For women only
Jul. 31st, 2007 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersFlint's "The Queen of Life" ends up being a very strange story. I had to read it twice to try to get it straight in my head, but I'm still not sure I understand all the strange twists and contortions. While on the face of it this is a fairly commonplace utopia, lurking beneath its placid, generic surface is an ambiguous battle of the sexes.
It's the second of a four-novella sequence called the Dr. Kinney stories, after the leader of a group of four intrepid explorers. In "The Lord of Death" they travel to Mercury, and in "The Queen of Life" they leave Mercury and head to Venus. On the way to Venus, one of the four is discovered during treatment by Dr. Kinney to be a woman. The narrative ramifications of this are rather weird, as Billie, as she is now called, both shows a hitherto hidden aptitude for cooking and cleaning (and a boyish -- ahem, womanly -- attractiveness to the geologist) and simultaneously instigates a spirited discussion of the changing role of women in modern society during which Dr. Kinney observes, "I'll tell you what's worrying Smith. He's afraid that women, having suddenly become very progressive, will forge entirely ahead of men. You understand -- having started, they can't stop. And I must admit that I've thought seriously of it at times myself."
Upon arrival on Venus, we are treated to an expository-heavy description of what is in many ways a fairly standard utopian society. The Venusians are more advanced than humans, machines do all the work, and the Venusians are losing their unused teeth, fingernails, and legs, and have long since lost nations, governments, and reasons for war. They have moved beyond their animal nature and pursue mostly intellectual and spiritual goals. The middle part of the novella loses all sense of narrative urgency as it lays out the perfection of their lives.
Then all of a sudden, near the end, we discover that there's one last serpent in the garden preventing complete spiritual actualization: sex. The calm surface of the story is abruptly convulsed by two new scientific developments that have been precipitated (in less than a day) by the arrival of the explorers from Earth. The first is essentially eternal life, but only for males, and the second is the ability of females to become pregnant without the "male germ". Confusion and violence explode into the story, as though the editor said, "Look, we need something rousing for the finale. Let's have a war of the sexes."
What's remarkable is the conflicted attitude toward women within the story. The finale is rife with it, as a howling mob of Venusian men descend upon the female inventor of spermless pregnancy, "for it was only a mob, despite its astounding advancement; a mob which had retained all the brute's fanaticism, and all the male jealousy of the female." Then the next thing you know, Billie is acting all coquettish toward the macho geologist who has the hots for her and is asking whether he really likes her better this way -- i.e., as a woman. Just a couple of pages earlier, Billie had been prepared to stay on Venus -- a la Tiptree? -- and was in love with what she took to be a Venusian man, who is finally revealed to actually be a female.
Very, very strange. The novella was published in 1919. Universal women's suffrage was on the verge of being granted in the USA. The story seems to be wrestling with that wave of feminism.
It's the second of a four-novella sequence called the Dr. Kinney stories, after the leader of a group of four intrepid explorers. In "The Lord of Death" they travel to Mercury, and in "The Queen of Life" they leave Mercury and head to Venus. On the way to Venus, one of the four is discovered during treatment by Dr. Kinney to be a woman. The narrative ramifications of this are rather weird, as Billie, as she is now called, both shows a hitherto hidden aptitude for cooking and cleaning (and a boyish -- ahem, womanly -- attractiveness to the geologist) and simultaneously instigates a spirited discussion of the changing role of women in modern society during which Dr. Kinney observes, "I'll tell you what's worrying Smith. He's afraid that women, having suddenly become very progressive, will forge entirely ahead of men. You understand -- having started, they can't stop. And I must admit that I've thought seriously of it at times myself."
Upon arrival on Venus, we are treated to an expository-heavy description of what is in many ways a fairly standard utopian society. The Venusians are more advanced than humans, machines do all the work, and the Venusians are losing their unused teeth, fingernails, and legs, and have long since lost nations, governments, and reasons for war. They have moved beyond their animal nature and pursue mostly intellectual and spiritual goals. The middle part of the novella loses all sense of narrative urgency as it lays out the perfection of their lives.
Then all of a sudden, near the end, we discover that there's one last serpent in the garden preventing complete spiritual actualization: sex. The calm surface of the story is abruptly convulsed by two new scientific developments that have been precipitated (in less than a day) by the arrival of the explorers from Earth. The first is essentially eternal life, but only for males, and the second is the ability of females to become pregnant without the "male germ". Confusion and violence explode into the story, as though the editor said, "Look, we need something rousing for the finale. Let's have a war of the sexes."
What's remarkable is the conflicted attitude toward women within the story. The finale is rife with it, as a howling mob of Venusian men descend upon the female inventor of spermless pregnancy, "for it was only a mob, despite its astounding advancement; a mob which had retained all the brute's fanaticism, and all the male jealousy of the female." Then the next thing you know, Billie is acting all coquettish toward the macho geologist who has the hots for her and is asking whether he really likes her better this way -- i.e., as a woman. Just a couple of pages earlier, Billie had been prepared to stay on Venus -- a la Tiptree? -- and was in love with what she took to be a Venusian man, who is finally revealed to actually be a female.
Very, very strange. The novella was published in 1919. Universal women's suffrage was on the verge of being granted in the USA. The story seems to be wrestling with that wave of feminism.
