S(Heroes) and Subversive Subjectivity in Speculative Fiction The Eye of the Heron and The Testaments

Abstract

Utopia implies the quest or desire for an idealized world and Utopian thinking and writing is the articulation of creative and critical ideas about existing society or a society of the future. But, the vision of an ideal world varies from people to people as there is so much variation in what people consider a perfect world. Sometimes, the quest to create a Utopia by some leads to the abrogation of rights of others which manifests into an irony of Utopian appearances but dystopic realities. The female-authored Utopia/Dystopia fiction has often been a way of articulating the unspeakable and of imagining a powerful female protagonist in opposition to the phallic law.

This paper examines how Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Eye of the Heron and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments employ the generic conventions of Utopic/Dystopic fiction to interrogate sexual and gender politics in society and provoke the readers to question and value their own freedoms. The Eye of the Heron published in 1978 represents Le Guin’s anarcho-pacifist ideals and is set in a penal colony on the planet Victoria inhabited by the descendants of violent criminals exiled from earth and another group called People of the Peace, exiled following a massive nonviolent march from Moscow to Lisbon. A faceoff erupts between the two groups and Lev is the heroic ideal leading the people of the peace but ultimately, he is shot dead. It is Luz Marina Falco, the female protagonist and daughter of the leader of the rival faction who ultimately leads them to a new Eden, who had revolted against her father and her culture’s treatment of her as an object for the service of a man. In the end, Luz Snatches freedom on her own terms. Atwood’s The Testaments published four decades later and as a sequel to the The Handmaid’s Tale attributes the authorial voice to a supposedly female oppressive figure – Aunt Lydia. Atwood blurs the distinction between stark villain and victim. Atwood gives this authorial figure a chance to prove and testify that she was not an amenable colluder but a subversive agent provocateur who while abetting the brutal patriarchs had also been secretly plotting Gilead’s downfall. Lydia’s story elliptically refers to her guilt but it also focuses on the suffering that coerced her into the oppressor’s role and the subversion she wreaks on the patriarchal order as an insider.