Another short essay on The Female Man

The novel opens with the introduction of three different women from three substantially different versions of the Earth, two substantially different versions of the present and a utopian vision of the future. In the final section of the text, we are introduced to a fourth woman from a distinctively different future, one far more dystopian in nature, who has brought the other three women together to help her defeat the patriarchal community of men who have declared an almost genocidal war on the women of their world. She also reveals that each of the four women of the text, the ‘four J’s’, Jeannine, Janet, Jael, and Joanna, are genetically the same world, revealing the deeply constructed nature of what Gayle Rubin called the ‘sex/gender system’, or what Teresa de Lauretis wants to understand as a gender system, removing the naturalistic remnants of the category of ‘sex.’[1] Each of these women is in fact the same woman shaped by radically different social environments. The intersection of these worlds allows for a comparative analysis of the political, social, and economic systems of those worlds, along with their modes of sexuality, kinship, and child-raising. Jeannine comes from an Earth that has never left the depression ear because World War II was never fought. Joanna is a stand in for the author and comes from that world, while Janet comes from an alternate future earth in which the men of the society died in a plague. The last character, Jael, comes from an alternate earth where the men and women of the society are in a long-term war against each other, a war produced by a similar catastrophe to the one that occurred in Whileaway, albeit with radically different results. Each of these characters represents an alternative vision of a single subject and at the same time, an alternative vision of the world at large.

We enter into Joanna Russ’ novel, The Female Man through the conjuncture that is through the disruptive process of the intersection of four different temporalities, and four different world systems. In effect, the narrative cannot be simply reduced to the ethnographic exploration of four worlds through their representatives. The narrative opens with Janet’s introduction into the world of Joanna, the world that most represents the present of the text. From there, the text introduces three of four of the characters is introduced, and the novel begins to introduce each of the worlds. The next sections of the text oscillate between Janet’s exploration of the world of Joanna, and descriptions of the utopian space of Whileaway. Through those engagements the text begins a satiric critique of the present world through Janet’s continual refusal to live up to the norms of that world, and the failures of that world to enforce those norms. From there, the narrative shifts to focus on the world of Jeannine, a repressed world in which the depression continues unabated, and the possibilities for women are even more limited. In each case, the world of Whileaway creates a deliberate contrast with the limited possibilities of the worlds of Joanna and Jeannine, allowing for the reader to recognize the contingent nature of each of the worlds. The final section moves into the dystopian world of Jael or Alice Reasoner, which is defined by warfare between men and women, with each side searching to annihilate the other. At the same time, the limitations of Janet are revealed. After exploring the world, Jael reveals why she has brought the women together, to support her attempt to destroy the Manlanders. Janet refuses this proposal, Jeannine accepts it, and the narrative never reveals the choice of Joanna. With these decisions, the narrative ends with each of the characters returning to their original worlds.

The text also tracks the various transformations of each of the characters through their engagement with each other, the ability of women to profoundly change each other’s worlds through the act of collective engagement and exchange, through the substantial act of consciousness-raising. Jeannine probably transforms the most, moving from a deep investment in the restricted horizons for women in her world to contribute to the war on Jael’s planet. Joanna’s transformations, while not drastic, are similarly significant, moving from an ambivalent embrace of the women’s movement to a full commitment to the radical feminist perspective, along with a sense of health and well being gained through the rejection of the conventions and expectations of femininity, of the rejection of the restricted role of supportive reproductive labor for men. Furthermore, the narrative of each character’s process of consciousness raising produces an incredible surplus of text, as she figuratively regurgitates those very restrictive discursive structures of femininity, from the institutional structures of psychoanalysis to the informal expectations of everyday common sense. These moments of seeming free association constitute the surplus to the narrative of the text, the excess that escapes the conventions of the narrative. The transformations of the two women from the future are harder to measure, less linked to the linear project of feminist transformation, but they, nonetheless, exist. Through her involvement in the world of Joanna, Janet breaks one of the most significant taboos of the world of Whileaway, the taboo of involving oneself in a sexual relationship with one that is significantly older or younger than oneself, with her relationship with Laura Rose. She also has to confront the possibility that the foundational narratives of Whileaway might be a myth, a cover up for the profound act of genocide that Jael is planning for her world. Jael is the exception, the catalyst who brings the other three together, who change each of the rest, while remaining unchanged herself.




[1] See Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987), Chapter One.

Joanna Russ and Genre: Reading Wolfe and James on Joanna Russ

     The first two essays in the collection of essays On Joanna Russ, edited by Farah Mendlesohn, are written by more traditional science fiction critics, Gary K. Wolfe and Edward James. Each of these text aims to focus on Russ' intense intertextual engagement with the genre, effectively arguing that Russ' work was deeply invested in the literary tradition of science fiction and fantasy writing, and didn't simply appropriate the genres for political purposes. Wolf polemically notes at the begin of his essay, "My apologies for beginning such a litany of bibliographical detail, but it's crucial to the intent of this essay, which is in part to reclaim and recognize Russ's identity as a science fiction writer--not simply a writer who used science fiction towards other ends--and to establish the extent to which Russ's work was deeply connected to the mainstream dialogue of genre SF prior to and concurrent with her most famous "breakout" works, the Nebula-winning "When It Changed" in 1972 and the now-classic The Female Man in 1975." ( Wolfe 4) Wolfe wants to break out of a number of feminist readings of Russ, that both erase the linkages that her work has with the dominant structures of the genre, as well as the tendency to read those texts instrumentally, that is to read it for its political aims, rather than engaging in the formal structures of the text. We'll return to some of the flaws contained in those assumptions, which in some sense reproduce the form/content divide, but let's begin by exploring what the essays contribute to our understanding of Russ' work. Gary Wolfe's essay, 'Alyx among the Genres' closely reads the Alyx stories for their dense engagement with 'a wide spectrum of science fiction and fantasy traditions." (Wolfe 5) Wolfe then offers a detailed analysis of the stories, showing deliberate intertextual references to Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, and others. For Wolfe, this work needs to be read not simply as prequel to the serious work of later novels, but as a serious commitment to the form and history of the genre, per se.

     Edward James continues this argument through his reading of the history of Russ's review of science fiction novels, written for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between the years 1966 and 1980. James is also concerned with linking Russ to the subcultural and generic norms of the science fiction community, noting, "What can the reader of Russ's science fiction learn from a study of her reviews of science fiction novels? First, that she is in many ways a very old-fashioned reader of science fiction. That she should write in praise, in her very last review, in 1979, of “as-if speculation which produces medical and technological advances,” swhows that she is a true daughter of Gernsback and Campbell, and apparently far removed from the reaction against the Old Guard by the New Wave. She enjoys schlock; she admits the importance of entertainment; she extols the value of scientific accuracy.” (James 30) For James, Russ is a faithful science fiction traditionalist, only demanding a revision in the genre to conform to her radical feminist critiques of the genres sexism, a claim that James implicitly endorses, as well. James is certainly correct in perceiving both a love of the genre in Russ’s writing, along with a willingness to celebrate a number of generic traditions that were challenged by the New Wave. Indeed, not only Russ’s reviews show this intense interest in the history of the genre, but her writing does as well, as shown in Wolfe’s intervention. But James doesn’t take into account the generic limitations contained in the format that Russ was writing in, the book review. When one begins to read the critical essays produced by Russ in the same era, we begin to see a greater demand for formal experimentation, one that links her work to the New Wave in a manner that James attempts to deny, which both refuses to recognize a critical engagement with the New Wave with the older traditions of science fiction, and the ways that both Russ and the New Wave are engaged in a substantial formal rewriting of those traditions.

      To return to the issue of form and content, brought up earlier in the essay, both Wolfe and James contribute useful material to the understanding of Joanna Russ as a science fiction author, as an author that both contributes to the generic form of science fiction, but also as an author who can only be understood through a critical engagement with that genre.  However, they don't allow that Russ's engagement with the form of the genre might be driven by a feminist politic, not from an instrumental perspective, but from the perspective of a politics of form, what Darko Suvin might call a 'social formalism.'  In this sense, Wolfe and James produce a mirror image of the critic who attempts to extract a political critique from the science fictional form, one that is designed to popularize and make accessible the radical feminist politics of her time.  Both perspectives erase the ability for literature to produce their own theoretical structures through a formal engagement, one built on a substantial engagement with the history as well as the radical possibilities contained in the science fictional form.  Russ points to radically alternative understanding of the social symbolic, one that escapes the psychoanalytical framework that dominated radical and cultural feminism.  We need a social formalist approach to engage with that work.