Sense of Wonder - Feminist Viewpoint

Feminist Viewpoint

Sharona Ben-Tov in her book The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and American Reality explores SF's 'sense of wonder' from a feminist perspective. Her book is a "thought-provoking work of criticism that provides a new and interesting perspective on some basic elements in science fiction," including the 'sense of wonder'. In his review of Ben-Tov’s work for the SF critical journal Extrapolation David Dalgleish, quoting from the text, points out that,

Ben-Tov asserts that SF's (in)famous "sense of wonder" is an attempt to evoke a sublime transcendence, achieved through Nature, and "Nature is an animate, feminine, and numinous being" (23). But in SF as Ben-Tov sees it, this natural transcendence is merely an illusion; in fact, the transcendent is only achieved through technology, achieved by alienating feminine Nature. SF has "appropriated the qualities of abundance and harmony from the romance's Earthly paradise, banishing the figure of feminine nature from the man-made, rationalized world ...(22) ... The SF ideology that Ben-Tov examines is rooted in the scientific revolution, in the changing view of nature - from living, feminine Mother, Nature becomes inert, dead matter. This twentieth-century ideology has, for Ben-Tov, disturbing implications, especially from a feminist standpoint. "Our society," writes Ben-Tov, "lost the basis for transcendent experience by losing the relationship with numinous nature"(23). Thus, SF's "sense of wonder" is a lie: "it reflects white American fantasies about nature, machines, and the `frontier' . . . . The American mythological apparatus must be comprehended thoroughly to be handled, or dismantled, effectively" (92-93).