Where It All Goes Down
The Asylum… and, oh yeah, the Future
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, every so often, she takes a psychic bounce to the future coast of 2137 Massachusetts and the town of Mattapoisett, which is… awesome.
So over here, back then, Connie is locked inside a dull, dreary institution; out there, way later, Connie is free to wander around a miraculous, happy community with nifty new technology and (for parties) fancy clothes. The contrasting settings emphasize one of the novel's main points—the present is godawful; the future is (or can be) better.