Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20885 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Synopsis
First published in 1979, Marge Piercy's novel is both a drama of survival and a Utopian epic. Connie Ramos, 37, Mexican-American and unfairly incarcerated in a mental hospital, is the enduring central character in a book about differing visions of the future.

From the Publisher
A timeless classic!
Ask any woman born pre-1970 to name the books which she found life altering and you can bet that Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy appears among them. Woman on the Edge of Time is the moving story of Connie Ramos, a thirty-seven-year-old Mexican-American, unfairly incarcerated in a mental hospital, whose survival instinct is greatly tested. On a larger scale it is a Utopian epic that makes you question the system that institutionalises her. Although originally published in 1975, this Women’s Press classic has endured the test of time and is greatly relevant to the 21st century reader interested in the idea of the position of women in the world.

Erica Jong ‘One of the most important novelists of our time.’

Thomas Pynchon ‘Here is somebody with the guts to go into the deepest core of herself, her time, her history, and risk far more than anybody else has so far, just out of a love of the truth and a need to tell it.’

Time ‘Anyone who wants to learn what the revolution against the fat society is all about should read Marge Piercy’s novel.’

New Internationalist ‘Marge Piercy succeeds brilliantly in pitting the imagined idealism of the future against the poisoned and despoiled present – each illuminating the other- and the book stands as one of the classic feminist utopias, alongside Ursula LeGuin’s Dispossessed and Always Coming Home and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man. In Connie and Luciente we have two wonderfully rounded characters, fallible, often wrong-headed but brave, full of spirit and immensely life affirming.’

Excerpted from Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
She hated being around the shock shop. It scared her. Regularly some patients from L-6 were wheeled out for shock. One morning there would be no breakfast for you, and then you would know. They would wheel you up the hail and inject you to knock you out and shoot you up with stuff that turned your muscles to jelly, so that even your lungs stopped. You were a hair from death. You entered your death. Then they would send voltage smashing through your brain and knock your body into convulsions. After that they'd give you oxygen and let you come back to life, somebody's life, jumbled, weak, dribbling saliva - come back from your scorched taste of death with parts of your memory forever burned out. A little brain damage to jolt you into behaving right. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes a woman forgot what had scared her, what she had been worrying about. Sometimes a woman was finally more scared of being burned in the head again, and she went home to her family and did the dishes and cleaned the house. Then maybe in a while she would remember and rebel and then she'd be back for more barbecue of the brain. In the back wards the shock zombies lay, their brains so scarred they remembered nothing, giggling like the old lobotomized patients.

On that Wednesday she was sitting there hopefully, but Fargo was deep in gossip with another black attendant. Connie had gone up once for a light - the only way inmates could get a match was to beg for one - and had been told to wait a minute, honey, half an hour ago. Four other patients were waiting too with small requests. She knew better than to approach again. On her lap was spread yesterday's paper, a present from Fargo for cleaning up vomit, but she had read through it, including births and deaths and legal notices. Mrs. Martinez approached her, eyes meeting hers and then downcast in a gesture that reminded her suddenly of Luciente's orange eat. Several weeks had passed since she had been in contact with the future, although almost daily she felt Luciente's presence asking to be let through. Here in the violent ward she was afraid to allow contact, for she had to watch her step. She was never alone, not even in the toilets without doors, never away from surveillance.

Customer Reviews

Speculative politics and patriarchy
An important (if flawed) example of feminist SF, Women On The Edge Of Time escapes that old cliche that nothing dates so quickly as visions of the future, which really speak only to the time of their imagining. But this might have more to do with the persistence (or resurgence) of the patriarchy which it critiques than with any quality of the book itself. The alternation between worlds is nicely imagined and thankfully free from a certain kind of technical obsession that we think of as 'masculinist'. The future citizens manage to take on a life of their own but lack the contradictions that make a work like LeGuin's The Dispossessed superior in so many ways. The language is itself a little pedestrian and reads a little too much like a morality tale - despite her incarceration in a mental institution and her outbreaks of violence and drug-taking, Connie is not quite complicated (or multivalent) enough to break cover into believable autonomy. Many of Piercy's central concerns, and more than a few features of her utopian future, are reminiscent of Joanna Russ's The Female Man. That is a much better place to go for the pleasures of feminist speculative fictions. Nevertheless, this has something going for it, even if that says more about politics and patriarchy than about literature.

A 1970s vision of the future still fresh and relevant today
When I started reading Woman on the Edge of Time, I had forgotten that it was supposed to be sci-fi and I was really rather disappointed to be reading about the depressing plight of a socially and economically disadvantage woman caught in an insane asylum, seemingly innocent (at least this time). As Luciente started appearing and slowly coaxed her into her future world, however, I became much more interested.

Initially, the future world that Marge Piercy paints is at odds with our - and indeed Connie's - vision of the future. Instead of gleaming towers and hovercars, Luciente and her "mems" live in squat mud huts and seem to be farmers, "peasants" in Connie's disappointed words. Nevertheless, I'd contend that this future world is not wholly original, especially when considering that this novel was written in 1976. At the time, there were many who considered an agrarian, communal life with ultimate respect for the individual utopia.

Into this utopia enters the world of the "multies" - those who have not adopted the idyllic peacefulness of communities like Mattapoisett. For sure (or "fasure" as Luciente would say), this heavily contrasted world is an extrapolation of the readers' own and a warning of what we may become if we don't change our ways and become a little bit more like Luciente and her "sweetfriends".

While these thoughts are typical of the 1970s, they are not entirely unmodern and, throughout the book, I never felt as if I was reading a book as old as I am! Connie's present and Luciente's future seem equally fresh and relevant in today's world. For example, mobile phones and the internet aren't noticeably absent (and in the future the "kenner" is like portable, talking Wikipedia).

The only lingering doubt that the book leaves me with is this: is the future experienced by Connie real or is it all a figment of her, clinically diagnosed schizophrenia?

An Important Historical Feminist Vision of the Future.
While, yes, certainly Piercy's work is dated, its theories of a feminist utopia are firmly set in the perhaps more `idealistic' 70's, this is still by no means a worthless read. In fact there is much to celebrate in her feminist, cum social critique, cum science fiction drama. The story of Connie's abuse at the hands of a pimp, the state and the resultant removal of her daughter, Angelina, into care creates an insight into a world of forced hysterectomies, unequal sexual relationships and discrimination of the poor and ethnic minorities. These are issues still affecting many women in American (where the book is set) and the rest of the world, today, and are therefore still relevant and worthy of analysis. Connie's resultant decent into so called `insanity' forces the reader to question just how mad Connie really is. Is she deserving of a lobotomy that will ultimately erase her memory and her ability to do what she believes is time travel into the future, or is the state interrupting and enforcing control over what they classify as a `dissident', a `rebel'? For insight into the plight of the poor and the often despicable treatment of the mentally ill this book stands alone as an extremely important late 20th century novel, up there with `The Bell Jar', `Girl, Interrupted' and `Prozac Nation.' The sub-plot, set in the future world of a so-called feminist `utopia' equally calls the reader to question just how utopian and improved the conditions really are. Certainly in comparison to Connie's existence in a sexist, discriminatory America were gender and class are definers of social standing, the future Connie finds herself exploring offers many improvements. Ultimately however, in a society today, were we are so forcefully defined by gender and sexuality (and not always in a belittling or derogatory manner - why shouldn't women after all celebrate what they believe is their innate womanliness - what ever that may be?), Piercy's utopia will certainly be found to be wanting by many of its readers. The sexless society she creates has its pros and its cons. It forces the inhabitants to define one another as human beings rather than as men and women. The birthing machine certainly frees women from the pains of childbirth, but ultimately robs them of the sometimes innate desire to bear children in a similar way to Connie's forced hysterectomy. Furthermore for want of a better expression the `free-love' community of the utopian future is problematic. In the 70's this concept represented to some the possibility of freedom from so-called `Compulsory Heterosexuality' i.e. man and wife partnerships, thus allowing women more sexual freedom and opportunities to explore their sexualities. However in practice these concepts are proved to not be without their flaws, as they are certainly no barrier to falling in love with someone who ultimately one cannot have a life long relationship with in a community where everyone belongs to everyone else. The guide Luciente painfully expresses this to Connie on one of her latter visits. Not without its flaws, but perhaps more thought provoking for them, Marge Piercy's novel will not leave you untouched, or unshaken, and there is much to think about in her richly dense analysis of society, feminism, gender, mental illness and technology.