reading Feminist fiction over time
In April so far, I’ve found myself reading a handful of short feminist fiction in some of my classes. Funny how that lined up. Both have science fiction and utopia kind of vibes, so I found that quite interesting. One is from 1905, and the other is from 1981. I’ll give brief overviews then discuss the stories themselves. Â
The first story of these two I read was Sultana’s Dream. It was written by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain in 1905, from the area known in modern day as Bengal. Specifically, when modern day Bengal was under British rule, which was told to my ENG-423 Shakespeare class by a visiting professor, who is a candidate for a new member of the English department here at Bonas.Â
The second is a story called With Delicate Mad Hands, written by James Tiptree Jr… otherwise known as Alice Sheldon, hailing from Illinois. Apparently, Sheldon was so great with her writing that no one expected for her to actually be a woman, in fact most people thought there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY Tiptree could be a woman. This story was written in 1981 and included in a collection of science fiction stories called Out of Everywhere. We just discussed this story in my ENG-350 creative writing: fiction class. Â
Now, to get into the stories.
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SULTANA’S DREAMÂ
This story, as the name suggests, dives into the dream of a woman named Sultana. She is a purdahnishin woman (which means she practices something called purdah, a custom that prevents women from being seen by men by means of fully concealing clothing and/or keeping women in segregated and private places) who has  a dream, a dream that enters a world where the gender expectations and limitations pressed on women have been reversed to affect men instead. This story is a bit ironic and satirical in that way, and this world known as “Ladyland” proves to be one far better than the world where men have all the power, it’s a utopia of sorts. In the control of women, it becomes this beautiful, technologically advanced, clean place, with no war nor crime, which I think is a fascinating thing. This reversal can be applied to a modern setting too—what kind of world would be created if men and women’s roles were reversed? It gives you a lot to think about—Hossain had this image of change. A dream so powerful that she established the first school for women in her area, one that still exists today.
WITH DELICATE MAD HANDS
This story is quite different from the previous one (and much longer). It follows Cold Pig, or CP, a woman who lived in a world where violence against women by men is commonplace. A world she longs to escape, so she does, through fantasy and also quite literally. It’s hard to shorten this story into little key points and tidbits, but I’ll try. So, CP is rather intelligent, she outwits and overpowers the male captain of a spaceship. She pilots this ship, haunted by these echoes of violence and cruelty as she drifts with no exact location in mind. But she finds this world, a lavender planet, where she crash lands. There, she meets alien beings, that become her company as her oxygen and support gradually start to run out over time. But this world offers comfort for the first time in her life, I won’t spoil it. Though, I will say, this story depicts a woman finding some bittersweet escape from a cruel world, a woman persisting and rising above a world that sees her as waste. Â
In the end, these two stories show how women have been taking steps against oppression through their words for a long time, have been striving to rise above. It reminds me a lot of Her Campus itself, a little. We have stood our ground for ages, and we have fought for so long, and we will keep fighting, I hope. Words have a lot of power, but they couldn’t have it without the people behind those words, who fight and dream and persevere.