Woman on the Edge of Time

[user1599918528]

Just finished reading this book and wanted to see what others' thought. For a book written in the 70s, it is amazingly (depressingly?) relevant time today. All of the different forms of discrimination flowing from uneven power structures - sex, wealth, race, colour, mental health - as well as utopian and dystopian futures.

I was fascinated by the utopian future - where babies are born in 'brooder', men and women can breastfeed, pronouns for everyone are per/person'. I know that doesn't sound utopian on the face of it (especially now, given the MRA situation) but just goes to show wider context is everything. Where gender stereotypes are truly demolished, power is shared and people are valued for their individuality. Dystopian future on the other hand is depressingly foreseeable - woman are 'fems' valued for their surgically enhanced bodies, only good for sex, are owned by whoever buys their contract, and the world is owned by multi national corporations.

Has anyone else read it? Interested in other thoughts.

I read it last year - a very interesting if uneven book. Often darkly funny I thought.

The dystopian future was interesting because the description of the women in it sounded just like the current Kardashian 'ideal' of slim but somehow overinflated, like a blow-up doll.

It's a very long time since I read it and all I can remember are the 'kenners' which are what we'd now call smart phones.

Marge Pierce? I remember reading it in the 80s - and 'Braided Lives'. Can't remember enough about either book to discuss now I'm afraid but they resonated with me at the time.

I won't pretend Ican remember

Soz - damn phone didn't delete!

Yes, I read it recently and there are so many comparisons that can be drawn with today, it feels like a very contemporary novel.

It's an amazing book. I read it a couple of decades ago and keep meaning to revisit it. I remember thinking the utopia was really utopian and I found the stuff in the character's own timeline to be shocking and realistic. A really brilliant book.

I read it about 30 years ago, it's fantastic. I really need to get a copy and read it again. It's one I've never forgotten.

No disprespect to the book as I know that Marge Piercy is a well respected writer.

But at that time a lot of this was common. We thought that part of what Women's Liberation was doing was dismantling "gender".

Have you read Ursula Le Quin - sort of feminist SF?

And on the political level this is partly what Shulamith Firestone was talking about on a political level. The Dialectic of Sex.

So maybe when Margaret Atwood wrote the Handmaid's Tale a few years later, she realised the patriarchy wasn't going to let feminist politics form the future. The patriarchy would strike back!

It sounds interesting, but to me the idea that we erase the biological differences between men and women is pretty dystopian, and represents a sort of hatred of differences and the body. I remember those ideas being very popuar and they influenced a lot of feminists, not for the better IMO.

I read this as a teenager and it's remained one of my favourite books.

However, one of the main things that occurred to me when reading it is that a lot of people in that supposedly utopian society came across as incredibly sanctimonious. For such an intellectual society, you'd have thought they'd know enough about history so that concepts such as private car ownership didn't reduce them to tears.

I definitely went through a time where I thought the differences between men and women should be erased or didn't even exist. This is going back thirty years. I kind of get that way of thinking that says 'there are no bio differences' or 'bio differences are just sexism' because I definitely felt that way for a time, and I guess that was both the influence of feminism as it was then, and my own sense of how fucking unfair life was for girls and women. I also thought that there were no differences between men and women except for basic biology, and I still kind of believe that, although I accept that there are probably genetic traits in certain behaviours.

So I wonder if I would read this book differently now. But when I read it, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I do want to read it again. It's extremely well written.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin also has this idea of sex-fluidity, with an alien race who can be both male and female. It sounds very 'woke' in today's context but actually it's completely brilliant. I never read it as a feminist text. I think her novel The Dispossessed is more feminist as it contrasts a society where women are equal (though still in no way a utopia) with one way more like our own. Also very worth reading.

I read this very recently for the first time, and I have to say I didn't "like" it as such. It really unsettled me. I've read several other Marge Piercy books which I absolutely love so I was quite surprised at how I felt about it.
I think now that we're living through the reality of the attempt to dismantle the biological differences between men and women, and the affect that it is having on women as a class that I found it hard to stomach that this was something to be celebrated in the book.
I found myself wondering the whole time I was reading it how the author feels about the identity politics of today, and what her views are on trans issues. (And slightly afraid that she would be of the TWAW view, which would disappoint me)
I wouldnt know much when it comes to academic feminism so I'm sure the book would probably make more sense to me if I did, going by previous comments on this thread.

Read this as a student and really liked it. At that age (19?) I thought the whole idea of taking pregnancy and birth from women and reproducing using technology and everyone being androgynous was brilliant and represented freedom. But, I had a friend who was a mature student, a mother, and she had a different take! We had a good discussion about how taking women’s ability to bear and birth children didn’t represent freedom, about nature/technology, humans relationship with both.
Suffice to say, I think my opinion now at 55 isn’t the same as at 19 ( although I never wanted and never had children).

But I think it also demonstrates how important it is that different generations of women can discuss feminist issues, and well seen I still remember that conversation 35 years later. Having an older feminist’s perspective really helped me think about issues. Obviously at 19 I was much more self involved and had the arrogance of youth (which is fine, as long as you grow out of it!). We don’t seem to have a generation of young women who will engage with us (not all, of course).

And probably means the book did what a good book should do - got people to have interesting discussion on its themes. And thank god for mature female student in my class.

@queenofknives

I definitely went through a time where I thought the differences between men and women should be erased or didn't even exist. This is going back thirty years. I kind of get that way of thinking that says 'there are no bio differences' or 'bio differences are just sexism' because I definitely felt that way for a time, and I guess that was both the influence of feminism as it was then, and my own sense of how fucking unfair life was for girls and women. I also thought that there were no differences between men and women except for basic biology, and I still kind of believe that, although I accept that there are probably genetic traits in certain behaviours.

So I wonder if I would read this book differently now. But when I read it, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I do want to read it again. It's extremely well written.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin also has this idea of sex-fluidity, with an alien race who can be both male and female. It sounds very 'woke' in today's context but actually it's completely brilliant. I never read it as a feminist text. I think her novel The Dispossessed is more feminist as it contrasts a society where women are equal (though still in no way a utopia) with one way more like our own. Also very worth reading.

I love The Left Hand of Darkness. I think by making the race alien though, it's not suggested that removing sexual dimorphism is somehow better or something to aspire to. It's a way of exploring how sex affects social dynamics and structures at a deep level, without implying that we could or should necessarily try and achieve something similar.

Yes - I think that's why it never came across to me as a feminist or political novel. It was able to explore sexual politics on a level more fundamental than politics. If that makes sense.

Le Guin was a genius, though, so I guess that's the sort of thing a genius can get away with! If you haven't read The Dispossessed, I highly recommend it.

I first read ‘woman on the edge of time’ at university too. I have reread it a few times since and lots of it has really stuck with me.
I definitely agree that a lot of the themes in it are, depressingly, even more relevant now than when it was written. The woman from the dystopian future is 100% a Kardashian type!
I was also depressed on rereading recently to realise that I am now older than poor old, past her best Connie the main character. When I first read it at 19 she seemed so old and broken down by life. She is 37!

I read it about 20 years ago and at the time thought “shit! That’s where we are now!” with the dystopian bit but now, wow! Even more so!

That’s what stuck with me the most.

@queenofknives

Yes - I think that's why it never came across to me as a feminist or political novel. It was able to explore sexual politics on a level more fundamental than politics. If that makes sense.

Le Guin was a genius, though, so I guess that's the sort of thing a genius can get away with! If you haven't read The Dispossessed, I highly recommend it.

I reread The Dispossed every few years.

I think it's a bit of a hallmark of books of that caliber that you don't always know what the authors opinion of it all is, from the text. It seems like there is an honest and truthful depiction of connections going on, not some kind of propaganda piece.

The sexual politics in The Dispossed are interesting in a lot of ways, and it's not always clear that the more egalitarian society isn't missing something that most of us might like to have.

Definitely. It's one of my favourite books for precisely those reasons.

There's quite a bit of great SF by women which touches on feminist themes. I'm thinking of James Tiptree, Joanna Russ, Lisa Tuttle and others.

Actually Joanna Russ' book The Female Man is probably relevant here. Another experiment in gender fluidity but from a very firm feminist stance. I never really got on with that. But Russ was also responsible for the great little book called How To Suppress Women's Writing, which is still worth a read.

Interesting, thanks. That does make sense about the timing of the book and the idea that dismantling gender is the ideal. Good point too about how the handmaids take could be seen as a what might happen in response if there was a true uprising in a patriarchal society.

I'm definitely going to read a Le Guin book.