The Female Man (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Joanna Russ
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Plot: Science fiction
- Time of Work: 1969 and the future
- Setting: Several versions of Earth during different centuries
- Principal Characters: Joanna, Jeannine Dadier, Janet Evason, Alice-Jael Reasoner
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism, Science fiction, Alternate history, Dystopian fiction, Utopian fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, 1970’s, Sexism, Gender roles, Future, Other worlds, Feminism, Time travel, War, Women, Women’s rights, Utopias
- Locales: Earth, alternate versions of
The Novel
Two of the staple plots of science fiction are that of time travel and that of alternate universes. Traveling in time—analogous to traveling in space—has become such a common peg from which to hang a story that it hardly requires explanation, but the idea of an alternate universe is not so familiar. In a story of alternate universes, and in The Female Man, in particular, the author supposes some different outcome of a historical event: One might imagine, for example, an Earth on which Adolf Hitler died in the 1930’s, one whose history would therefore be...
[The entire page is 2627 words long]
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