Woman on the Edge of Time

Written in 1976, this classic of speculative, utopian, feminist fiction is still relevant.

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The main storyline is that a woman is unjustly committed to a mental institution, and because she is a brown-skinned Latina, she is treated really poorly. Not just psychological gas-lighting and denial of basic health-care, she and the other patients who have been labeled as dangerous to society, have zero control over what is done them.

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The group we follow has been given over to a group of doctors who are like mad scientists. They want to show that with the implantation of an electrical device in the brain or with an amydalectomy they can subdue the violent patient so that they can be re-introduced into society.

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My initial writing of this review included a statement along the lines of “In today’s world, the kind of treatment described in the book would never happen.” But the false confidence of that statement made me uncomfortable, so I went to do a bit of research. Boy, was I wrong.

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I found a study published in May of 2024 that detailed the findings of a study that went out online in 2021. It asked people who had been institutionalized about their experiences.

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Reading the responses gave me the chills. Doctors and nurses are still sedating people who speak their mind, who raise their voice, or who complain about the care in any way. Facilities are still run-down, depressing, inadequate.

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Then the gates swallowed the ambulance-bus and swallowed her as she left the world and entered the underland where all who were not desired, who caught like rough teeth in the cogwheels, who had no place or fit crosswise the one they were hammered into, were carted to repent of their contrariness or to pursue their mad vision down to the pit of terror. Into the asylum that offered none, the broken-springed bus roughly galloped.

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So, let me say instead that the conditions and situations experienced in mental institutions, described 50 years ago in this book as abhorrent and dehumanizing still exist in today’s world. Indeed, the basic negation of bodily autonomy, especially of women, still exists.

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Along with the main plot of the protagonist being unwillingly admitted to an institution and the heinous things that happen there, is a secondary plot that has to do with her being able to visit a future that is utopia for adults of all genders, children and animals. The bits of the book that describe the utopia are excellent.

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I enjoyed being given an idea of what governance, healthy relationships, transport, food production, child-care, careers, birth, and death could be like without the influence of the patriarchy. The ideas given by the author are mind-stretching.

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For example, women are freed from the automatic assumption of them doing the child-rearing. Instead, the raising of children is spread among three people who, regardless of gender, agree to mother that child until it is old enough to decide it doesn’t want or need to be mothered anymore. (There is a coming-of-age test, of course, so the decision has some weight behind it.) Objects are shared among people in villages and among villages, so you might have a DaVinci hanging on your wall for a month before it gets passed to your neighbor. Ritual or ceremonial clothes (like an embroidered purple robe you might wear to someone’s dying) are borrowed and then returned to the library. Resources are pooled among the people in the village and among villages to ensure that everyone has what they need, eliminating the need for currency.

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These types of ideas are life-giving, relaxing, and a pleasure to read. Imagine if food were growing everywhere where there isn't a dwelling or paving stones! Imagine if you were encouraged to learn what you were interested in with someone who excelled at that thing. Imagine that you'd be able to choose your adult name once you passed through the coming-of-age ceremony? These ideas create a level playing field where everyone wins and is able to discover and express their internal excellence. Great stuff!

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As they strolled on, she said, “But they can’t possibly learn as much that way as they would in a classroom with a book!”

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“They can read. We all read by four or so,” Jackrabbit said. “But who wants to grow up with a head full of facts in boxes? We never leave school and go to work. We’re always working, always studying. We think, what person thinks person knows has to be tried out all the time. Placed against what people need. We care a lot how things are done.”

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“Every seven years you get a sabbatical,” Luciente said. “You’re off production for a year and all you’re liable for is family stuff. Some go study in their field. Some learn a language or travel."

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The synopsis of the book suggests that the protagonist has the power to ensure that humanity finds itself in that utopian reality byway of decisions she makes in her lifetime. But that’s absurd. Sure, we each create our own reality, and each of us affects the shared reality we live in somewhat, but one affects society’s shared reality much less if they’re sedated and in a cell in a mental institution.

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Anyway, I think this book has be experienced with respect to the historical context in which it was written. Not only that, if one is sensitive, one needs to pull psychological boundaries up against the worst bits of this story as it falls squarely into that style of media in which the bad guys get theirs in the end but it isn’t satisfying because we had to sit through 98% of the story of them being evil.

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I can only recommend it in as far as it contains some good ideas about a possible reality that I, personally, would love to live in.

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