美國文學首頁   /   The 20th Century -- Second Half 二十世紀 -- 後半  /  作家  /  Marge  Piercy  瑪兒吉.皮爾希  /  作品
Woman on the Edge of Time
作者Author  /  Marge  Piercy  瑪兒吉.皮爾希

Woman on the Edge of Time ( 1976)

 
 Plot Summary By Chapters

 Feminst Utopia as a Genre

 Women's Position in the Relations of Production and Reproduction

 Connie's Position on the "Edge"

 Encounters with: Those on the Edge / Luciente

 The Future Worlds (2173) : Mettapoisette / the World of Gildina

 
 
 Plot Summary By Chapters
  1) Dolly's search for rescue and Connie's fighting against Geraldo; (memory of her past experience with the other men: "Geraldo was her father, . . . Her second husband. . .El Muro . . . )--> Connie in Bellevue --> sent to Rockover State ("She was drowning. . . She was human garbage carried to the dump" p. 32);
2) Connie's dream of Luciente --> working for Mrs. Polcari (welfare work program) -->Exhausted by work, she dreams of L --> Dolly asking for her -->  meeting L on the street; --> Connie's past --> Connie lonely at home --> meeting L again, talking about food, garbage and "intersee"
3) locked in the seclusion cell; meets Luciente after 3 weeks;
4) Spring, interviewed by Dr. Redding, moved to G 2
5) Connie with an illusion of freedom in G 2, a bit reluctant to receive Luciente. Still she goes with L to her world, getting to know the brooder, only to think of her own daughter and get dissociated.

6) present ("privileges and disorder in G 2) --> M: naming ceremony; Jackrabbit's madness understood;
 7) M:work and study explained ; motherhood redefined;  Connie willing to give Angie to them.
8) present --> 147 M government; death; 
9) present --> 170 M holidays and pleasures and art;  --> Dolly does not come
10) turning point: Alice getting an electrode implanted in her brain--> explanation of their views of coffee, how their world is only one of the possible worlds (197); the 30-year war; --> exhibition of Alice --> M's worming and ways of 'healing' (e.g. the conflicts among Jackrabbit, Bolivar and Luciente)
11) Acker's persuading Connie; Dolly's visit (gets a bit of money from Dolly) ; Sybil's change --> Luciente tries to help her control her nerves --> Connie tries to escape;
12) Connie in escape, joined by Luciente and Dawn, finally returned to the hospital;
13) effects of electrode on Alice and on Skip --> Luciente tries to comfort Connie --> the holi --> debate over the role of artists in defense --> Skip
14) drifter Maclaw 273 and his interest in tribal knowledge; Luciente as a scientist proposing her reck; Connie about to get her brain surgery --the night before;
15) Gildina (Rapture, flacks, HG and sense-all)
16) Jackrabbit's death 309
17) Hard to get Luciente; Luciente putting her kenner back to foco; Connie encouraged by Bee to fight; Connie imagines fighting with Bee and Hawk on a floater --> remembers Martin's fight and being murdered--> The doctors get worried about Connie's loss of consciousness, so they remove the dialytrode.
18) Captain Cream and Tina get their surgery; Connie communicates with Sybil about Sybil's most meaningful talk with a college student about witchcraft. Connie asks Luis to let her visit him
19) Luciente winter games; Connie at war
20) Official history of Connie

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 Feminst Utopia as a Genre
 
  1. "Centrally concerned with the clash between individual desire and societal demand, Dystopian fiction often focuses on sexuality and relations between the genders as elements of this conflict."  (e.g. We, The Brave New World, 1984.) (337)
  2. Despite giving frequent lip service to equality of genders, literary dystopias (and utopias, for that matter) have typically been places where men are men and women are women, and in relatively conventional way.   (337)
  3. "critical utopia": Feminist writers [e.g. Piercy, Ursula K Le Guin, Samuel Delany, and Joanna Russ] "produced works that re-energized the utopian genre as a whole and moving toward an open-endedness that sought to overcome the tendency toward monological stagnation that had long haunted conceptualizations of utopia.  Tom Moylan argues that such writers attempted to create in their works what he calls 'critical utopia,' retaining an "awareness of the limitations of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as blueprint while preserving it as dream" (10).  Such uotpias are able to function effectively as critique of status quo, while maintaining a self-critical awareness that prevents them from descending into empty utopian cliche." (338-39)

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 Women's Position in the Relations of Production and Reproduction
  Production and Reproduction:
"Piercy not only opens wide the definition of modes of reproduction, she examines it economically, socially and biologically as well as politically. "

motherhood and family; birthing 103/104; co-mothers, no genetic bonds with the child.
"Where Gilman's future family is one of overmothers, landmothers, mothers and daughters, Piercy's family is an extended one in which notions of motherliness replaced motherhood" (Bartkowski 72)
"'Parenting, not pair-bonding, is the basis of these families.  And 'coupling' refers to a sexuality no longer tied to reprodution."
 

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 Connie's Position on the "Edge"
 
I. The positions of the underclass: 
Connie's racial and class background: 
  • Chicano: from a village near Namiquipas, Los Calcinados to El Paso in Texas, to Chicago, and then to NY; 45
  • on social welfare; no money for presents 48; 
  • the social-pigeonholing institution: 


     -- Connie's three husbands:  Martin murdered by the police in the streets; Claud killed in the jail Claud pp. 26-27 ; Eddie a womanizer and wife-abuser
    -- Connie's bosses: Prof. Everett Silvester p. 50; Mrs. Polcari 35; 
    -- Connie being pigeonholed: "human-to-cockroach look" 26; experts condemning Connie 60; at Ward L6: 91; 

    Connie vs. Mrs. Polcari -- p. 34

  • her memories of Claud pp. 108; p. 242;
  • her only experience of pride 242; her being on social welfare 253-54
  • her memories of Marin pp. 214; 242-43; of eating dog food with Angie p.

    Dolly a white pimp, pretending to be Italian or Spanish 210;
     
II. Gender and familial relations in the past and present "families" 
  • "His" violence: Connie's husbands: Martin; Eddie 43-44; Geraldo pp. 12; G and the other men 14-15; 
  • Professor Silvester p. 50 --> the anger of the weak
  • Luis: many wives 48; Luis wants to be like Anglo 363; 
  • Claud 26-27; 109; 112-13; 
  • submission to childbirth: Connie's mother: p. 45; Teresa 47-48<-> Connie p. 46; 
  • mother-daughter: 
    • Connie nevered been "mothered enough";  p. 47
    • Angelina: p. 61 - 
    • Dolly: 
    • a vicious circle for women in the lower classes p. 280
  • women's roles in biological reproduction --Connie--her mother dies the year she gets her first abortion;
    • hysterectomy -- her mother and Connie ("they had taken out her womb at Metropolitan when she had come in bleeding after that abortion and the beating from Eddie. Unnecessarily they had done a complete hysterectomy because the residents wanted practice" (38).
    • experiment: Inez (cannot tell the difference between a doctor and a scientist) 274;

    Like my sister Inez, she lives in New Mexico. . . she has seven kids. After the sixth, she went to the clinic for the pill... See, she thought she went to a doctor. But he had his scientist cap on and he was experimenting. She thought it was good she got the pill free. But they gave her a sugar pill instead. So, she got heavy again with the seventh child. It was born with something wrong ... Now they have all that worry and money troubles. They're supposed to give him pills and send him to a special school, but it costs. All because Inez thought she had a doctor, but she got a scientist. ( 268-269)

  • What should or can the social workers do? (e.g. Salaam Bombay)
III. Connie's personality: 
  • rebellious; run away 14; does not want to be like her mother with so many children; 
  • lonely, accompanied by her TV.
  • suffered from Claud's death; 
  • her will to survive: 24; 
  • Connie's sense of the city and space: 
    • the city: "bellied out to her"; people meeting and coupling 49; 
IV. Social system of surveillance: 

A. Education p. 107 - 108 // regulation like a mental institution

B.  police and social workers:  pigeon-holing--restricting(p. 17) , condemning and imprisoning

  • caseworker: Mrs. Polcari p. 40; social worker Ms Fergusson: 25-26 ("human-to-cockcroach look")
B. The medical field and the mental hospital: (psychotropic medications, electric shock therapy, and brain surgery)
  • experiment on humans: Claud's experience in the jail 27; Skip's experience of having electrode attached to his penis (to test his sexual responses) p. 167
  • lack of privacy or freedom 1) *the hospital is like school, where the authorities dominate (e.g. language training; lack of freedom in action);

    2) having to stand in line for medicine, to get permission to make a phone call,
    3) no privacy pp. 165 - 66 (cross-examined by the nurse)

  • Connie's experience: 
    • the first and the second time 59-60; --feel guilty and self-hatred.
    • control with psychrotopic medicine: Thorazine, "hypo"
    • control through communication (examination): "they trapped you into saying something and then they'd bring out their interpretations that made your life over... into a pattern of disease" (18-19).
    • control with judgment: doctor not listening, only judging with their pre-concepts 19-21; any sign interpreted as that of sickness. 
    • control with spatial division and regulating action: pp. 17; 25 (sit and sit and sit); Ward L-6 (violent ward) 80; seclusion ward; "the real hospital" 88; a former schoolteacher's response 91 (re-classification); Ward G-2: 94-95
    • control by promotion or punishment 83
    • dehumanizing: "your sign is cuckoo" 29; tin mirror 89, like the other mirrors in society
    • be obedient.  194 
  • the consequences of electrode on pp. 204, 201, Alice 260; on Skip 254; 263-64, 270; Connie --feeling raped 179; Tina 341; Sybil 342
  • Their ways of persuading Connie 269
  • Inez's experience of "scientist" 274

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 Encounters with: Those on the Edge / Luciente
  I.  Wardmates 
  • Sybil -- pp. 82-83; discussing what sex means p. 85-86
  • Joan and her word salad pp. 86-87
  • Mrs. Martinez 82
  • Glenda 110; 
  • Alice 144-45;"You take the shit and you is shit, girl."
  • Getting money from Skip to make a phone call to Dolly pp. 166-67.


II. Connie's meeting L and her responses to Luciente: 

  • meeting L: 1) on the street after she is exhausted by work p. 36; 2) on the street; 3) after she feels very lonely (51-52); 4) when she is in seclusion cell in the hospital 63; 5) actively wants to get away and visit 113; has to turn off her memory 113;"Luciente, let me visit"
  • responses: 
    • sex p. 37 "boys in her dreams" grow younger and more beardless. 
    • concerned with her own money: 41; 
    • "dyke" 57; 
    • the agricultural society: 67
    • touching and caressing: think of childhood 76;
    • re. sign language -- disbelief, self-defense (e.g. p. 98 --does not like to be denied by the cat)
  • Connie's responses as a mother and a lover
    • hate them for their idea of motherhood; p. 105;
    • feels angry  p. 134; 182 (kisses Dawn); give Angie to them 141
    • be with Bee 
      -- Luciente reminds her of her mother's mother 225;
      -- dreams of being a comother p. 249-
    • "Why me" 196; 
  • no transition (inviation/reception) 265; 
  • difficulties in connection since 1) Jackrabbit's death and 2) the implant of electrode
  • Connie's joining the war 301; 328

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 The Future Worlds (2173) : Mettapoisette / the World of Gildina
  The future (2137) --community + individualism, no hierarchy, no institutions

I. Mouth-of -Mattapoisett

1) language:

-- about human identities: "ownfed," person, per, intersee
--> "Person must not do what person cannot do." 101
-- about family: comother, sweet friends, mem, core, 
-- ceremonies: kidbinding, naming, 115; Thanksmaking 174
-- name: only one word for a name (no family name), can change names.  (e.g. Rose of Ithaca, Luciente and Bee and Jackrabbit ) pp. 76; choosing different names (different from Connie's sense of her names) 121-22; 
-- others (frequently nouns used as verbs): worming (struggle p.101), bottom, fasure, kenner, red, compost, Yif, suck patience (57), "Craze me"; trance, body one's feelings; 
-- suck patience 213

2) pluralism, individualism + communication: sender/catcher: p. 42; being in contact 52; 

Identity
-- individualism 101; 136;
-- naming e.g. p. 121; Innocente p. 114
-- free self-expression of "I want" p. 123
-- personalities: each with different traits, e.g. Jackrabbit with artistic tendencies; weaknesses (Jackrabbit's 124; Dawn's shyness, Luciente's jealousy 176)
-- dialogic communication (negotiation) as mothering
worming 207 -- in order to discover and eliminate the sources of hostility between individuals.
Connie: "Don't you people have nothing to worry about besides personal stuff?" One of the community members then points out the connection between individual and national warfare:
Response:
[W]e believe many actions fail because of inner tensions. To get revenge against someone an individual thinks wronged per, individuals have offered up nations to conquest.

Note: Sara Ruddick on mothers and peace:

"Out of their faiture as well as successes, mothers develop a conception of relatinships that undermines the paranoid conception of individuality that fuel conquest. . .They not only modify aggression in the interest of connection but develop connections that limit aggression before it arises. The self who desires other selves to persist in their own lively being is a self at least capable of respecting the lives and life-connections of quite different others." (254)

3) Community Culture and Ecological Concerns

Sexual and family arrangement:

  • family with individual private spaces;
  • comothers and sweetfriends 74; man breastfeeding 134; 
  • love and sex: love more than one per 133; "person never stales on anybody" 148 (e.g. Erzulia and Bee)flirting in public 123; 
  • allowing children to experiment sex 138-39
  • the brooder 101 - severs the connection between genes and racial culture

"Decisions were made forty years back to breed a high proportion of darker-skinned people and to mix the genes well through the population. At the same time, we decided to hold on to separate cultural identities. But we broke the bond between genes and culture, broke it forever. We want there to be no chance of racism again. But we don't want the melting pot where everybody ends up with thin gruel. We want diversity, for strangeness breeds richness." (96)

  • examples: the ceremony of naming; children-- naming ritual and then they go away ("They body our sense of good." 117)
  • Shaper vs. Mixer pp. 226

    Culture and Arts

    --pluralism 178, affirming different cultures
    -- preservation of racial cultures 100 ( hunting); 102; 103;104-06; Zuli follows voodoo; Sappho an Indian believer;  150; confirming the past e.g. J's art work 180-81; *other examples of holi(visionary artwork) pp. 180, 265

    Environmentalist/Ecological views of Nature
    -- use either solar energy or gas from decomposed waste
    --communication with animals 98-99; animals Tilla 98
    -- decompost or re-cycle things p. 55;
    -- use spinners to make fences.

    Few Private Properties
    Fooder --
    Pleasure and Luxuries --circulated or decomposed (flimsy p. 171); coffee 195; luxuries determined by credits or productivity 247-48;

* Their view of Connie's world (its need for love): 251; (car and loneliness) 245-46
-- work and study pp. 130 - 31
--pleasure in dresses 175-176
-- food -- everybody well-fed; p.173 (cook--a job to be rotated)
-- child's sex p.138

Problems and Death
--"Some problems you solve only if you cease being human." (125)
-- ritual of dying 156
-- children and older people on both ends of life p. 132

4) place-bound communities without contraints or social institutions:  They do have organization; e.g. for environmental protection; for being own-fed.
  • rituals and holidays pp. 120, 173
  • joining a base 123-24; 
  • education 53; 
  • madness:  "Our madhouses are places where people retreat when they want to go down into themselves -- to collapse, carry on, see visions, hear voices of prophecy, bang on the walls, relive infancy -- getting in touch with the buried self and the inner mind. We all lose parts of ourselves. We all make choices that go bad....... How can another person decide that it is time for me to disintegrate, to reintegrate myself?" (p.60)
  • planning for the township 151; representative chosen by lot; decision made by voting; the winner treats the loser.
    * their law 208-209 (healing those committing assault or murder)
  • garbage p. 55
  • close to nature: 125

5. Healing and Medicine

Erzulia -- into voodoo and medicine

II. the World of Gildina
-- clues: "We are only one possible future," Luciente 177
chap 15: marriage as contract 290; life expectancy 291; use of drugs 292; levels 292; HG; no window, no view 294-95; SC (sharpened control); monitored by the Securicenter; multi; 
 

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