See the Moon
"Anyone who lives in two worlds is bound to have a complicated life."
— Vittoria, 5.XII
The Female Man is a 1975 book by American author Joanna Russ, part Speculative Fiction novel (or "antinovel"
) and part feminist manifesto.
The loose story follows four women from separate realities: Jeannine is a librarian from an alternate past where The Great Depression never ended; Joanna is a feminist in the 1970s trying to find her way in a man's world; Janet is a Time Traveler from a utopian future Earth inherited by women; and Jael is a Mysterious Watcher observing the actions of the other three as they are brought together by happenstance and without much explanation.
The book is highly experimental in its style, switching freely between perspectives often without clear delineation and bordering on stream-of-consciousness at times. Intercut with the plot are chapters (from varying or uncertain perspectives) that are essentially Russ's personal observations of misogyny, gender relations, and the female condition.
This book provides examples of:
- Appeal to Familial Wisdom: Parodied in 6.I:[Y]ou can't expect a man to listen to everything (as everybody's Mother said).
- Arc Words: See the moon.explanation
- Armoured Closet Gay: Laura is vocally opposed to Janet's unabashed lack of femininity and protests in one of her monologues that she would never sleep with a woman because it would be abnormal. She turns out to be a lesbian.
- Author Avatar: Since she shares a name and an era with the author, Joanna is the obvious choice (and many of the author tracts seem to be from her perspective), but all four protagonists represent aspects of Russ's personality to some degree.
- Closet Key: Meeting (and falling for) Janet helps Laur realize she's a lesbian.
- Code of Honour: Jael shares hers in a late chapter:If you want to be an assassin, remember that you must decline all challenges. Showing off is not your job.
If you are insulted, smile meekly. Don't break your cover.
Be afraid. This is information about the world.
You are valuable. Push yourself.
Take the easiest way out whenever possible. Resist curiosity, pride, and the temptation to defy limits. You are not your own woman and must be built to last.
Indulge hatred. Action comes from the heart.
Pray often. How else can you quarrel with God? - Designer Babies: Since they use cloning for reproduction anyway, Whileawayans have bred out common ailments like allergies.
- Double Consciousness: Russ invokes this idea in several places, describing the difficulty of being othered in a male-dominated world one is nevertheless trying to succeed in.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Janet has difficulty adapting to social norms (particularly gendered ones) in 1970s America.
- Gendercide: On the Whileaway timeline, a virus gradually eradicated men. Near the end, Jael claims that this is a lie; men were actually defeated in a war much like the one raging in her own timeline.
- Genre-Busting: It's usually classified as Science Fiction, but the emphasis in on the human experiences and interactions of its characters, with the sci-fi elements taking a decided backseat—and that's not even counting the parts of the book that take a break from the plot altogether.
- Grand Staircase Entrance: Discussed:[Jeannine wishes] that she were someone else so she could watch herself coming down the stairs, the beautiful girl who composes everything around her to harmony.
- Homosexual Reproduction: On Whileaway, geneticists combine two egg cells to create a genetically distinct baby, which one of the mothers then carries to term.
- Lady Land:
- Whileaway is a version of Earth 800 years in the future, where a virus has wiped out all men, and women have rebuilt their own society.
- In Jael's timeline, men and women have separated into two societies perpetually at war.
- No Woman's Land: The highly militaristic Manland in Jael's timeline. The dominant men force one seventh of the population to undergo sex-change operations so that they can be used as sex slaves.
- Sweet on Polly Oliver: Exploited. On one of her missions undercover as a man in a primitive society, Jael "seduced" one of the king's guard through casual touches and the like, driving him crazy when he thought he was falling for another man.
- Theme Naming: As lampshaded by Jael, all four women have J names. As it turns out, this is because they are actually genetically identical versions of one another from alternate timelines.
- Time Travel: Janet visits Joanna's Earth from the future (although, as is explained later, it's not so much strict time travel as timeline travel).
- Temporal Mutability: Time travel within the same reality is impossible, but you can switch between Alternate Universes and achieve about the same effect.
- Title Drop: Comes at the end of 7.I-II, the book's thesis statement:Listen to the female man.
If you don't by God and all the Saints, I'll break your neck. - Women's Mysteries: Jeannine espouses this perspective in one of her monologues:Jeannine, who sometimes believes in astrology, in palmistry, in occult signs, who knows that certain things are fated or not fated, knows that men—in spite of everything—have no contact with or understanding of the insides of things. That's a realm that's denied them. Women's magic, women's intuition rule here, the subtle deftness forbidden to the clumsier sex.
