To Subvert Or To Respect?

The issue of sex and gender is always the focus of feminist study. Through the analysis of the female roles in Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, this thesis intends to discuss how women's sexual identity affects their gender roles, which contributes to their inferior social status in comparison to men's.Woman on the Edge of Time is a Utopian science fiction. In the world of reality, although the female protagonist attempts to challenge the society permeated with patriarchal ideology, the fact that she is born a woman decides her fate of being the object used and dominated by men. Society and family desert her to the mental asylum, which turns out to be the accomplice of patriarchy exerting control over rebellious women. Physically and psychologically, the female protagonist wishes to escape. Through mental time traveling, she goes to the future world where the gender roles of men and women are blurred due to the assimilation of social division of labor. Besides, discourse, which symbolizes male power, is also subverted and women have opportunities for self-expression and self-definition. Through the experience of the female protagonist, Piercy creates a degendenzed society where absolute equality between men and women is proclaimed.However, this Utopian imagination has its radical side and shortcomings. Based on feminist and sociologist theories, the thesis will further analyze the social roles of women by closely observing the relationship between women and madness, women and re/production as well as women and discourse, in the hope of revealing some problems raised by absolute equality between the two sexes.