Lack of Female Agency in Time Travel Texts
In many seminal time travel texts, genders fulfill certain archetypes that arise from societal gender roles. In the movies Back to the Future and The Time Traveler’s Wife and the novel Kindred, females have less agency, power, and independence than male characters, showing how time travel texts are inherently sexist.
In the movie Back to the Future, Marty McFly accidentally travels to the past, only to have his teenaged mom romantically pursue him, highlighting how female characters are often subject to the Oedipal complex. At the beginning of the movie, McFly’s mom, Lorraine, is an unhealthy woman that seems unhappy with her life. When McFly travels back to the past, his mom is prettier, more popular, …show more content…
When Dana returns to the present, the next time she feels a travelling episode is happening, her husband, Kevin, holds on to her (Butler 58). This shows how Kevin does not trust Dana to go alone; he believes she needs him to protect and look after her, because she cannot handle herself. Not only are they believed to be unable to protect themselves, females are also forced to take care of those that have hurt them. The Oedipal complex is shown when Dana find Rufus, hurt, and she is required to care for him, despite everything he has done to her and people she knows (Butler 131). In Marisa Parham's article, “Saying "Yes": Textual Traumas in Octavia Butler's Kindred,” she describes "Dana's obligation to Rufus' life, which is also an obligation to her own, structures the interplay of history and morality" to show how Dana isn’t an independent character (Parham 1318). She doesn’t have the freewill to choose to not take care of Rufus, because doing so could possibly kill her. Parham further describes how “structuring the text around Dana's various obligations to life (her own, Rufus's, other slaves), Butler not only complicates the range of Dana's responses” to show how Dana cannot only consider herself in this situation (Parham 1319). Often times, females bear the grunt of looking after a family. For example, given a family with a working mother and father and a child, if the child is sick, the mother is often called upon to take care of the child. The female is seen as the caretaker and is looked down upon for her other responsibilities, while a male doing childcare duties is praised for his devotion to family life. This shows the stereotypical gender role of women, the caretaker, yet how women also have to balance being a sexual object, as Dana is also a sexual object for Rufus, as he does
In many seminal time travel texts, genders fulfill certain archetypes that arise from societal gender roles. In the movies Back to the Future and The Time Traveler’s Wife and the novel Kindred, females have less agency, power, and independence than male characters, showing how time travel texts are inherently sexist.
In the movie Back to the Future, Marty McFly accidentally travels to the past, only to have his teenaged mom romantically pursue him, highlighting how female characters are often subject to the Oedipal complex. At the beginning of the movie, McFly’s mom, Lorraine, is an unhealthy woman that seems unhappy with her life. When McFly travels back to the past, his mom is prettier, more popular, …show more content…
When Dana returns to the present, the next time she feels a travelling episode is happening, her husband, Kevin, holds on to her (Butler 58). This shows how Kevin does not trust Dana to go alone; he believes she needs him to protect and look after her, because she cannot handle herself. Not only are they believed to be unable to protect themselves, females are also forced to take care of those that have hurt them. The Oedipal complex is shown when Dana find Rufus, hurt, and she is required to care for him, despite everything he has done to her and people she knows (Butler 131). In Marisa Parham's article, “Saying "Yes": Textual Traumas in Octavia Butler's Kindred,” she describes "Dana's obligation to Rufus' life, which is also an obligation to her own, structures the interplay of history and morality" to show how Dana isn’t an independent character (Parham 1318). She doesn’t have the freewill to choose to not take care of Rufus, because doing so could possibly kill her. Parham further describes how “structuring the text around Dana's various obligations to life (her own, Rufus's, other slaves), Butler not only complicates the range of Dana's responses” to show how Dana cannot only consider herself in this situation (Parham 1319). Often times, females bear the grunt of looking after a family. For example, given a family with a working mother and father and a child, if the child is sick, the mother is often called upon to take care of the child. The female is seen as the caretaker and is looked down upon for her other responsibilities, while a male doing childcare duties is praised for his devotion to family life. This shows the stereotypical gender role of women, the caretaker, yet how women also have to balance being a sexual object, as Dana is also a sexual object for Rufus, as he does