Bridget wrote:
>
> Sorry everyone for bringing this up again, but I'm intrigued.
> With regards to the issue of separatism (of the sexes) in novels such as
> Joanna Russ's The_Female_Man and Suzy McKee Charnas' _Motherlines_ what
> does everyone think about its feminist consequences? Is it merely an
> explorative and/or narrative tool or does it have wider implications?
> Is it the separatism which makes these works utopic/dystopic?
>
I just read a book on "Feminist Utopias" by Frances Bartkowski. It
seemed a bit limited in scope, but one of the points that did strike me
was that while there are many utopias written by women which are
separatist,there do not seem to be any by men which had no women in
them. From the point of view of procreation, perhaps it's easier to
envisage women existing without men than vice-versa.
> I also thought the idea of 'freedom' as such, very interesting as well as
> the quite prevalent use of violence in both whileaway and the free fems
> tea camp and even in the raids etc of the riding women, especially seeing
> it was socially sanctioned. I'd also be interested in anyone's response
> to the prevalence of anti-monagamous relations in both books. To me it
> was tied up in the notion of freedom again, the whole issue of being
> owned but also intrigued me in the fact that in Charnas this seemed to
> be accepted in the 'dystopia' of the holdfast amongst both males and
> females as well as the 'utopia's' of the fems and the women. Why did they
> carry this practice (talking specifically about the fems now)over if it
> reminded them so much of the old ways? As well as the other contradictory
> elements of their almost feudal (serf/lord slave/master) class system
> etc. Was this irony supposed to illustrate a "no matter how things change
> they stay the same" type analogy or that they are inherently human
> characteristics that can't be helped-
I thought it showed the difficulty of working out totally new ways to
live when all your life you had only known brutality and degredation. To
people who had lived in servitude, being free might mean the same as
"being the master" if their only terms of reference were those of the
Holdfast. If I remember rightly, the fems had only limited contact with
the Riding Women and saw them as more-or-less alien creatures. Alldera
was the catalyst for fems and riding women to begin to come together.
> I'll spare you all and stop now!
> -Bridget-
--
"Take what you want", said God. "Take it - and pay for it."
Old Spanish proverb,
quoted in "South Riding" by Winifred Holtby
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:34 PDT