Introduction
Due to the fact that I just changed my fake thesis topic on Monday this is going to be an extremely rough draft. However I have high hopes that by December 12th this will be an immaculate work of art that even Dr. Vrooman will be proud of. I’ve recently read a novel by Marge Piercy Woman on the Edge of Time and ultimately it has changed my life. Why you say, well it kind of combined an array of the types of literature that I thought I liked with the literature that my professors over the last three years have been trying to get me to make sense of. I didn't really expect to enjoy this novel even though I chose it to do a discovery project on during my Women Writers class with Dr. Johnston. My goal was to survive it as it was my last reading assignment before graduation. However after being introduced to Connie, a 37 year old hispanic mother living in poverty in New York, who is repeatedly abused by the patriarchal systems of the 1970’s and the idea that by either refusing to submit to a literal rewiring of the brain by male doctors in a mental institution or giving up on life, she had the power to choose a possible future for the world, I have found that there may be hope for me yet (I do understand that this sentence is in need of some punctuation but I will have to further seek advice from one Dr. Pamela Johnston to see where to put some commas, as Chelsea Box was unavailable at this time). The novel finally made me understand the purpose behind second wave feminism as I was kind of born right after all of the excitement of this decade but it totally explains why my dad has called my mom “Princess” all my life. Anyway, back to Connie, since I got sidetracked for a bit. For the majority of the novel Connie is a resident of 3 separate mental institutions in New York. This is her second visit however her first was voluntary (sort of) after she injures her daughter during a bout of depression following the death of her third husband.
Literature Review
These are the sources that I have made it through so far. I will attach the annotated list to this which also is not complete but has the quotes from these sources that I think will be relevant to making an argument. I will get through the rest of them by this weekend. And I just realized that I used the page numbers for the pdf and not the page numbers of the actual document itself. I will fix that as well.
McBean, Sam. “Feminism and Futurity: Revisiting Marge Piercy's ‘Woman on the Edge of Time.’” Feminist Review, no. 107, 2014, pp. 37–56., www.jstor.org/stable/24571888.
“feminism and futurity: revisiting Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time.”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24571888?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
“This article moves away from a reading of Piercy's text as a fictional exploration of the concerns of second wave feminism to consider instead how it might be placed in dialogue with contemporary feminist and queer theorising on the relationship between futurity and the past. In my reading, Woman on the Edge of Time not only functions as a critique of the present through the Utopian genre, but also brings loss, mourning, haunting and futurity into close contact with each other—so that Connie's past losses are formative and productive of the future” (5)
“In opposition to over-arching theories of Utopia as a distant or perfect world, these arguments emphasise Utopia as a discursive practice of imagining historically specific and situated alternative” (7)
“In the time travel between Connie and Luciente, this split temporality is represented through a queer touch, so that Connie's contact with the future necessarily shakes her erotic present” (17)
“In thinking about time in feminism, Woman on the Edge of Time is an example of the various ways desires, attachments and political dreams cross temporal boundaries, blurring these bound” (18)
Maciunas, Billie. “Feminist Epistemology in Piercy’s Women on the Edge of Time.” Women’s Studies, vol. 20, no. 3/4, Jan. 1992, p. 249. EBSCOhost, bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5832856&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
“Feminist Epistemology in Piercy’s Women on the Edge of Time.”
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=5832856&site=ehost-live&scope=site
“For Harding, science-as-usual, while functioning under cover of a supposed value-neutral ethics, is inherently sexist, racist and classist.” (1)
“When Lucienty first appears to Connie she is mistaken for a man… By Contrast, women in Connie’s world are absurdly socialized according to men’s conceptions of their reality” (4)
“Piercy shows, too the contradiction inherent in the socialization of women strictly for motherhood. Connie and her niece can afford to raise their children only at the cost of dependence on men who are for the most part abusive” (5)
“As soon as Connie has poisoned the doctors, she understands that she is no longer receptive to Luciente’s world. Piercy thus seems to conclude that the possibility of the world that she imagines is closed off by violence.” (9)
Trainor, Kim. “‘What Her Soul Could Imagine’: Envisioning Human Flourishing in Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time.” Contemporary Justice Review, vol. 8, no. 1, Mar. 2005, pp. 25–38. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/10282580500044143.
“‘What Her Soul Could Imagine’: Envisioning Human Flourishing in Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time.”
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=16358189&site=ehost-live&scope=site
“I argue that the opposition of a dystopian and utopian world in this novel asks
the reader to imagine first a diminishing and then a flourishing of her own human capa-
bilities and that, in this imagining, she gains essential insight in order to participate in
debates surrounding social justice” (1)
As she reviews the events of her life, she recognizes that “She had had too little of what her body needed and too
little of what her soul could imagine” (p. 274). What her soul could imagine is
Mattapoisett, the village community of the year 2137 to which Connie time-travels, a
community in which individuals are treated not as tools to serve other people’s ends,
but as ends in themselves. (2)
It is explained that this development was necessary in order to achieve equality
between the sexes. Connie expresses distaste for the artificial breeding of children, the
“bland bottleborn monsters of the future, born without pain, multicolored like a litter
of puppies without the stigmata of race and sex” (p. 98). Both men and women can
mother and breastfeed, while men and women work in all the same jobs and activities
and wear similar clothes. The personal pronouns that distinguish gender have been
Eliminated. (8)
The contrast with the visionary world of Mattapoisett is stark. As readers, we are
alerted to the difference in this newly imagined society when Luciente looks directly at
Connie as opposed to seeing right through her as the doctors and the case workers do.
Some of her first words to Connie are: “I see you as a being with many sores, wounds,
undischarged anger but basically good and wide open to others” (p. 49). Here, the
human potential which is discarded as garbage, tool, and test experiment is recognized
and nourished. (13)
In the utopian future of Mattapoisett she is recognized as an end in herself where all individuals have the opportunity to flourish.(14)
Afnan, Elham. “Chaos and Utopia: Social Transformation in Woman on the Edge of Time.” Extrapolation (Kent State University Press), vol. 37, no. 4, Winter 1996, pp. 330–340. EBSCOhost, bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=94625&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Chaos and Utopia: Social Transformation in Woman on the Edge of Time
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=94625&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Thomas More exploited the contradiction inherent in the term when he chose the title for his account of the imaginary island that enjoyed perfection in laws, politics, and economy. However, this paradox has also helped create a dichotomy with far-reaching consequences for modem readers for whom Utopia is often synonymous either with totalitarian social engineering or with impractical wishful thinking. Utopian works are often denigrate or dismissed as unrealistic and dull because readers insist on approaching them as either blueprints for creating a perfect, and therefore static, society or as purely fictional works of imagination that can be realized "nowhere." (1)
Luciente's role is analogous to that of the author: both of them not only present the distinguishing features of a new society, but they also try to stimulate in their auditor/reader the activism that will bring that society into being. (4)
Clearly concepts of order, particularly order concealed within or arising out of disorder, are central to the creation of a Utopian society. Chaos theory offers an understanding of the dynamics of emergent order that is applicable not only to physical systems but also, analogically, to cultural situations. Of particular relevance to Woman on the Edge of Time is the idea of the boundary between order and chaos. Gleick describes a computer program that generates fractal shapes by saying that "the boundary is where [it] spends most of its time and makes all of its compromises." The boundary serves as a threshold where the system "chooses between competing options" (Gleick 232-33). Connie spends much of her time in the novel in a similar region as she crosses and recrosses the "edge of time" separating her from Utopia (9)
These are the rest of my sources that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ve strictly read the title and abstract but not the substance.
Ethics, Reproduction, Utopia: Gender and Childbearing in "Woman on the Edge of Time" and "The Left Hand of Darkness"
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4316482?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9502011103&site=ehost-live&scope=site
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=74628745&site=ehost-live&scope=site
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=160183&site=ehost-live&scope=site
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=26602135&site=ehost-live&scope=site
http://bulldogs.tlu.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=7389869&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Methods
As of right now my methods have consisted of trying to pick through the large amounts of feminist information. Dr. Johnston recommended taking a look at the idea that Connie has trouble accepting some of the values of Mattapoisett due to her more traditional values and the constraints that had been placed on women in her time. I’m seeing some discussion in that direction but I’m not sure if that has already been discussed or if I might be able to add something to it.
Data Analysis
Connie’s Current World:
Middle and upper class men have authority
“The doctor had not even interviewed her but had talked exclusively to Geraldo, exchanging only a word or two with Dolly” (12).
“She had struck out not at herself, not at herself in another, but at Geraldo, the enemy” (15).
“Some truce had been negotiated between the two med over the bodies of their women” (28).
“You’ll do what women do. You’ll pay your debt to your family for your blood.” “Nothing in life but having babies and cooking and keeping the house.” “There’s nothing for a woman to see but troubles.” (45)
“It was a crime to be born poor, as it was a crime to be born brown” (62).
“Prostitution? I’ve read of this and seen a drama too about a person he sold per body to feed per family!” (64)
“From an early age she had been told that what she felt was unreal and didn’t matter. Now they were about to place her in something that would rule her feelings like a thermostat” (308).
Connie’s Utopian Future:
Decisions are made in unity: men and women are equal
“The face of the young Indio smiling, beckoning, curiously gentle. He (Luciente) lacked the macho presence of the men in her own family” (33). “Really he was girlish” (38)
“We don’t buy or sell anything.” “Fasure we couple. Not for money, not for a living. For love, for pleasure, for relief, out of habit, out of curiosity and lust. Like you, no?” (64)
“Now she could begin to see him/her as a woman. Smooth hairless cheeks, shoulder length black hair, and the same gentle Indian face.” “You’re well muscled for a woman.” (68)
“We each have our own space! Only babies share space!” (73)
Connie’s Dystopian Future:
Women are property to be held under contract
Only 15 pages
“Segregated and Guarded” “Nobody would take you for a contracty… If you’ve ever had a beauty-op, you’ve reverted… When I was fifteen I was selected, and I’m still on the fully shots and re-ops.” (314)
“All the flacks make contracts. Contract sex. It means you agree to put out for so long for so much. You know? Like I have a two-year contract. Some girls got only a one-nighter or monthly, that’s standard. You can be out on your ear at the end of a month with only a days notice… Course once in a while some real bulger ends up with a ten-year contract. I’ve never met one, but I’ve heard of them” (316).
“I’ve never had a contract call for a kid. Mostly the mom’s have them. You know they’re cored to make babies all the time. Ugh, they’re so fat” (316).
“She must have been forty-three. How long do you suppose to live? Only the richies live longer, it’s in their genes” (317)
Conclusion
Obviously at this point I do not have a conclusion but I will by next week. I’m feeling accomplished. Sorry I prioritized preparing for my interview and submitting two job applications over this assignment.
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