with different approaches to gender. Le Guin’s novel is about a different world, Gethen, with an androgynous population. Atwood’s story happens in a near-future in the United States, in which religious fanatics have gained control of part of the country and women have lost all rights. I shall put these novels into the context of Science Fiction as a genre, compare how they approach the topic of gender and illustrate how the approach each takes reflects the time in which it was written. Finally, I will venture my opinion about their intention in writing these novels.
Science fiction is called a modern genre, but has existed for as long as people have used their fantasy. One of the earliest writers of science fiction was a Greek satirist from the 2nd century AD called Lucian. He wrote Trips to the Moon, where he portrays sailing to the Moon. This kind of fantasy tales was a tool to satirize contemporary regimes, society, and religion, without becoming a victim of slander suits, censorship, and maltreatment. However, Cyrano de Bergerac from the 17th century is considered to be the most obvious predecessor to science fiction. He also wrote about trips to the moon, but a utopian society without war, hunger, and diseases. His work was published after his death, but then in suppressed versions.
Nevertheless, he influenced greatly the works of later satirists like Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), especially in his novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Voltaire (1694-1778) in his book Micromégas (1752). They both used a similar ruthless type of satire with bizarre inhuman monsters, and unpleasant forms of normality. Other well known authors from earlier centuries that wrote science fiction would, for example, be Sir Thomas Moore (1478-1535) (Utopia (1516)), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in several of his works, Jules Verne (1828-1905) and his famous stories, Robert Luis Stevenson (1850-1894) with and Mr. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll Hyde (1886), and Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) in for example Time Machine (1895) .
To briefly explain what science fiction is about, one has to look into the subgenres and major themes of this category. The name science fiction is the umbrella term for related genres within literature dealing with topics (themes) like utopias and dystopias, alien encounters, space travel, time travel, sex and gender, alternate histories, parallel universes, high technology, and alternative societies. The main subgenres in science fiction is hard science fiction (emphasis on scientific and/or technical detail and/or accuracy), space opera (also a subgenre of speculative fiction)(romantic, often melodramatic adventures, mainly in outer space), science fantasy (a mixed genre that draws elements from SF and fantasy), planetary romance (a part of the action takes place on exotic alien planets), speculative fiction (umbrella term for the more highly imaginative fiction genres), soft (points to the role and nature of the science content) and social science fiction (concerned more with sociological speculations about human behaviour and interactions), the last two are very closely related. These subgenres also have subgenres. Science fiction writers often search for new scientific and technical progress in order to, without restraint, predict or prophesy the techno-social transformation that will distress the readers’ sense of cultural decorum and expand their consciousness. They can, for example, use trends in contemporary society and write a dystopian novel around these trends to show the readers what may happen in a possible future, as a warning. Actually, the only thing that may limit the writing within science fiction is the writer’s own imagination. .
In the late 1960s, science fiction and fantasy genres started to mirror the alterations in society, like the civil rights movement and the appearance of a counterculture. Inside these fields, the alteration of the western civilization was integrated in a movement called New Wave . This group was much more sceptical to the new technology that was spreading all around the western hemisphere, but they were also freer socially, and attracted to stylistic experimentation. Many of the writers who belonged in the New Wave movement showed more interest in the “inner space” than the outer space. However, the New Wave science fiction authors were more open about sexuality and adjustments of gender roles. Several of these writers also wrote about the social position of sexual minorities . Well known science fiction authors like Joanna Russ (1937- ), Thomas M. Disch (1940-2008), John Varley (1947- ), and James Tiptree Jr. (1915-1987) often used sexual themes in their novels. They were influenced by New Wave authorities like Michael Moorcock (1939- ), editor of the magazine New Worlds and Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- ), who has written several sympathetic portrayals of unconventional sexuality and gender in the science fiction genre .
Another writer, who has contributed to the last mentioned, is Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). In 1972, he wrote the novel The Gods Themselves. Here he describes an alien race with three sexes, where all three are involved in sexual reproduction. Sexual intercourse must, of course, happen simultaneously, since the three sexes are active at the same time. Other acceptable manners for sexual and societal norms are also present. For example, the first sex creates a type of sperm; the second produces some kind of energy essential for reproduction, the third bear and raise the child. In this novel, Asimov also explores the risks and problems of sex in Microgravity, where people born on the Moon are proficient at it, while people from Earth are not .
Le Guin’s and Atwood’s novels could also be a part of a feministic tradition in science fiction, even though it does not seem like a good idea to generalize about women as writers compared to men. However, it is tempting to imply an interesting tendency that can be found in the stories and novels of many of the female writers, who have issues about the future. Like the interest for the reproduction, that stands out in texts by female writers from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) up to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. The end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s was especially a time that produced several utopian texts about the future. In 1915, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her novel Herland, which describes the discovery of a country where everyone is female, all males died a long time ago caused by warfare. Here the women have created an ideal world based on equality and ecological balance. They have also solved the problem of reproduction. In this society women get pregnant without the help from men. In 1978, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, where a future society has equality between gender, and fetuses grow in a kind of aquarium which both, men and women are responsible for. Both, men and women also breastfeed! In other words, full equality between genders can only happen when men become “mothers” ? There are, of course, male writers, who have shown great interest for this field too. For example Aldous Huxley’s classical Brave New World (1932), who describes an extremely consumption oriented and technologically based society in the future, where babies are created in test tubes after accurate recipes. This future sounds a lot like our society. Our scientists can already create babies who are copies of their fathers or mothers. It is not allowed to use, but with the right amount of money, who knows. It is easy to believe that copies of people are already walking around in our society .
Science fiction feminists were beginning to hope for less injustice between genders in the late 1960s, and Joanna Russ’s admired novel The Female Man (1975) proposes, through the title, that “femininity” is something to have been forced on people. However, Russ’s classical feminist novel pales when compared to Margaret Atwood’s (1939- ) very dark dystopian future in The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The dystopian dictatorship in the novel ultimately falls down caused by its hostile system used in the treatment of women and is followed by, nonetheless, another historical era. It has been claimed that in a sense The Handmaid’s Tale creates an intellectual reconciliation with historical development and goes beyond the expected confines of utopias and dystopias .
Since both, Le Guin and Atwood, are feminists, one should think that their novels belonged within this genre, but this is not entirely correct. Le Guin’s novel belongs in soft science fiction where the emphasis is on social sciences like anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science etc. In her story about the envoy Genly Ai and his experiences on the androgynous planet Gethen, the themes she uses to emphasize what she wants her readers to comprehend are Communication, Understanding and Misunderstanding, Friendship and Betrayal, Love, The Inner and Outer Journey, Acceptance, Duty, Politics, Religion, and Gender. It is interesting to observe how she uses the androgynous planet Karhide in the story to highlight that gender is really not that important. The technological development in Karhide is also fascinating, where there is none. They have used the same truck for centuries! It works, so why develop something new. Genly Ai also comments on why Gethians have not been more successful when trying to develop an aeroplane, and he is wandering if the reason to this failure is that there are no birds on Gethen. This is not a feminist novel but a novel that accentuates how people interact, both in a positive and negative manner and put the emphasis on the individual no matter what gender.
Atwood, on the other hand, may have written what many call a political feminist novel which is rooted in social science fiction that highlights sociological speculation about society in our world. Here the meaning differ. The majority claims it to be what is already mentioned above, and also Atwood partly agree in this, but she tones down the feminist angle. Atwood has in several interviews, emphasized that Gilead’s extreme scenery is the product of the traditionalistic and feministic perspective that concurrently was being supported in society at the time she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. At best this is a much more complex view on feminism. When her themes are Power (power of language, power of the regime, and power of gender), Sexuality, Gender, The Individual’s Position in Society, and Feminism (Offred’s mother is a feminist), it may be easy to misinterpret what her intension is. In an interview in 1984 she says that although she is sympathetic to feminism, she does not program her writing to be feministic. Others say it belongs in speculative fictions, like many of her works. The reason for this disagreement may be caused by the fact that there are no exact boundaries or a set of rules in science fiction or its subgenres for what is and what is not allowed to write in a given genre. Atwood has become famous for her speculative fiction and is possibly expected to write just that. In earlier days her use of the expression "speculative fiction" caused much reaction from her own readers, but also other readers of science fiction responded to this. Both in writing and in interviews she made clear that her idea of this genre differs from science fiction. She had an understanding of science fiction as to be overflowing with Martians and journeys to other planets, and similar activities. Atwood gave the impression of looking at science fiction as lesser to speculative fiction and that science fiction’s only purpose is to entertain; while speculative fiction tries to leave the reader with second thoughts to his or her world based on the descriptions of events in the novel . In later interviews Atwood appears to have a more differentiated view on science fiction. This may be caused by the fact that this genre now has become more accepted as “real” literature. Another reason may be that as Le Guin she does not like to be categorized and put in a box.
Le Guin and Atwood are both using gender as one of their themes but in very different ways. In her novel Le Guin appear to be investigating the neuter world of Gethen; where sexual dissimilarities do not matter, yet, love and jealousy are present. It has been called a utopian novel, although the meaning differ, several authorities claim that this is not a perfect world and therefore can not be a utopia and Le Guin, herself, has never called her story utopian. There has never been a war on this planet, and Le Guin lets Genly’s commentaries about his stay at Gethen, declare that a reason for this is not explained. This may possibly be caused by the uniqueness of the Gethians that the absence of a strong gender separation also influences a necessary component of nationalism. It could, of course, be a consequence of the harsh climate as well, which restricts war to miniature conflicts by straightforward money matters. Also related, as mentioned before, is the slow pace of technological development as a comparison to our worlds very fast industrialization from the 1800s and up to our time. This may, as above, be related to the nonexistent male/female gender, but also be an effect of the small amount of raw materials on Gethen and/or the lack of ingenuity among the Gethians. One can argue that Le Guin has not looked at gender-related questions much in this novel and offers even less in the way of answers, but she emphasize individuality. For example the Gethians do not march in step; even so the outcome is not disharmony and confusion, like we would think if it happened in our world. On Gethen the result is human dignity, a kind of dignity that initiates from the respect for the individual. Le Guin is sending a very strong message about gender, that one should look at each other as individuals not gender related male or female. Gender is not important, individuals are! She also links this to Taoism and balance, where unity of the opposites is essential. The latter may be the reason for using androgynous humans in her story.
The novel was, as mentioned before, published in 1969, at the end of a very troubled decade. Le Guin had been witnessing the start of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the outbreak of the Vietnam War in the middle of the 1950s and, both were still active at the time she wrote the novel. The Women’s Liberation Movement and the Civil Rights Movement were dynamic in the 1960s and initiated many protest marches, which contributed to several Civil Right Acts. The movement of the counterculture in the same decade, where the youth rejected the conventional norms of the 1950s, their parents cultural standard, racial segregation, sexual mores, and initial wide-spread support of the Vietnam War. In the last years of the decade the more violent protest marches against the war in Vietnam took place. Several of the events are mirrored in her novel. Especially gender, war, race, and sexual differences. The topics of gender and war she relates in her book. Showing the reader that if one remove gender and relate to each other as individuals war can not happen. That humans start thinking of them selves as a nation she believes is a recipe for war. If gender was nonexistent we would also be living in a more just society. She has also, in several of her novels written about societies who have a different sexual agenda, but in The Left Hand of Darkness this is more related to gender than sexuality. In Le Guin’s novels one can also notice that the majority of her main characters are people of colour. She decided to do this because the coloured population in this world greatly outnumbers the white. The outer journey in her book is obvious, but the inner journey that Genly goes through is about acceptance, that we should see people for who they are and not what they are. In the novel Genly has trouble with acknowledging the androgynous inhabitants of Gethen being both man and woman. When they sit in their tent on the way back to Karhide he finally understands that Estraven acts the way he does because he is also a she. This can, of course, once again be linked to gender, but in addition connected to race and sexuality and that we must look at people as individuals, not as men and women, homosexuals, or as belonging to a particular race etc.
The approach to gender in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is very different from Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. In interviews Atwood has given, she says that this story is rooted in the time of the American Puritans who also was a theocratic society like Gilead. Since this time is dated so early in history a brief summary is required to fully understand the links from this society to Atwood’s novel. The name Puritans was used in the 1500s on those, within the Church of England, who had a more extreme Protestant view in how far the English Reformation should go in reforming the structure and policy of Catholicism. These people wanted to get rid of the “impurities” of the old system by excluding it completely from their new church. In the 1600s many of them immigrated to what they called the New World where they founded a holy Commonwealth in New England. The Puritans was the most important cultural influence in this part of the United States into the 19th century. Richard Mather and John Cotton was this society’s most known theocratic leaders. They believed that they where elected by God and therefore had the right, as well as duty, to control American national affairs and did so up till the end of the 1600s when they, because of political change had to give it up, but they still had substancual influence, and even today they are considered as a main player in American politic.
Moreover, she witnessed the rise of the fanatic Iranian monotheocracy of Ayatollah Khomeini in the beginning of the 1980s, where women actually lost all the rights they gained under the Shah of Iran, who was working for a more modern society. She also became gradually more conscious of statements made about women by conservatives in the United States, and for that matter, Europe, where they for example declared that a woman’s place is at home. In the beginning of the 1980s a much more conservative political view was getting acceptance. Ronald Reagan was elected president in USA and Margaret Thatcher became the prime minister of Britain, both very conservative. Atwood used these tendencies in society and mixed them with radical feminist proclamations such as women prefer other women’s company. Women also put domestic violence, rape, and pornography on the political agenda when they marched for more and better laws against violence against women in society. Atwood says about the book that she used the Puritans and its theocratic ruling, as well as Iran, as a model for Gilead and mixed it with the conservative point of view on women and the more extreme feministic statements at the time the novel was written and brought it to the furthermost futuristic conclusion. A theocratic society ruled by men, but it is dominantly a women’s world.
This is also a novel that raises the question about how far a society can go to protect itself from extinction at the cost of the individual. In Gilead the massive destruction of the environment and radiation has caused infertility in both men and women, although the women get the blame for it. Doctors who were so-called abortion doctors in earlier days are executed together with homosexuals. This mirrors the violent protests and actions against abortions and abortion clinics, mostly in the United States, but was also seen in Europe, although in the latter the actions were not as extreme as in US. Here doctors who worked in these clinics or were somehow associated with what they did potential victims of being shot, bombed, or beaten up. Several persons lost their lives as a result. Also in the 1980s many governments in the western part of the world became aware of the fact that the birth rates was not sufficient enough to keep the number of citizens at a stable level. In fact it was going down. In the same decade the newspapers brought disturbing reports about an increasing number of male sterility, birth defects, and spontaneous miscarriages all seemed to be caused by mainly toxic waste. Like in the book but here in a much larger scale.
In the interview with Random House’s book group in 1998, she says that she used the German model from World War II. When they took over a country they used the country’s own citizens to help control it, for example, as they did in Norway, Belgium, Yugoslavia, and Poland. In Gilead they use women to control other women, like the Aunts, who are responsible for the schooling and brainwashing of the Housemaids. These women have earlier been a part of the feminist revolution. The Aunts are focusing on the safety for women in this society, and it is true. There are no violent crimes against women in this monotheocratic system. That is if one does not look at what the system is doing to them. If the Handmaids do not want to cooperate they are severely beaten, then sent to families where these women are raped regularly; because their only purpose in life is to bear children. To read or write is forbidden, even what they eat is controlled to keep their bodies healthy and in shape for the pregnancies.
Gilead is also in a constant war, against, among others the Quakers, who, if caught, would be executed. Together with abortion doctors and homosexuals they are hanged on the brick wall of Harvard University, Massachusetts, where Atwood have placed Gilead. The Quakers, or as they call themselves, the Society of Friends began in England in the 17th century. Here, for a long period of time, they were prosecuted until King James of England, in the years 1687, -88, -89, first announced the Declaration of Indulgence and then, with his parliament agreed to the Toleration Act. Under this period the number of Quakers grew and expanded to, among other continents, the Americas. Here William Penn founded the state of Pennsylvania in 1682 as a place where they could worship in peace. The Quakers emphasize pacifism and social reform and have actively worked for the abolition of slavery (where they were a part of the “underground railroad”), equality for women (participated in this from the beginning), education and better conditions for prisoners and the mentally ill.(still active, and have founded several institutions). Members of this movement also participated and had key roles in the Industrial Revolution, however mainly in Britain and Pennsylvania. In their belief, is integrated that women are equal to men, after Jesus’ sacrifice . Also in the grim society of Gilead, the Quakers do what they have done before, running an underground railroad for women to Canada, just like they did for slaves in earlier times.
Margaret Atwood also wants to highlight the use of credit cards and show how easy it would be to get social control through the use of these. In the novel, this is how the dictators got control of the women. She also, by the way this novel is constructed, shows that this type of regime has existed several times up through our history and may well happen again. In an interview in the University of Rouen, Canada, she also said that The Handmaid’s Tale was an echo in modern time of the slave trade in earlier centuries. As for the historical part at the end of the book, where scholars discuss Gilead and its society, Atwood says that “the ways in which scholars (present as well as future) assemble the text of the past confirms the present and thereby helps to predict the future, even the horrific future endured by Offred.”
Le Guin does not focus on gender at all, in fact, she tells us in many different ways that the focus should be on the individual. She wants us to se people for who they are, not what they are. We must stop categorize persons into gender, race, sexual mores etc. Le Guin also thinks that the world would be a more just place if this could be realized. She also makes an effort to tell us that acceptance is the key to achieve this. She believes that war will not happen if we think as individuals instead of as a nation. This will probably never happen, but what she says is nevertheless, the truth.
Atwood is more gender related, but the diary of Offred, could just as well have been written by a man. One must not forget that men also were suppressed by this regime. Even the leaders, like Fred, the Commander Offred stays with, is frightened. Noone is safe and fear is part of every day life. Many men also try to fight the regime. Yet, women suffer the most.
Atwood’s novel is a warning against contemporary trends in the 1980s, but as she says history has already repeated itself and can very well do it again. The latter is also true; we have seen it in Iran and Afghanistan and we will probably see it again.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Aldous Huxley.” Authors Calendar. (Not dated). Retrieved 16 Oct. 2010.
http://www.Kirjasto.sci.fi/huxley.html
Atwood, Margaret. Genesis of The Handmaid’s Tale and the Role of the Historical Notes.
Canada: Publication of the University of Rouen, 1999. No. 253. 7-24.
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Põtschneck: GGP Media GmbH, 2008.
Broderick, Damien. “New Wave and backwash: 1960-1980.” The Cambridge Companion to
Science Fiction. Eds. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009. 48-62.
Doubleday. “An interview with Margaret Atwood on her novel The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Readers Companion to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. USA: Random House
Publishing Ltd. (not dated). Retrieved 26 Nov. 2010.
http://www.randomhouse.com/resources/bookgroup/handmaidstale_bgc.html.
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group,
2003
Harris-Fain, Darren. “Anything goes, 1993-2000.” Understanding Contemporary American
Science Fiction . Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South
Carolina Press, 2003. 154.
“Margaret Atwood.” Wikipedia Contributors. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopaedia, 16. Nov.
2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Margaret_Atwood&oldid=397200385
”Marge Piercy.”Author’s Calendar. (Not dated). Retrieved 16 Oct. 2010.
http://www.Kirjasto.sci.fi/margepiercy.htm
Merrick, Helen. “Gender in science fiction.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction.
Eds. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009. 241-251.
Potts, Robert. “Light in the Wilderness” The Guardian. 26 April 2003. Retrieved 21 Nov.
2010.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/apr/26/fiction.margaretatwood
“Puritanism.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. 2010. Retrieved 25 Nov. 2010.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/484034/Puritanism
Rass, Rebecca, Assistant Professor of English, Pace University, New York. Analysis of
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. (Not dated). Retrieved 22 Nov. 2010.
http://www.angelfire.com/ny/gaybooks/lefthandofdarkness.html.
“science fiction.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. 2010. Retrieved 20 Nov. 2010.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528857/science-fiction
“Society of Friends.” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. 2010. Retrieved 26 Nov. 2010.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/220221/Society-of-Friends
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar