“Woman of the Edge of Time” by Marge Piercy can be considered as a fantastic utopian novel about gender equality; the horrific novel about the limitation of human evolution. The writer depicts the story of a woman in her mid-thirties who gets to a mental hospital after her husband’s death. The doctors declare her totally insane since she is unable to perceive the reality. Her ability to see the future of 2137 horrifies her because the world that she sees differs greatly from the world she lives in. The future world is peaceful and quiet where women and men are equal and both could suckle their children as well. The children are created in artificial wombs and were brought up in the family of three parents. In other words, all the attributes of gender similarity disappear (Sayer 147). There are no words “mother” or “father” that determine the sexist belonging. However, in real time the doctors do not care about the woman’s past and expressed their prejudiced attitude to the patient. Connie also realizes that the humiliation she feels is due to her being a Mexican-American woman. Racial distinctions discourage the hospital staff to understand the reason for mental illness. Hence, apart from the problem of gender distinction it is necessary to consider the state of medical ethics towards mentally ill patients.
In this book, Marge Piercy emphasizes that the healthcare system and mental care in particular are used as an effective tool of sexism as well as racism. The healthcare staff treats the patients relying on their race, gender, and nationality. From the first pages, we see the treatment of women in comparison with men, taking into consideration their social status. Connie finds no mercy and respect within the hospital, everybody considers her insane.
The nurses in the hospital do not believe her and are assured that she is to blame for breaking Geraldo’s nose (Piercy, 9). The healthcare stuff negligence can be pursued throughout the novel: “Doctor had not even interviewed [Connie] but had talked exclusively Geraldo, exchanging only a word or two with Dolly”. Being in the hospital, the nurses who looked after her also considered her insane and talk behind her back about how dirty those mad people are. There, she is always left tied to her bad for many hours because of the nurse’s indifference. Piercy brightly portrays the scenes of the nurse’s treatment: “They hauled her along the hall like a bag of garbage and they paid no attention to what she tried to say…” (Piercy, 12). Connie was forced to urinate herself; she was even incapable to wipe nose. Her bagging and requests are completely ignored by the nurse stuff. Each word uttered by Connie is not perceived as the asking for help but the useless whipping of a crazy woman. The description of the nurse stuff only completes the general situation in the hospital. The nurse behavior makes the readers to help and to think over the mental hospital establishment since the indifference of the doctors and nurses frightens. The author refers to this treatment as to “human-to-cockroach behavior” (Piercy, 18). The most striking scene is outright refusal for recognition of human pain. The main protagonist screams about her pain. Connie is outraged by Mrs. Ferguson who is coldly asking “Where do you believe you feel pain?”
In the book, the indifference and neglected attitude is the main stream and can be revealed through the characters in the novel from the doctor and the nurse stuff to the social workers who, instead of listening to their patients, shuffle the papers in the folder (Piercy, 17). The nature of such treatment is obviously due to looking her down as a Latina. The racial prejudices are the one of the main grounds for neglected treating the people.
The writer also touches upon the problem of drug abuse. Connie is being pumped with drugs that drive her crazy so that the distinctions between the reality and the imaginary world are blurred. Her mental disease was the outcome of the doctors’ diagnosis and who were impacted by the stereotypes. Their minds refused to accept the truth and horrible fate of poor woman. Therefore, the drugs was the means of controlling their patients.
Medical crimes are explicitly revealed and intentionally exaggerated in the novel: Connie is subjected to the horrible surgical experiments. The doctors of the hospital set the experiments on the womb’s elimination. They also intend to implant electrodes into the patients’ brains to supervise their emotional state. The indifference of doctors and their unwillingness to treat her properly only assures Connie that she is has no hope for the survival. The guards of human health, made the woman to an operation declaring her insane. She is trying to fight but all her efforts are in vain. The doctors of this mental hospital exclude any features of gender in their patients and look down at them as on the “experimental monster”.
Marge Piercy gives a personal view on the current outlook on reproduction and motherhood. Thus, she opposes men controlling technology and providing automation even in childbirth and women and “natural” motherhood. Her protest was revealed in presenting the future in Connie’s imagination that is a kind a call for the people and the doctors who are trying to infringe the natural laws. That utopian fantastic place imagined by the woman is also the warning for the healthcare system symbolizing the consequences that care may treat. In addition the pejorative attitude of the people changes the medical original goal to heal and to cure but to torture and to hurt. Piercy turns the mental hospital into the plant of creating monsters out of people. This plants where people make robots deprived of moral values and human emotions. The doctors and the nurses involved in the process, put their patients on the assembly line and the finished “products” labeled as insane are just artificial creatures. Connie’s imagination depicts the world, a technological world, where people are really made artificially.
Though the book is rather provocative and even rigid, especially for late 70s, it highlights the problems of medical ethics of the mental healthcare system in the most proper way. Such stylistic device as exaggeration applied by the author encourages a better understanding of the situations taking place in the establishments for the mentally ill people. The write makes a considerable accent on the presence of sexist streams that also affect the quality of treatment. The doctors and nurses’ carelessness prevents them from realizing the needs of suffering people. Therefore, the author’s view on current healthcare is justified.
Works Cited
Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of the Time US: Fawset Books, 1976.
Sayer Karen & Moore, John Science Fiction, Critical Frontiers US: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.