I need to begin with a disclaimer: I am not an accomplished
feminism scholar. I haven’t studied the theory at any great length, nor can I
name drop like it’s yesterday’s business. However, having read the four short
stories for today’s class, I find it almost impossible not to comment on the
positioning, treatment, and absence of women in Campbell’s ”Twilight,” del
Ray’s “Helen O’Loy,” Godwin’s “The Cold Equations,” and Moore’s “No Woman
Born.”
Let’s break down the initial situations: in “Twilight,”
we’ve got a situation of female absence. The narrator (Bart) is male, the
storyteller (Bendell) is male, and Ares (the “hitchhiker”) is male. The human
representatives Ares finds seven million years in the future are predominately
male—and the only future human to be named is male. “Twilight” is the easiest
story to position, gender-wise: there are only men. I admit that women are
mentioned in passing, as the humans seven million years from now continue to
procreate (sexually, I assume), but at a much slower rate.
In “Helen O’Loy,” there is no shortage of women. Strike
that: there is no shortage of robotic women.
There is Helen, the titular character, and Lena,
a less-advanced robot. Granted, there is Mrs. van Syler and the servant girl
her son is infatuated with, but they do little more than occupy a topic of
conversation.
“No Woman Born” is somewhat akin to “Helen O’Loy,” as Deirdre
is a cyborg created to give continued life to a relatively recently deceased
woman. The human Deirdre’s brain is given new life in the android Deirdre’s
body.
“The Cold Equations” has Marilyn Lee Cross, the eighteen
year old stowaway on board the EDS. Marilyn is a fully functional, natural
human.
Now let’s break each down a little further: Lena and Helen in “Helen O’Loy” are complete objects. Lena, as a less functional robot, doesn’t cut the order
for her “masters.” As such, and probably because of this, she is essentially
sold (as property) to pay off the debts accrued in acquiring Helen. Lena is chattel—she’s a slave. She’s also a robot, with
much less humanity than Helen. But still.
Helen, on the other hand, is so much a human that she loves
Dave entirely. In fact, both Dave and Phil love her back—Dave marries her and
Phil pines for her silently until she and Dave are dead. In this instance,
although Helen functions as a full member of society as Dave’s wife, she owes
her existence to Dave and Phil: they changed her initial intention and
programming, bringing her “to life.” This is, of course, reminiscent of
patriarchal control—Helen never makes her own decisions, nor is she ever really
allowed to.
Deirdre also owes her continued existence to a man: Maltzer.
However, unlike Helen, Deirdre has not
been created to mimic a docile, servant-of-a-wife. As a visually un-human cyborg, she does not look like a woman: her face is a blank mask devoid of
mouth, nose, eyes, ears. However, where Helen and Lena
are forced to live under the whims of men, Deirdre rises beyond her creative
parameters and becomes, as she states, “superhuman.” In this instance, Deirdre
overcomes the patriarchy to assert her new-found strength. Maltzer cannot even
commit suicide in her presence. She denies him the action. Where Deirdre goes
as a “free” woman, we aren’t told: the story ends with open possibility.
Marilyn Lee Cross does not have nearly as hopeful an end as
Deirdre. In many ways, Marilyn is dehumanized beyond Deirdre, Helen, or even Lena. It is interesting that Marilyn’s position as a
“girl” ensures her prolonged existence—Barton would have forced her into the
space lock or shot her for resisting had she been a male. So in one sense, her
being a woman saved her, but only temporarily. Regardless of this pity (based
mostly on sex, although her youth plays a part—also linked to sex, I’m sure),
she still falls subject to the rules of space and is jettisoned. In one way,
the hesitation to kill her creates terror within her (a situation worse than a
quick end), although Barton hopes she will come to accept her end. Barton does what he “can” for her, except
choose to jettison himself and allow her to ride the EDS to safety. (I had
hoped for this to happen, but alas . . . oh, ethical dilemmas . . .) This
possibility is never considered, at least not for the reader to see. It may be
that it was impossible to teach her to land the EDS, but I should think there
would be an auto-pilot? (Maybe I’m just reaching here . . .).
In the end, Marilyn is as marginalized as Helen, Lena, and the women seven million years in Earth’s
future. I won’t get into whether or not the authors were men (I’m assuming
three of the four were, at least). I’ll just leave with this position of being
a woman in a science fiction short story: you won’t have much agency, if any at
all.
I tried posting this once, but it got deleted, so let me try again.
ReplyDeleteI wondered too if Barton might jettison himself to save Marilyn, but I thought there was something in there that made me think that he was the only one who could pilot the ship (but I can't find it now...). Maybe I did just think it in my head.
Something else that came to my mind while reading that story: what if the decision to save Marilyn had less to do with a desire for her own personal well-being and more to do with her ability to reproduce? The reactions of the men when they find out it's a female stowaway and not a male lead me to believe that, perhaps, there is a shortage of women in that future, and, therefore, a fear of what might happen if they let even one die. I don't know that the text supports this reading, per se, but I think it's worth thinking about, maybe.
Also, I thought it was funny that, when I went to post this comment, it made me fill out a captcha to "please prove you're not a robot." Oh irony...
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