Thumbtack: Cat Person and Friday
Apr. 12th, 2018 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osewalrus Never going to have time to fully write this out, but if I do, wanted to at least nail down the premise.
Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person" and Robert Heinlien's Friday explore the same themes of cultural disempowerment of women via manipulation of expectations and cultural brainwashing. Indeed, Heinlien's depiction is far more stark -- including cultural conditioning to accept rape -- than Roupenian's. Heinlien's "Friday" is even less aware of her disempowerment than Roupenian's "Margot," despite an internal monolog that describes the precise and brutal mechanisms of Friday's cultural condition. Likewise, Heinlien actualy provides far greater detail on how Friday's friends inadvertently confirm Friday's negative self-story (well, it is a novel).
Unfortunately, the literary world has consistently misinterpreted Friday, primarily because of its allegoric nature common to science fiction (Friday is, quite literally, a superhuman product of genetic engineering who is humiliated and raped into submission to believe herself *less* than human, which is the ultimate success of this disempowerment) and because the author does not supply an Epiphany Moment where the character explicitly recognizes that her internal disempowering mantra that she is "not human" is the culmination of her disempowerment and the mechanism of her diminishment. Rather than recognize the repeated times Friday uses her rationalization of herself as less than human and self-diversion from her discomforting internal monologues (which are frequent) as traditional defense mechanisms of the abused, readers generally suffer from the defense mechanisms themselves and assume that the character is meant to be portrayed as happy and confident when anyone familiar with how abuse victims cope would recognize the relevant mechanisms.
Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person" and Robert Heinlien's Friday explore the same themes of cultural disempowerment of women via manipulation of expectations and cultural brainwashing. Indeed, Heinlien's depiction is far more stark -- including cultural conditioning to accept rape -- than Roupenian's. Heinlien's "Friday" is even less aware of her disempowerment than Roupenian's "Margot," despite an internal monolog that describes the precise and brutal mechanisms of Friday's cultural condition. Likewise, Heinlien actualy provides far greater detail on how Friday's friends inadvertently confirm Friday's negative self-story (well, it is a novel).
Unfortunately, the literary world has consistently misinterpreted Friday, primarily because of its allegoric nature common to science fiction (Friday is, quite literally, a superhuman product of genetic engineering who is humiliated and raped into submission to believe herself *less* than human, which is the ultimate success of this disempowerment) and because the author does not supply an Epiphany Moment where the character explicitly recognizes that her internal disempowering mantra that she is "not human" is the culmination of her disempowerment and the mechanism of her diminishment. Rather than recognize the repeated times Friday uses her rationalization of herself as less than human and self-diversion from her discomforting internal monologues (which are frequent) as traditional defense mechanisms of the abused, readers generally suffer from the defense mechanisms themselves and assume that the character is meant to be portrayed as happy and confident when anyone familiar with how abuse victims cope would recognize the relevant mechanisms.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 03:32 pm (UTC)My initial take is that being a superhero isn't enough to make a life for a person. I've been told it's actually about being a superhero isn't enough to make a life for a woman. I was annoyed.
Considering Heinlein's emphasis on the need for family for both men and women, I think I'm right.
The epilogue makes it clear that Friday hasn't made her way past the prejudices she' internalized. It's just that she has a pretty good life.
I've wondered whether it would have made literary sense for her to have needed her superhuman abilities to handle an emergency at her final home.