'How can men be mothers! How can some kid who isn't related to you be your child?' Oh, and children are raised by three non biological mothers, some of which are male. There is widely available mental health care without stigma. Everyone contributes based on their skills and inclinations. The society of Mattapoisett has eliminated hierarchy. The ruined Earth is not fully healed and restored, but it is well on its way. There is still conflict, but that conflict is far away. On the surface (and a bit deeper), it is a utopian future. As mentioned in the Executive Summary, that future has solved the problems of pollution, racism, classism, sexism, greatly reduced crime to almost nil, and the nature of the community is so foreign to Connie that she can barely accept how it could work or that, despite the hell she is traveling from, it could even be desirable. This is a vision of the future offering a return to a more pastoral and cooperative society. The feminist future is Connie's initially inadvertent time travel to the year 2137. At the time Piercy was writing, that was telling the truth through contemporary fiction.

That part of Woman on the Edge of Time isn't the feminist future. It rings all too true and echoes the horror stories many of us have grown up reading. Traveling somehow to 2137 Connie is introduced to a possible future that has solved pollution, racism, classism, sexism, and has upended every social and political structure in order to build a better world than the one Connie knows.įeminist Future: From the opening scenes of the real world dystopian hellscape of 1970's era poverty, mental illness, and sex trafficking, Marge Piercy paints a damning picture of instutionalism and the social politics of poverty and mental health. It is as part of that mental instability that Piercy reveals Connie can see and hear Luciente, a woman from the future who wishes to show off that nearly utopian future as something Connie needs to aspire to because it is women like Connie who can help make that future come true. Connie has a history of mental illness, drug abuse, and had previously lost custody of her child. Woman on the Edge of Time Įxecutive Summary: After attempting to protect her niece from an abusive pimp, Connie Ramos is brutally beaten and then institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital where she is frequently medicated and not believed that *she* is the victim and not the aggressor.

Woman on the edge of time