Divya Kopalle
5/11/18
Gender in Science Fiction

Femlanguage

The feminist movement has never been more visible than it is today. Through highly publicized women’s marches and prevalent social media campaigns, feminism has thoroughly established itself across the globe. Although these marches and campaigns cover our TV and computer screens, there are still other outlets where feminist thought is explored. Literature has been a central space for feminism throughout history, feminist writing cannot be pinned down as a specific genre, but many women writers have used their novels to advance feminist thought. Speculative fiction authors each have their own unique visions of societies, Joanna Russ’s short story While away envisions an entirely female civilization and men are merely a figment of the past. Margaret Attwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a future in the United States where a totalitarian takeover results the use of female handmaids whose sole purpose is bearing children. Despite their vastly different speculations about society, The Handmaid’s Tale and When it Changed can both be considered as feminist writing.
As Carla Kaplan points out “Feminist strategies for breaking silence are varied and range from exposing the social conditions necessitating silence, to creating an audience able to hear what silence cannot yet say” (Kaplan,339). Each feminist writer has their own way of revealing the truths of society, but the common goal between all these writers is to further feminist thought and. With this common goal in mind, repeated techniques in feminist literature can be identified. In 1975 Annette Kolodny conducted research where she read across genres and authors to identify patterns in potential feminist literatures, she came up with a few prominent identifiers of feminist writing.
The first identifier mentioned by Kolodny is “inversion” There are two types of inversion present in feminist literature. One usage is when authors utilizes the already stereotyped images of women in our society, and use these traditional depictions to explore how inherently absurd they are or reveal a hidden reality behind these ugly generalizations(Kolodny,6). This technique is extremely present in Attwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Gilead, the society depicted in the story, is a shocking totalitarian regime where the patriarchy has become more toxic and powerful than ever. Low fertility rates have led to the few fertile women left being used as handmaids for elite families. These handmaids are severely oppressed and their only purpose in society is to bear children. Every aspect of Gilead is merely an exaggeration of the already present stereotypes in our current society. Atwood uses her depiction of Gilead to expose our own society, and show that although Gilead may seem farfetched our society might as well be heading in that direction. As Attwood chillingly puts it “there isn’t anything in the book not based on something that has already happened in history or in another country”(Note to Reader, 1). Gilead was constructed with careful thought, Attwood conducted thorough research and she has spoken about how she has clippings from newspaper stories that support the contentions in the book. Another aspect of inversion that Kolodny mentions is when authors “deny our conventional expectations for a happy ending and substituting for it an ending which is conventionally unhappy, but which, in terms of the particular work, pleases or satisfies nonetheless” (Kolodny,8). The ending of the Handmaids tale is clearly not supposed to reflect a happy ending, the readers are left knowing Offred has escaped yet there is no closure that this escape was successful- leaving the readers with an ending that can be categorized as conventionally unhappy. Although this ending may not have wrapped up in an obviously satisfying way, the readers at least know that Offred is trying to escape rather than existing silently in Gilead.
The second usage of inversion, is a more literal technique. Authors will often times actually invert the stereotyped portrayals of women and present a completely different image that comes to connote the complete opposite of the traditional roles. This interpretation of inversion is applicable to Joanna Russ’s short story When it Changed and how Russ constructed her fictional society of Whileaway. On Whileaway men do not exist and the society is entirely populated by women who have developed a new way of society that is independent from the patriarchy. Images from our own societies are completely flipped on their head, and the gender roles in the story are stark inversions of the roles women are expected to fit today. On Whileaway there is very little status distinction and everyone is expected to turn their hand to whatever is required. On Whileaway women’s live seamlessly blend both masculine and feminine values- completely inverting the strict gender roles present today where little overlap between genders is ever seen and often condemned.
In her research Kolodny also references the concept of reflexive perceptions where “character after character is depicted discovering herself or finding some part of herself in activities she has not planned or in situations she cannot fully comprehend” (Kolodny,6). In the Handmaid’s Tale, the novel constantly reveals to readers Offred’s life prior to Gilead, and how her identity had been completely stripped of her. The reflexive perceptions in the novel can be seen throughout the story as Offred tries to regain connection with her lost identity while also connecting with her new identity as Offred. One of the first places Offred finds herself is in the commander’s office, where to her surprise the commander treats her like a valued human. She states “His approbation laps me like a warm bath. I sense in him none of the animosity I used to sense in men, even Luke sometimes”(Handmaid’s Tale, 184). Although she is in the commander’s office, a place Offered never expected to enter, she finds herself enjoying the commander’s presence. This new environment has become unexpectedly familiar to Offred and she is connecting something from her new life to her old life, allowing her to not completely loose her old identity but also start to grow closer to her new identity. As Offred and the commander become closer, Offred is continually reacquainted with aspects from her previous self-such as playing scrabble and applying hand lotion. This growth Offred experience through the commander is a clear use of reflexive perceptions by Attwood, since her character is discovering herself in a completely unexpected place.
On Whileaway one can argue that reflexive perceptions are present even though characters are not explored in much depth and the story takes places over a short time period. The story encapsulates the moment when Men arrive on Whileaway, a society where men are completely foreign and only few women understand the concept of the male person while others rely on stories and stereotypes told to them. The narrator Janet’s reflexive perception can be seen when her biggest fears are exposed. “ I do not like to think of myself mocked, of Katy deferred to as if she were weak, of Yuki made to feel unimportant or silly, of my other children cheated of their full humanity or turned into strangers. And I’m afraid that my own achievements will dwindle from what they were.” Through this realization of how Men are threatening her position, Janet is discovering a part of herself and her greatest fears due to this new and uncertain environment where Men have come to Whileaway.
Literature, although quieter than marches, is going to be extremely important in expanding the feminist movement and truly changing fundamental values. As Teresa de Lauretis puts it “language, of which we have no mastery, for it is indeed populated with the intentions of others, is finally much more than a game…Strategies of writing and reading are forms of cultural resistance (Kaplan,339). Feminist writing is exposing the toxic patriarchy and shedding light on how these engrained images can be reversed- and its cultural resistance that makes people think. Readers sit with speculative fiction, they try to digest the disasters or social orders depicted, and they try to digest the absurd realities exposed by speculative fiction that have been prevalent in our society for too long. Every feminist writer tells a different and unique story, and they are all crucial to keeping feminist thought alive and present.

Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Handmaids Tale. Vintage Publishing, 2017.
Evans, Arthur B. The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2010.
Kaplan, Carla. “ Women’s Writing and Feminist Strategy.” JSTOR.org, 1990, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/490034.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af9ef2c08ca8db1579e0cf8b7e4bf6bc4.
Kolodny, Annette. “ Some Notes on Defining a ‘Feminist Literary Criticism.” Jstor.org, 1975, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1342802.pdf?refreqid=excelsior:c93a1be7539d3264f6fc0cc86a67ef3c.