Understanding how to read a utopian or dystopian is important and McBean compares these ideas and looks at how we have to look at the social and political systems surrounding the date these are published. “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 alternatives” (McBean 42). By looking at the feminist movements surrounding the publication of this novel, Piercy’s objective becomes clear. There are four main themes that she covers, while closer analysis could probably find even more. The biggest theme is the idea of gender equality, but she also spends a lot of time talking about race, sexuality and poverty. The majority of my data is based on the idea of gender inequality.
In the novel, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy argues it is impossible to achieve true gender equality while functioning in a capitalist society that has been built by men. She also shows that in order for a woman’s full potential to be reached, that money and the present ideas of “motherhood” are two critical ideas that must be taken out of the equation. This is proven in the initial response of the main character, Connie, to the ideas presented by the utopian and dystopian futures that she is introduced to. As well as the progression of her feelings toward the possibility of a future like the one she is shown by Luciente throughout the novel.
Connie is a Mexican American woman living in New York in the 1970’s, who has repeatedly been a victim of the racist, patriarchal and capitalist society she was born in to. She seems inevitably trapped in a painful cycle, from watching her mother be abused to being abused herself. When she finally gets the courage to run from that abuse she finds herself in poverty and incapable of finding stable enough work to support her daughter.
“Consuela, my given name. Consuela's a Mexican woman, a servant of servants, silent as clay. The woman who suffers. Who bears and endures. Then I'm Connie, who managed to get two years of college—
till Consuela got pregnant. Connie got decent jobs from time to time and fought welfare for a little extra money for Angie. She got me on a bus when I had to leave Chicago. But it was her who
married Eddie, she thought it was smart. Then I'm Conchita, the low-down drunken mean part of me who gets by in jail, in the bughouse, who loves no good men, who hurt my daughter…” (Piercy 129)
In this passage Piercy shows the inner struggles that Connie has faced in trying to make ends meet in a world that seems to constantly work against her. Each time she feels like she is finally making progress she finds herself in a battle with a man or with money.
Connie tries to convince her mother to come with her when she moves to New York, but her mom has been brainwashed by the patriarchal ideas that she is in the life she is destined. Her mother tells her, “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.” (Piercy 45) The fact that she is raised to believe that the only use for women in her society is to have babies and belong to a man show the struggles she faces in finding any independence. Connie’s mother almost died giving birth to her last baby, a male, who was stillborn. “They took her womb in the hospital. Afterward that was a curse Jesús threw in her face: no longer a woman. An empty shell” (Piercy44). In Connie’s present world these seem to be the ideologies that she is constantly running from.
She also comes to realize that she has more than just the fact that she is a woman stacked against her. She says, “It was a crime to be born poor, as it was a crime to be born brown” (Piercy62). The fact that her only glimpse of hope or happiness in her current world comes from her dependence on men, shows the constraints held on her by the society she is a part of. She and her mother were dependent on her abusive father. Then she marries Martin and is happy but he is killed in a police shootout. She believes Eddie is going to take care of her because he has money but she finds herself in an abusive situation like her mother that she just can’t fathom remaining in. She meets Claud, a blind African American musician and professional pickpocket when she goes to tell Eddie that she is pregnant with his baby. Then she has to depend on her brother Luis when Claud dies from experimental testing in prison. This and the fact that men seem to control all of the money in her life is how Piercy shows the desperation Connie feels when Angelina tears up her shoes.
Connie’s first trip to the “bughouse” or mental hospital is voluntary. She knows that she has hit rock bottom and the fact that she has injured her daughter because of this weighs heavily on her. She thinks that she is going to get help so that she can be a good mother and have the opportunity to start over but when she finally gets out she realizes that Angelina has been adopted out and her only chance at motherhood has been taken away. No money, no job and no hope for a family even when she is trying to take care of her niece Dolly and her daughter Nita. Dolly has been forced into prostitution by her pimp boyfriend Geraldo, and has wound up pregnant. She seems sure that the baby is his and wants to keep it so he will marry her and she won’t have to be a prostitute anymore. He tells her “You think I sweat bricks for the kid of some stupid trick with dragging balls? You don’t even know what color worm you got turning in that apple” (Piercy8). Dolly is another example of women not having control of even their own bodies when Geraldo brings the doctor from Mexico to perform a backdoor abortion. Connie in an attempt to save Dolly and her baby hits Geraldo in the face with a gallon wine jug and breaks his nose.
“She had struck out not at herself, not at herself in another, but at Geraldo, the enemy” (Piercy15). “Geraldo was her father who had beaten her every week of her childhood. Her second husband who had sent her into emergency with blood running down her legs. He was El Muro, who had raped her and then beaten her because she would not lie and say that she had enjoyed it” (Piercy9).
This lands her back in the mental hospital severely injured by the beatings she received from Geraldo and his men and in the lineup for experimental neurological testing. “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” (Piercy 308). At the hospital she isn’t deemed to be rational enough to have any realistic opinion of what happened and even Dolly is threatened to lie and say that Connie attacked them. “The doctor had not even interviewed her but had talked exclusively to Geraldo, exchanging only a word or two with Dolly” (Piercy12). Then when her brother Luis signs the paperwork at the hospital she realizes that any control she may have held in her life no longer exist, “Some truce had been negotiated between the two men over the bodies of their women” (Piercy 28). This is the point when Piercy establishes that something is going to have to be done to change things and Connie can’t do it alone.
Even though we’ve been briefly introduced to Luciente before this point in the novel, this moment is when she becomes important. This is when she is able to time travel with Connie to show her Mattapoisett, Massachusetts in 2137. When she first meets Luciente I think it is important to note that Connie thinks she is a man but, she says “He lacked the macho presence of men in her own family, nor did he have Claud’s massive strength, or Eddie’s edgy combativeness” (Piercy 33) In the present both men and women are significantly repressed by harsh stereotypes.“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” (McBean 52). Even Connie can’t the the constraints that she is placing on gender identity in regards to Luciente and possibly others that she has come into contact with. “Really he was girlish” (Piercy 38). She is extremely shocked and embarrassed when she realizes that Luciente is a “she”. Not only is she angry with herself because she found herself attracted to her, which in her time she would have been frowned upon and ridiculed. “‘You’re well muscled for a woman.’ In anger she turned on her heel and stalked a few paces away. A dyke, of course” (Piercy 68). Her response initially is to push Luciente away. “When Luciente 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” (Maciunas 252).
When Connie is trying to explain the situation of how she got put into the institution there is not only a language barrier but also confusion due to the difference in the way Luciente’s society functions. “Prostitution? I’ve read of this and seen a drama too about a person he sold per body to feed per family” (Piercy64)! Because selling of anything does not exist, the idea that someone would be forced to sell their body doesn’t make much sense. Even though they have heard of it the concept remains unclear. It also seems that Luciente is of the mindset that ‘why would someone buy something that could be given away freely’?
In this utopian future that Luciente takes Connie to there are a lot of things that she struggles to understand in the way things are done because of her upbringing. The biggest of these is that men and women all share equal roles in the community even when it comes to making what would seem like political decisions. It does not seem like this future has a structured government just the idea that everyone comes together and is given the opportunity to speak. “We have a five-minute limit on speeches. We figure that anything person can’t say in five minutes, person is better off not saying” (Piercy161). Luciente explains that it is a planning council “Chosen by lot. You do it for a year: threemonth with the rep before you and three with the person replacing you and six alone” (Piercy161). Although originally skeptical Connie realizes after watching the process that it is a more efficient consideration of the communities needs and resources. Everyone seems to care about the needs of everyone else and because of the lack of a monetary system the greediness of people is subdued. “We don’t buy or sell anything” (Piercy64), Luciente explains. They realize that the only way to arrive at a solution is to compromise and therefore they tend to work their problems out on their own.
When it comes to sex Connie is even more confused. She has friends that she has met in the institution who have been persecuted for their sexuality. Sybil has been regarded as a lesbian by the hospital staff, while Connie knows her true feelings about sex. “Who wants to be a hole?... Do you want to be a dumb hole people push things in or rub against?” (Piercy 87). While the sexual encounters in Mattapoisett seem more strange because they only do so out of pleasure; “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?” (Piercy64). Connie has been raped and abused throughout her life and likely doesn’t understand why anyone would have sex with multiple partners just out of pleasure. Luciente tries to how their ability to have relationships with whomever they wish makes the coupling more enjoyable. Rather than finding one individual who is incapable of meeting all of your needs and having to sacrifice those needs for love or security. They don’t have to depend on their partners to provide support and they are able to pursue personal needs from multiple individuals typically without fear of jealousy. They also don’t have to live with one another, “We each have our own space! Only babies share space!” (Piercy 73), and Piercy seems to be saying that they are able to have a lot more peace and unity.
Another important fact about Mattapoisett is that babies are not born to individuals. In Connie’s present the stress of motherhood causes women a lot of hardship and pain, whereas the babies here are fed and born by a brooder. “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” (26). Connie is appalled by the idea that a machine is giving birth and feels that the women must feel cheated out of motherhood and even more so when she finds out that men are allowed to “mother” as well. She describes the babies of Mattapoisett as “bland bottleborn monsters of the future, born without pain, multicolored like a litter of puppies without the stigmata of race and sex” (Piercy 98). Then later gets angry again; “How can men be mothers! How can some kid who isn’t related to you be your child?” (Piercy 274) Connie is angry and this is the most difficult concept for her to grasp ahold of during her trips to the future. “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” (Trainor 32). With this Piercy makes a strong argument that even though this idea may be difficult for a lot of women to make sense of, because they enjoy the responsibility of giving birth and raising children. It may be complicated to accept the idea that it would be a beneficial choice for the whole of the community and the betterment of the future. Luciente says
“Birth! Birth! Birth!... That’s all you can dream about! Our dignity comes from work. Everyone raises the kids, haven’t you noticed? Romance, sex, birth, children--that’s what you fasten on. Yet that
isn’t women’s business anymore. It’s everybody’s” (Piercy 274).
Shortly he follows with “The need exist. I serve the need. After me the need will still exist and the need will be served. Let me do well what has and will be done as well by others. Let me take on the role and then let it go” (Piercy 275). This is happening when Connie has escaped the institution and she is trying to run away. It is possible that Piercy is trying to show that Connie is not only running from imprisonment of the hospital but also the imprisonment of the ideologies that she has lived under her entire life. Even with this revelation she is captured and taken back to the hospital where the doctors finally implant the device into her brain. This physical change alters her ability to meet with Luciente and sends her to an alternative dystopian future.
In this dystopia, Connie meets Gildina, who is a woman “contracty”. Women are property to be held under contract for any given amount of time and are subjected to be dismissed for any reason.
“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” (Piercy 316).
They must fulfil any duties given in the contract and while they are paid for their “labor” they have no ownership of any property or possessions. Piercy only designates fifteen pages to this part of the novel. She seems to be showing with the comparisons to Dolly’s prostitution that this future is not far off from where Connie currently lives. In this future beauty is even more important and when she is greeted by Gildina her feelings are hurt, “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” (Piercy 314). This future is described as being “Segregated and Guarded” (Piercy 314) where everyone has a strict place that cannot be altered. The complete opposite of Mattapoisett. Even the groups designated for reproduction are looked down upon and seem to have a poor lot in life; “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” (Piercy 316). It is possible that this vision allows Connie to see the benefits of having the responsibility of childbirth taken off of women makes motherhood easier. Also the life expectancy is much shorter in this dystopia than it is in Connie’s time or especially in Mattapoisett where people mostly die old and happy surrounded by family and friends, Gildina says “She must have been forty-three. How long do you suppose to live? Only the richies live longer, it’s in their genes” (Piercy 317).
In her novel Piercy makes it seem that she is giving Connie several choices to make by showing her these alternative futures. She shows that by women allowing themselves to be continuously treated as property that they will eventually become just that, while if they push for equality that it is something achievable and something that could make humanity prosper. Luciente shows Connie that by taking the distinction out of gender and allowing people to participate in society where they feel the most useful they have a more prosperous community. One where sex is not a job or a duty but one in which people are able to find enjoyment, pleasure and companionship. Race is something in Mattapoisett that doesn’t segregate people but brings them together in unity. Poverty doesn’t exist in Mattapoisett because there is no such thing as money. Goods are traded according to need and while no one is wealthy there is also no one that is suffering in their communities. Connie has suffered greatly from Poverty and this is probably the most desirable concept to her. She sees this as the reason she lost her daughter and had money not been an issue she may have still had Angelina with her. By the end unfortunately it is unclear if Connie is able to make any choices that would lead her in the direction of either of these futures but Piercy makes a strong argument that the way out of this society would be to take the idea of money and motherhood out of the equation in order to make sure that women are treated as equals in society.
Works Cited
Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time. Ballantine Books, 2016. originally published in 1976
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.
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.
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.
