How would you position James Tiptree’s work relative to the pulp SF we have read to this point? What is one way in which “The Women Men Don’t See” is either different from or very similar to the style or content of earlier magazine stories (“The Roads Must Roll,” “The Cold Equations,” and “Helen O’Loy,” for example) that we have read?
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In The Women Men Don’t See, the obvious distinction, for me, was the clear mental thought process differences between the male and female main character. Some other commenters touched on this above, but the way that the male main character and narrator for the story thought about his environment and the people in it is fairly unchanged from stories we read earlier like The Roads Must Roll and Cold Equations. He has an air of confidence that is somewhat unfounded, and maintains in his mind that he is the reason for the party’s continued survival. Furthermore, his fixation with women is not a new idea: he sexualizes and treats his female companion in manner typical of early-period pulp science fiction. Ruth, on the other hand, is self-sufficient, resourceful, and ends up taking care of the male protagonist for the majority of the story. Though we aren’t inside her head, her actions reasoning skills in a way make the those of Don seem cave-man-like. In an ironic sense, though the narrator perhaps doesn’t realize it or want to recognize it, Ruth is the person most in charge of the situation.
James Tiptree’s work “The Women Men Don’t See” is very different from the pulp SF we have read in class in terms of how the relationship between man and woman is portrayed. In pulp SF, female characters are extremely sexualized and are portrayed as frail. Pulp SF covers share the common trait of depicting women as being easily kidnapped by monsters and as having to need the help of heroic men who come to their rescue. In contrast, in “The Women Men Don’t See,” Ruth, the major female protagonist, is depicted as an unappealing, quiet, rather odd, middle-aged woman who clearly possesses skills that contributed to the survival of her and her companions on the island. In a sense, she is more important to the survival of the group than anyone else on the island: she fixes up her companions (ironically, all the male companions) when they get hurt, she provides food for Don when he injures his leg and makes sure that he is relatively comfortable in the little comfort any of them can get in the environment, and she comes up with a solution to transport both her and Don back to the rest of her group. Perhaps, one can say that men in the story are dependent on Ruth for survival, and this is completely opposite of the stereotypical views on women seen in pulp SF.
A recurring stereotype in previous science fiction stories we have studied throughout the early 20th century is the depiction of women as helpless and in captive; often hyperexualized. A prime example of this is the cover of the “Amazing Stories” series that we looked at in class, in which we see women chained, trapped, and even held over a pit of lava, waiting to be rescued by the “hero” of the story from either monsters, aliens or some type of villain. This way of objectifying women in the genre lasted into the 1950s, and even as the science fiction genre shifted away from the romance and sexual pulp to a dominance of dystopian stories after WWII, it wasn’t until 1970 where we see women finally have a voice in these stories. In “The Women We Don’t See Me”, Ruth and her daughter act nothing like Don Fenton expects, as they actually express their emotions and feelings about the male-dominated society that they live in. The women in the story are even comfortable with leaving the world which they live in now with the aliens. As time progresses through the 20th century, women worldwide seem to gain more power and rights worldwide, and it seems this trend is evident in the fact that women have more say in science fiction and literature. Women start to be strong and pivotal versus being decorative accessories and weak. It is interesting that James Tiptree Jr is actually a woman writing under the name of a man as well. There have always been female writers, but Tiptree, who’s real name is Alice Bradley Sheldon, felt like she would have more success getting her message across under the guise of a male name. Using a male name was definitely more palatable, but also did its job in signaling a change.
James Tiptree in his writing focuses on the human rather than the foreign mechanics of pulp science fiction. Unlike works such as “The Roads Must Roll” and “Cold Equations” where technology dominates the stage, the heart of Tiptree’s work is human nature, and more specifically, its vulnerability to the prospect of a new alien life. For example, in “The Women Men Don’t See” Mrs. Parsons defies all expectations of women’s nature and flees the mundane world for a new alien life. Rather than being controlled by some technological equation that forced her into the decision, Mrs. Parsons acts on her own free will from an internal desire to be free of the male domination she sees on Earth.
Tiptree further diverges from the common tropes of pulp science fiction with his depiction of women in the story. While the male gaze is not altered from common pulp writing that maintain fixation on women’s bodies and their vulnerability to the threat of outsiders; the women characters do undergo a major change in Tiptree’s work. Tiptree in “Houston, Houston, Do You Read” takes pulp fiction’s obsession with the female body and makes it both artificial but also the only life left on Earth. The role of women’s bodies as objects of men to be saved and claimed is challenged in this story. Women instead are written as creators of life and the saviors of the human race. In “The Women Men Don’t See” pulp science fiction’s ever youthful woman is replaced with a real forty-something year old woman who sees the inequality of her position as a woman. Mrs. Parson’s awareness threatens the male narrator who, in the story, takes on science fiction’s role of the injured and vulnerable woman. Roles are flipped and common tropes are manipulated to read as an inside out pulp fiction in Tiptree’s writing.
The James Tiptree readings that we read for class today were very entertaining but also very different than previous readings we have done from this era. In the reading “The Women Men Don’t See,” protagonist Ruth Parsons and narrator Don Fenton are together when their charter plane crashes on an abandon island and the two are forced to leave together in search of fresh water. During this adventure, the two encounter aliens and Ruth pleads with them to take her away while Don tries to get her to stay on Earth. Ruth ends up winning this battle and leaves with the aliens which is a stark contrast from the other readings that we’ve had as in many of the other stories the aliens are bad or at the very least, humans are wary of them. One example of this is “The Roads Must Roll” in which protagonist Larry Gains is forced to fight seemingly non-human is “Shorty” Van Kleeck. Shorty is responsible for a train crash and attempting to kill a large amount of people and it is up to Gains to get to his office and stop him. In this case, “the good guys” win again. This concept of the good guys winning is what is confusing however as in the first Tiptree story the aliens are the good guys while in the second one they are the bad guys.
This concept of how aliens are viewed is exactly what I want to discuss and examine with the class. The reason is that I’ve been programmed to think that humans are the superior race and everything else is inferior. In other words, I’ve always looked at aliens with a slightly judging eye and never quite trusted what their intentions may be. The most interesting part of this to me is I don’t know why I feel this way except for the fact that aliens are a different species than what I’m used to. As a result of my feelings however, I initially sided with Fenton and was shocked that despite not being forced to, Ruth wanted to go to with the aliens. I remember thinking to myself, “Why would she ever want to do that? They are bad and dangerous.” I’m curious to hear what my fellow classmates think however. Do you guys share my feelings that aliens are inherently bad or not trustworthy or am I just being crazy?