The Female Man Characters

Will the Real Joanna Please Stand Up?If you're a fan of the New Criticism or Roland Barthes's notion of the "Death of the Author," The Female Man is going to put you through your paces. It's n...

In her funniest, brashest, and most charming moments—when she's dialing room service with her toes, beating up would-be attackers, and belting out her Handel lady-jams in the shower—Janet is th...

Naïve, romantic, and an active fantasist, Jeannine is the youngest of the four alter egos. Unmarried at twenty-nine years old and living in a version of Earth where the Great Depression is still o...

A.K.A. Alice-Jael, Sweet Alice, J, Alice Reasoner, Alice-Jael Reasoner, and Jael ReasonerFanged, clawed, and fond of dressing all in black, Jael is the last of the four alter-egos to appear in the...

The first of the three men who hit on Janet during the party on Riverside Drive, Ewing is "sharp, balding," and wears glasses (3.2.22). He's a "long, lean, academic, more-or-less young man" (3.2.22...

When Joanna takes Janet to the party on Riverside Drive, all of the other women in the room are archetypes rather than complex characters. Together, they represent a range of social roles that wome...

The second of the three men who hit on Janet during the party on Riverside Drive, Ginger Moustache is young, hip, and a fan of 1970s slang words like "grok," "groove," and "chick." He's a high scho...

Of the three men who hit on Janet during the party on Riverside Drive, the Host is the most outwardly violent and aggressive. After Janet and Joanna escape from the couch where Ewing has trapped th...

The most complex of all the novel's minor characters, and the only other person who shares significant personality traits with Joanna and her three alter-egos, Laura Rose Wilding is a quiet rebel i...

One of the guests at the party at Riverside Drive, this guy is about as charming as an ingrown toenail. All the same, most of the flaky Female Archetypes get a laugh out of his quips about the new...

Janet is interviewed by multiple people in Joanna's and Jeannine's worlds. Some of them are television and radio interviewers; others are National Security. The television MC whom we meet in Part 1...

Mrs. Wilding worked as a librarian when Laura was young, and she worries that Laura's abnormal lack of femininity is her fault. That's what comes when mothers work outside the home, you see (or som...

As a member of the Belin clan (there are eighteen of them), Chilia Ysayeson is part of Janet's immediate kinship web. When Jeannine is first transported to Whileaway (with Mr. Frosty in tow), Chili...

The daughter of Chilia Ysayeson, Dorothy appears in the novel just long enough to teach us something about Whileawayan dancing (5.14.1-2).

Every civilization needs a great philosopher or two, and Dunyasha Bernadetteson is Whileaway's. She's long dead by the time Janet appears in Joanna's world or Jeannine's, but her thinking has had s...

As another member of the Belin clan, Elena Twason is also part of Janet's kinship web. She is also the runaway whom Janet kills in the line of duty. Elena's death is ambiguous, and prompts us to th...

Another member of the Belin clan, Etsuko is likewise part of Janet's kinship web. We don't know much about her, other than that she likes to go hang-gliding, and is also the person who sends Janet...

Vittoria is Janet's wife, and the "other mother" of their daughter, Yuriko. She's an intelligent, stocky woman with long, "blue-black hair," "velvety brown eyes," and a "heavy-obstinate chin" (5.11...

While Joanna visits Whileaway, she spends about three weeks living in the large home shared by the Belin clan. One of the youngsters takes to her, and hangs around trying to learn English. In the m...

Yuriko is Janet and Vittoria's daughter—one of two, in fact. Janet bore her and gave birth to her, which is why her family name is "Janetson" (presumably, her sister bears the name "Vittoriason,"...

Mrs. Allison is Jeannine's co-worker at the public library. We don't learn very much about her other than that she's African-American and knowledgeable about global politics. She seems to be introd...

Cal is Jeannine's boyfriend. He's a hum-drum, mostly harmless sort, except for the fact that he thinks it's his right to wheedle Jeannine into sex. He's also a product of his time, and although tha...

Bud is Jeannine's older brother, a happily married math teacher with a wife and two young children. He likes to spend his summers fly fishing in the Poconos while his wife and mother look after t...

Jeannine's sister-in-law Eileen wants two things in life: to be a good wife and to be a good mother. Hand-in-hand with her mother-in-law, she seems to spend most of her days doing housework and loo...

Like Mrs. Wilding, Jeannine's mother is a near-perfect portrait of domestic femininity. Even though both of her children are adults, Mrs. Dadier still spends a lot of time cleaning up after them. S...

Jeannine dates Frank casually during her vacation in the Poconos. Like Cal, he calls Jeannine "Jeannie," he isn't particularly good-looking (Jeannine doesn't think so, anyway), and he's not a great...

Mr. Frosty seems like a pretty cute little guy, even though Cal likes to call him The Blotchy Skinny Cat (1.2.9). Is it his fault there isn't enough food to go around? No, it is not. Mr. Frosty is...

As the old, unmarried woman who lives in the apartment below Jeannine's, Little Miss Spry appears in the novel just long enough for Jeannine to catch sight of her "small, wrinkled, worried, old fac...

This poor guy vanishes from Jeannine's Earth when Janet Evason appears in it, and promptly turns up in a turnip field on Whileaway. Lucky for him, he faints straight away, and the nice Whileawayan...

Anna is one of Jael's Manland contacts, a "half-changed" who retains the male body with which he was born, but dresses, acts, and is treated like a woman. In his "pink chiffon gown, with gloves up...

We don't ever learn what this creep is the boss of, but clearly he's some kind of big-shot. He's "jowly," "pot-bellied," and has "the fierce redness of an athlete forced into idleness" (8.8.1). He'...

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the Land of the Free, raised in the woods so's he knew every tree… no, wait—wrong Davy.Our Davy is a super-high-tech automaton with the bo...

Lenny doesn't appear in the novel for very long; he's one of the Manland guards hanging around at the recreation center where Jael meets up with Anna. He's a big guy, dressed in a standard guard's...

Natalie is the wife of the Manland Boss whom Jael assassinates. She's a "changed" Manlander, which in Manlander thinking means that her sole purpose in life is to be a good wife and serve her husba...