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How are women portrayed in Flatland?
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In Flatland, women are portrayed as powerless yet dangerous, reflecting a satirical view of Victorian society. Women, depicted as lines, hold the lowest social status and are subject to strict control due to their perceived threat as "needles" capable of becoming invisible. They lack educational opportunities and are restricted in their movements, illustrating their paradoxical role as both feared and oppressed individuals within the rigid social hierarchy of Flatland.
Published in 1884, the novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott combines a satirical view of Victorian society in Britain with elements of science fiction and math theory about dimensions.
As narrated by the protagonist, a square, the story explores how awareness and movement in dimensions affects someone’s perception of self and others. When the square encounters a sphere who lives in the third dimension called Spaceland, his perceptions about life and society are challenged.
Flatland is a two-dimensional world with a social order based on a strict hierarchy. The higher the number of sides a shape has, the higher in the social structure (with a circle being considered the highest). Because women are lines, they occupy the lowest position in Flatland, even below the isosceles triangles. Yet because they can be mistaken for points depending on how one sees them, women are also...
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considered to be the most dangerous residents of Flatland.
In section 4, “Concerning the Women” the square tells readers,
If our highly pointed Triangles of the Soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For if a Soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle; being, so to speak, ALL point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a Female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with.
The square goes on to describe how women can become invisible when seen from behind because of an “Invisible Cap.” The square also explains that in the warmer climates the “Laws concerning Women” are stricter due to a combination of greater gravity and “casual and involuntary motions” by the other shapes. By these Laws, women must enter homes through the eastern door and make their presence known through sound:
2. No Female shall walk in any public place without continually keeping up her Peace-cry, under penalty of death.
That the death penalty is to be applied indicates the difficult and paradoxical status women have in Flatland: they are on the bottom of the social order yet the most feared. In other Flatland states, women must stay in their homes and can’t leave except for a public event.
The narrator notes that women facing these restrictions experience anger and retaliate against their families. Women have some outlet for their energy when they practice “back-motion,” a skill which enables others to see them and has also become an artistic endeavor:
I pointed out that in some less civilized States no female is suffered to stand in any public place without swaying her back from right to left. This practice has been universal among ladies of any pretensions to breeding in all well-governed States, as far back as the memory of Figures can reach.
The square also notes that a woman can turn her back to her husband to denote a loss of status for him. However, even these movements grant women little relief in their lives. As he reflects on his world, the square admits that life is difficult for women in Flatland:
To my readers in Spaceland the condition of our Women may seem truly deplorable, and so indeed it is. A Male of the lowest type of the Isosceles may look forward to some improvement of his angle, and to the ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste; but no Woman can entertain such hopes for her sex.
In section 12, “Of the Doctrine of our Priests,” the square refers to the religious leadership in Flatland and the decisions they came to regarding women:
About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the Chief Circle that, since women are deficient in Reason but abundant in Emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education.
The result of this policy has created generations of women unable to read or do basic math.
As a work of satire, Flatland presents an exaggerated situation to address the issue of the restricted lives women and other limiting aspects of life in Victorian England which, as a teacher, Abbott would have observed firsthand.
References
Women are portrayed as both powerless and dangerous in Flatland. They're something to be controlled.
In Flatland, people have more or less power depending on how many sides they have. (Everyone is a two-dimensional shape in this world.) The perfect shape is supposed to be a circle and society sees more sides as being closer to achieving that shape. Unfortunately, in Flatland, all women are shaped like needles—almost straight lines. Edward Abbott writes:
Place a needle on a table. Then, with your eye on the level of the table, look at it side-ways, and you see the whole length of it; but look at it end-ways, and you see nothing but a point, it has become practically invisible. Just so is it with one of our Women.
This means that women in Flatland have very little power. They only appear to have one line; they can never have the same amount of power as men, who are polygons with more sides. The interesting thing, though, is that women are also considered dangerous in that society. Their shape makes them easy to hide; it also can act as a weapon. Because of this, their lives and movements are very restricted.