Book Review: The Female Man by Joanna Russ

 

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

 214 pages, Paperback
Published March, 2000 by Beacon Press (First published in 1975)

Literary awards:

 Nebula Award Nominee for Novel (1975), 

James Tiptree Jr. Award for Retrospective (1995)

There are certain novels in the science fiction canon it is a straight-up crime I have not read. I was beginning to feel like a poser having not read any Russ before last year. Experiencing Joanna Russ for the first time for the best SF novel of 1968 debate episode of Postcards from Dying World (the podcast!) I knew I had to read more.  I mean Picnic on Paradise was good but The Female Man was considered her masterpiece, so I ordered it right away. It took me a couple of months to get to it.
In the past, this is where I would do a little history lesson on the author her place in the greater genre. I am saving those types of commentary for a future Amazing Stories column. Let’s just focus on this book.

After some traditional Science fiction much like the fantasy adventure of Picnic on Paradise Russ wrote plenty of essays and was teaching. When she wrote this novel she was teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Russ was not driven by market forces. She could experiment with her next novel and she did. The result was a surreal feminist utopia that is deeply tied to the second wave of feminism.

As a science fiction writer or an essayist, she was more directly a feminist thinker and commentator than many of the other major women writers in the genre. Most of the women who were foundational in the early like Leigh Brackett mostly stayed away from telling tales that addressed gender issues or talked about being a woman. But Catherine Lucille Moore made a middle-aged woman her sword-carrying fantasy hero.  Judith Merril made it into the SF Hall of Fame with Only a Mother but it was not until Leguin and Russ that feminism made it into the major award categories as the point. Certainly, womanhood was a part of the genre before Russ and Lisa Yazsek’s amazing collection The Future is Female is filled with examples (at great place to start if you are seeking examples). The Female Man is pure undeniable feminism that is meta and hardly allegory. It makes it different.

Leguin’s Left Hand of Darkness deals with gender but through the lens of a very alien culture, but it is something in the still fairly sexist 70s that a novel that explores Feminism would be nominated for a Hugo. Science Fiction was a' changin'. I get that I am not exactly the target audience for understanding everything Russ is trying to express. Much of the novel speaks to experiences lived and felt by women. I am however the target audience of SF readers. I think Russ was trying to reach us because the concepts are fun. You can sell this novel as a lesbian time-traveling novel that starts in a female utopia. It is that, but also more.

The narrative is spread over nine parts, that revolve between four different points of view characters, one of which is Joanna herself. The four women whose names all start with J live in four different realities and times.  We open in Whileaway… “Whileaway you may gather, is in the future. But not our future.” Like a far future extrapolation of Tiptree’s Screwfly Solution, this future was the most interesting part to me it is pretty much our future utopia woman Janet has to interface with our world at least as it is in the 70s the book was unleashed into. We are introduced to Joanna who is clearing a meta version of our author. The last J women who make up the four POVs are Jeannine who lives in an America whose great depression never ended.  The final point of view is Jael who has been fighting an open and literal war of the sexes com between men (Manlanders) and women (Womanlanders).

Often those critical of this novella say they like the idea but the story serves as a framework for the sometimes surreal commentary. There is a story, in fact as you can see there are four stories at work. Some people think that Mad Max Fury Road doesn't have a story because it happens during a chase. There is plenty of story in this book.

One of the strengths of the novel in a science fiction concept Russ gets to play with the World-building A female Utopia, the alternate history and the war of the sexes. There are tons of fun SF nuggets throughout but the strength is the commentary. So-called Anti-woke readers will hate it, and people who want subtle messages will likely be turned off as well. Russ speaks to common frustrations

“If you scream, people say you're melodramatic; if you submit, you’re masochistic; if you call names, you're a bitch. Hit him and he'll kill you. The best thing is to suffer mutely and yearn for a rescuer, but suppose a rescuer doesn't come?”

The book is filled with quotes that hit hard like that one. I could put twice as many into this review. This novel speaks hard truths.

Inequalities...
 
“Finding The Man. Keeping The Man. Not scaring The Man, building up The Man, following The Man, soothing The Man, flattering The Man, deferring to The Man, changing your judgment for The Man, changing your decisions for The Man, polishing floors for The Man, being perpetually conscious of your appearance for The Man, being romantic for The Man, hinting to The Man, losing yourself in The Man. 'I never had a thought that wasn't yours.' Sob, sob. Whenever I act like a human being, they say, 'What are you getting upset about?' They say: of course, you'll get married. They say: of course you're brilliant. They say: of course, you'll get a PhD and then sacrifice it to have babies. They say: if you don't, you're the one who'll have two jobs and you can make a go of it if you're exceptional, which very few women are, and if you find a very understanding man. As long as you don't make more money than he does. How do they expect me to live all this junk?”
 
Cultural expectations of women...

“Of course, you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn.

As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.

But the frogs die in earnest.”

That last line is to me the most powerful of the book. I found it powerful to experience the frustration and rage Russ was expressing. It is what makes this novel special and different.

“I’m a sick woman, a madwoman, a ball-breaker, a man-eater; I don’t consume men gracefully with my fire-like red hair or my poisoned kiss; I crack their joints with these filthy ghoul’s claws and standing on one foot like a de-clawed cat, rake at your feeble efforts to save yourselves with my taloned hinder feet: my matted hair, my filthy skin, my big fat plaques of green bloody teeth. I don’t think my body would sell anything. I don’t think I’d be good to look at. O of all diseases self-hate is the worst and I don’t mean for the one who suffers it!”

This is a classic worthy of being a Hugo winner representing most years. The problem with that fate of The Female Man is it was the same year as Philip K. Dick's  Flow My Tears and Leguin's  The Dispossessed. It appeared that year belonged to a showdown of the class of 1947 at Berkeley High School.  Leguin deserved the award and that is the novel I would have voted for in that position. As Dickian you might be surprised to know I think The Female Man would have been my second place. either way, they are all three great achievements.  

Russ created a masterpiece of SF Commentary, there are better stories, and storytellers but the story is only part of the point here. This is a masterpiece for reasons that go beyond just the story.It is a must-read classic.