> And, incidentally, given that we are on FEMINISTSF, what do feminists
> today make of FRIDAY?
I just re-read FRIDAY this week, and I was thinking about that as I
was reading it. My feelings are mixed. Heinlein has strong female
characters and in this one particularly, the main character is
struggling with proving her self {super-}human as well as struggling
against sexism. My wife has suggested in the past that Friday's
problems with the society's perceptions of Artificial Persons is,
in a sense, the struggle that women face in our society. As with a
good bit of his stuff, I find myself discarding a lot of the surface
stuff to get to the good parts of the story.
For example, he has the statement, "It takes a human mother to bear a
human child". And he still has Friday defining her happiness in terms
of babies and kittens to a large degree. And then there's the portrayal
of Friday as a nymphomaniac (this does not set her apart from a number
of his other characters... ;-). I also had a small problem with the
fact that Friday had major problems with some human societal rules but
seemed to know the "barnyard dance" inside and out (much better than I do
or ever did).
Anyway, a few semi-random thoughts from someone else who does generally
like Heinlein.
BTW, the novella(?) GULF (which can be found in _6 x H_) appears to have
been a predecessor of FRIDAY that does a bit more with the superman
ideas and "the Boss's" organization. It's been a while since I've read
that one, though, and don't remember much about it...
-allen
--
Allen Briggs - end killing - briggs@macbsd.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:49 PDT