Important Themes in Marge
Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time
-
What is Reality? Does Connie "really"
visit the future, or is she just imagining all this? Is Connie crazy
or sane?
-
How does this book compare and contrast to Cuckoo's
Nest?
-
Connie is like the Chief in that she has been
incarcerated in a mental institution when she doesn't really seem that
crazy. She is also like the Chief in that she is an unreliable narrator:
We aren't sure how much to believe about what she says. We also wonder
if perhaps her turth is MORE true, poetically/ metaphorically.
-
Sanity/ Insanity -- Is Connie sane? Is
the society Connie lives in sane?
-
Family, connections, relationships (She is rejected
by Dolly, her mother, etc)
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Gender role expectations -- she shows
her anger; she is honest; she is violent
-
Critique of sexual politics -- ways that sex
is used and experienced
-
Critique of nuclear family arrangements: women
do nurturing; men earn money
-
Mechanical vs. organic reality.. critique of
mechanization of emotions
-
Power struggles-- patriarchy. Struggle
against (mostly male) power structure -- anti-authoritarian
-
Race and racism --
-
Two kinds of power: organic, natural power vs
power over people, controlling power.
-
Luciente's future represents: freedom,
no discrimination (racial, sexual, etc.) , organic and envioronmentally
resposible, no classes, no rich people, de-emphasis on commodities, little
or no private property, high empahsis on childrearing but by the community
rather than nuclear family, particpatory democracy
-
Themes I indexed in my copy:
-
inknowing/ outgoing
-
What is real?
-
sex/sex roles/ androgyny
-
Alternate (bad) world
-
Utopian Ideals
-
Ecological issues
-
Time (seasons)
-
History (What led up to Luciente's
time)
-
materialism/ consumerism, capitalism/
private property
-
age and ageism
-
bad medicine
-
madness/ insanity
-
anger
-
labels/ categories
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the hero's quest
-
motherhood/ Angelina
-
communication/ community
-
language
Themes shared wi Song of the
F'd Duck
-
Rejection-- feeling of being left-- pain of
that
-
dividing people up into two groups: the selfish,
mechanical, authoritarian ones vs the more organic ones who are in touch
with the sub-conscious, with emotions, with memories
-
We have to make room in our lives for more than
just consciousness and reason -- importance of the unconscious life: the
creativity of our imaginations