English 67

Susan, in an older post, wrote that science fiction seems to lack strong females, much less strong femaleprotagonists. This post brought to the surface of my head my own observation that runs sort of counter to hers: science fiction male characters may be “blatantly male,” but in the dystopian fiction I’ve encountered, the male protagonists are in some way or another emasculated, enervated (note: I broadly understand dystopian literature as not just literature which envisions a complex future society, e.g. Brave New World, but also literature which simply represents a negative, hopeless world, present or future.) George Orr in Lathe of Heaven, Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, Bernard Marx in Brave New World, Shinji Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion, even the image of the cubicle worker part of a massive bureaucracy - all of these men are at the center of their dystopian universes, narratively, and all lack the sereotypical male brashness. They even lack the more agreeable masculine qualities of self-dependence, Hemingway-esque stoicism, or even normal sexualities/understandings of sexuality. As for women in dystopian literature, they often seem to fulfill the worst nightmares of sexually frustrated, powerless men. Arther’s wife is brutal to her feeble husband before his memory’s awakening, a stereotypical bitch. Billy Pilgrim’s wife is not cruel, just insensible and stupid, unable to give Billy emotional support, or understand his depression.

Thus, at the center of most dystopian universes is a powerless male, so much so that it is difficult to imagine a dystopian novel in which a woman is at the center. I suppose that men are at the center of dystopian universes is because their emasculation is a further inversion of what is “normal” in a corrupted future. A dystopia necessarily has inhabitants who are powerless against the grim future envisaged, else there would be hope in this future; in these grim futures, who else can understand the hopelessness of the situation better, but a lonely person who lacks the “attributes” of his gender: strength, resilience,and willpower?

Finally, athough I do not agree with the chauvunism implied in this statement, I think that the traditional genderattributes also explain why women are rarely, if ever, the center of dystopian novels (please correct me if I am revealing my ignorance of novels proving the contrary.) Think back to the snippet of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” in the intro to Falling into Theory, and remember the Young Feminist Professor’s complaint about the peom’s implication that “it’s the function of your [the female professors's] naturally more spiritual sex” to “protect and console” weary men. The men at the center of dystopian novels badly need consolation; that is why their painful reception of their dystopias are espcially acute. Women, however, in these dystopian schemes, are always a facet of the dystopia, a symptom. Their inability to commiserate for the protagonist makes the future only more bleak. The traditional role of women as a pillar of emotional support makes it difficult to imagine women as protagonists of dystopian novels.

[note: Sorry if I come off in any way sexist, chauvunistic, etc. I will not lie in saying that in discussing gender issues, I would never unintentionally bring in my own prejudices, especially since gender studies is fairly new to my mind.]