A textual example of feminist science fiction is Octavia Octavia Butler’s, Bloodchild, which challenges conventional roles in sexual reproduction. The story is set on an alien planet, where humans have fled in the wake of a dystopian catastrophe on Earth. An alien race known as the Tlic have set up “Preserves” for humans to live, on the condition that each family provides one male to act as a host for the Tlic’s young. T’Gatoi is the matriarchal figure in charge of the Preserve. A young boy named Gan was promised by his mother to fulfill such a role. Gan’s character is parallel to what we consider a woman in our society. Women are typically the bearers of offspring; however, Butler makes a deliberate choice to give males this role. The thought of males in our society being subject to such action is almost unthinkable. Furthermore, the pain of childbirth is not familiar to men. This familiar female experience is mimicked through the painful removal of Tlic grubs from the host males. Butler’s choice to reverse gender roles presents the reader with the opportunity to consider how gender is …show more content…
Octavia Butler’s twist on gender constructs is in line with this notion. The more far-fetched the idea is the more readers will contemplate the idea. In reading this text, I did not question the validity of Gan acting as a reproductive host. I dissociated the Tlic world from my own and expected such a thing to be plausible. The Tlic’s societal construct was familiar enough for me to understand the plot, but different enough that I did not question the obvious differences to my own society. Butler capitalizes on cognitive estrangement effectively. Bloodchild serves as textual evidence of the ability of the SF genre to subvert normative gender roles, particularly sexual
By definition, survival is to continue to live in spite of challenging circumstances. Survival is an instinct that everyone has and people are usually compelled to make tough decisions in order to survive. What happens when those decisions could be pernicious to innocent people and even ruin their lives? Octavia Butler explores this idea in her novel Kindred. The main character Dana Franklin is forced to make some complex decisions in order to survive. Dana is sent back in time to the 1800s to help a little boy. She soon discovers that the little boy is actually Rufus Weylin, her ancestor and she must continue to help him in complicated situations throughout his life because without him she will never come into existence. She goes back and forth between the Antebellum South and her home in 1976 and even brings her husband along. In Kindred, Butler uses Dana’s choices to explore the idea of survival and how people handle the difficult
The book follows Dana who is thrown back in time to live in a plantation during the height of slavery. The story in part explores slavery through the eye of an observer. Dana and even Kevin may have been living in the past, but they were not active members. Initially, they were just strangers who seemed to have just landed in to an ongoing play. As Dana puts it, they "were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors." (Page 98). The author creates a scenario where a woman from modern times finds herself thrust into slavery by account of her being in a period where blacks could never be anything else but slaves. The author draws a picture of two parallel times. From this parallel setting based on what Dana goes through as a slave and her experiences in the present times, readers can be able to make comparison between the two times. The reader can be able to trace how far perceptions towards women, blacks and family relations have come. The book therefore shows that even as time goes by, mankind still faces the same challenges, but takes on a reflection based on the prevailing period.
Irigaray, Luce. "This Sex Which Is Not One." Feminism: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndle. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991.
Butler, Judith. "Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion." Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge, 1993. 121-140.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dracula by Bram Stoker, both nineteenth century texts, present women and their roles within society at that time as one of subservience to their male counterparts. Women had no independent means of subsistence, and were obliged to follow the conventions set by men.
In both Neuromancer and Dawn other characters use gendered stereotypes to devalue both Lilith and Molly’s gender. Both women support multiple physical enhancements that serve to push them more into the masculine by enhancing their strength. Through these enhancements characters not only take Lilith and Molly out of the female gender role but take them entirely out of the female identity. Both women are dehumanized as unnatural. Case and Molly meet a man named Terzibashjian who remarks on Molly: “‘In Turkey, women are still women. This one...’ The Finn snorted. ‘She’d have you wearing your balls for a bow tie if you looked at her crosseyed’” (Gibson 87). Terzibashjian takes Molly out of the female category because of her augmentations. She doesn’t act or present in the same way as the traditional woman in his society. He uses this to take away her humanity and her female identity. The gender roles of his society make Terzibashjian think this way. In this way gender roles have influence the way other characters interact with these powerful women.
The novel 'The Chrysalids' explains the journey of a young boy, David Strorm, who has telepathic abilities despite living in an anti-mutant society Waknuk. He begins to question and arises doubts as to whether the laws set in Waknuk could be wrong. There are several female characters involved in David's life and through these women we could see that the women in the novel act as bystanders, protectors and are used just for the purpose of 'pure' reproducton.
The feminist perspective of looking at a work of literature includes examining how both sexes are portrayed
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
In the mid-nineteenth century, many American men based the worth of a person primarily on his or her race and gender. Kate Chopin often wrote about topics that were extremely sensitive during her lifetime. Men were usually pictured as the person who earns money for the family, as well as the well-educated and the sole structure of the family. Women are illustrated as sensitive, sweet, caring, and faithful. In “Desiree’s Baby,” a short story by Kate Chopin, there are three major themes: identity, racism, and gender roles.
Society continually places specific and often restrictive standards on the female gender. While modern women have overcome many unfair prejudices, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were forced to deal with a less than understanding culture. Different people had various ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities, including expressing themselves through literature. By writing a fictional story, authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James were given the opportunity to let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic.
Blum, Deborah. “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Signs of Life In the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.
In a society where the focus on equality amongst different races, religions and sexes continues to grow, it is no surprise that literature has begun to follow suit. Publishers have seen a rise in strong, capable female protagonists who overcome a variety of struggles to save themselves or others and both teens and adults alike rush to get their hands on this material. With such popular literary works to choose from, it seems strange that many schools continue to rely on somewhat archaic material that mistreats and degrades so many women. In John Steinbeck 's Of Mice and Men, for example, the only female character the reader interacts with is treated like a lower-class prostitute who is ultimately killed off due to her seductive behavior. Though Steinbeck 's treatment of women comes mainly from classic gender roles, his portrayal of female characters in Of Mice and Men is
One definition of gender is the membership of a word or grammatical form, or an inflectional form showing membership, in such a class. Gender critics take masculinity and feminism, as well as male and female, and use those theories to analyze writings. In books, or other writings, masculinity and feminism are used in order to describe how a character is seen by other characters. Feminism is the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. It is also a feminine character. After the women’s rights movement, women began to write works and put in their own views and beliefs. This era became known as the feminist writing era. Women felt that by writing their feelings and then getting their works published, that people would see why women should be equal to men.
Mary Shelley, the author of the novel Frankenstein grew up in the early 1800’s with her father, a radical philosopher that believed in the equality of the sexes, and her mother, a vindicator of women’s rights. Shelley followed the footsteps of her parents and became a strong feminist advocate, and supporter of gender equality. The development of her novel granted her with the opportunity to express her feminist ideologies in a subtle, and realistic way, unlike any other authors during her time period. Thus, in the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley incorporates her feminist beliefs with the purpose of portraying the realities of a woman’s life during the early 1800’s.