Setting
- The Female Man includes several fictional worlds.
- Joanna's World: Joanna exists in a world that similar to Earth in the 1970s.
- Jeannine's World: Jeannine lives in a world where the Great Depression never ended. The Second World War never happened because Adolf Hitler was assassinated in 1936, and Chiang Kai-Shek controls Hong Kong, as Japanese imperialism still dominates the Chinese mainland.
- Whileaway (Janet's World): Whileaway is a utopian society in the far future where all the men died from a gender-specific plague over 800 years ago. After mastering parthenogenesis, women form lesbian relationships and parent children within them. Although the world is technologically advanced, their societies are mostly agrarian. Their technology enables them to genetically merge ova in order to procreate. Joanna Russ's Nebula Award winning short story When It Changed (1972) also takes place on Whileaway, but earlier.
- Jael's World: Jael's world is a dystopia where men and women are literally engaged in a "battle of the sexes". Although they have been in conflict for over 40 years, the two societies still participate in trade with each other. Women trade children in exchange for resources. In order for men to cope with their sexual desires, young boys undergo cosmetic surgery that physically changes their appearance so that they look like women. Jael is heterosexual and has sex with Davey, a lobotomised adolescent male, at her home.
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Famous quotes containing the word setting:
“In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.”
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“Like plowing, housework makes the ground ready for the germination of family life. The kids will not invite a teacher home if beer cans litter the living room. The family isn’t likely to have breakfast together if somebody didn’t remember to buy eggs, milk, or muffins. Housework maintains an orderly setting in which family life can flourish.”
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“The trees stand in the setting sun,
I in their freckled shade
Regard the cavalcade of sin,
Remorse for foolish action done,
That pass like ghosts regardless, in
A human image made....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)