| OOTW Home | Identity Variations |
| OOTW Home | Identity Variations |
Women writers used fantastic and speculative fiction to explore feminist themes--questioning our society's assumptions about sex differences and gender roles.
Perhaps the most important work of speculative fiction by a "mainstream" writer is Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, about a future United States ruled by a sexist theocracy.
Atwood's novel is a classic dystopia in the tradition of Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984.
Candas Jane Dorsey and Élisabeth Vonarburg have used the conventions of science fiction to question the meaning of sexual identity and the roles of men and women.
The Handmaid's Tale
Atwood, Margaret
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986.
The place is Gilead some time in the near future. The atmosphere is Puritanism revisited in this a sexist theocracy. The narrator is one of the handmaids in this horrifying new social order. This satirical description of a dystopia is all too possible.
Courtesy of Margaret Atwood.
Machine Sex ... and Other Stories
Dorsey, Candas Jane
Victoria, B.C.: Porcepic Books, 1988.
This collection of short stories speculates about a future in which, despite advances in technology, the human element -- the people passion factor -- remains central.
Used by permission of Beach Holme Publishers, Victoria, B.C.
Le Silence de la cité
Vonarburg, Élisabeth
Paris: Éditions Denoël, 1981.
In the City under the earth, deadly genetic experiments are underway. Outside, wild tribes live in a very different world. A child born to privilege must choose between the two and her choice will transform not only her own life but the lives of those who come after her.
© Éditions Denoël, 1981.
| Top of page |
|---|
Copyright. The National Library of Canada. (Revised: 1995-06-17)