Woman on the Edge of Time Analysis

Woman on the Edge of Time is split between two settings. On the one hand, you have 1976 New York and its environs, where Connie is incarcerated in various hospitals and asylums. Blegh. And then, ev...

You see everything in the novel from Connie's point of view. This is important, because if you saw it from someone else's point of view, you'd have a better idea of whether Connie's mind is working...

When you think of sci-fi, you probably think of bug-eyed monsters and lasers and Marty McFly lopping off Mr. Spock's ears with the Tardis. But this is not that kind of science fiction. Instead of j...

BitterWoman on the Edge of Time is a bitter, bleak book. Marge Piercy looks around at her own time and spits on it. Connie is desperate, beaten, and sad—and no one cares:Only one person to love....

DidacticA lot of Woman on the Edge of Time is devoted to telling you stuff about the future, so you know how great the future is and can say, "Awesome, let's organize things like the future now. Pa...

The woman in Woman on the Edge of Time refers to the main character, Connie. She's a woman (check!) on the edge of time (check, check!): she's visited by people from the future and then she go...

The last chapter of the book is a short selection of "Excerpts from the Official History of Consuelo Camacho Ramos" (20.1). It essentially provides a brief, alternate history of Connie—the way th...

There's a great story there in Woman on the Edge of Time—but you've got to work for it a little. Time, character, plot, even what's real and what isn't can be hard to figure out. So we put it up...

Wow, Life Really SucksConnie is sent to an asylum for hitting the pimp who was abusing her niece, Dolly. This puts Connie where she's going to be for the whole novel: unjustly detained, powerless,...

Anticipation StageConnie gets in touch with Luciente and starts to learn about the future. She bashes her niece's pimp in hopes of getting rid of him, but instead she gets committed to the asylum.D...

Connie is committed to the asylum; she learns that they are going to put implants in her brain. She also has visions of a woman from the future, named Luciente, who shows her the utopian world to c...

Piercy is an avid gardener. That's probably why her utopian future at Mattapoisett has a lot of gardening (source).Piercy has four cats. Her memoir is called Sleeping With Cats. She thinks our feli...

Most of Woman on the Edge of Time is not very sexy. Either you're having intellectual discussions about the perfect gardens of the future, or else you're stuck in an insane asylum being dehumanized...

Many of the people in Mattapoisett are named for famous historical figures. The figures chosen are meant to tell you about whom the future honors. In a couple of places, people are mentioned who do...