What is it to Write as a Man?

James Tiptree Jr. aka Alice Sheldon is able to explore topics of female inequality through her adoption of the male pseudonym. Julie Philips refers to this adoption of a male pseudonym as raising "questions [to] all our assumptions about writing and gender" (Philips 6). Tiptree was thought of as an oddly pro-feminist writer. The mystique surrounding Tiptree was rather large, Sheldon claimed, "My secret world had been invaded and the attractive figure of Tiptree-- he did strike several people as attractive-- was revealed as nothing but an old lady in Virginia" (Philips 3). That this constructed pro-feminist male writer could be considered

Sheldon's work often deals with the gender binary, especially in the story of The Screwfly Solution.  Sheldon switched from the penname of Tiptree to Racoona Sheldon for this story, a woman who was believed to be a student of Tiptree. The story explores the concept of a global catastrophe stemming from a mixing of the pleasure gained from "agression/predation and sexual reproduction in the male... shown by (a) many of the same neuromuscular pathways which are utilized both in predatory and sexual pursuit, grasping, mounting, etc., and (b) similar states of adrenergic arousal which are activated in both" (Tiptree 25). Through the letters and correspondence between Ann and Alan we are able to see the degeneration of a loving husband and father as his psyche switches from love and desire to feelings of violence and a lust for blood.

The impact of the title, and of Alan's position as scientist studying how to remove parasites, comes to a head with the conclusion of the short story and the reveal of the "angels." Starving and feverish, Ann encounters one of the fabled angels that motivated the mad ravings of the Sons of Adam Cult. This angel takes samples of the earth, and utilizes a system they used to eradicate the screwfly population: "Pinpoint the weak link, wait a bit while we do it for them" (Tiptree 31). The angel clears the earth of the parasite, in this case man, for reasons unexplained. Ann speculates that they have taken on the role of "a real estate agent," but it is never explained whether the angel is either magical or alien. Based on the evidence in the short story we can determine that the aliens are clearing the world of humanity, yet for what end we cannot tell.

The use of angels, God and the cult's name referring to Adam all hint towards the aliens reverting the Earth back to a prelapserian sort of world and the inevitability of man's destruction. A world before the fall and the spread of humanity throughout its border. Something resulting from the change the aliens brought about drives Alan, a former loving father, to murder his daughter. This inevitable movement towards sin, as if it is within man's nature to destroy himself, serves as a forceful embodiment of the gender divide and the essential nature of women in society in order to temper these destructive impulses.

Notes from Underground

To some, living underground is simply untenable—to do so is to be confined and cut off from light and air. On the one hand, retreating below ground can be the first step toward degeneration, as it is in The Time Machine. To embrace the earth is to embrace the primitive, atavistic side of our nature. But it is also a defense mechanism—whether the threat is a tornado or an atomic bomb, the earth is our shelter. Why is it that this natural sanctuary, safe from the elements, can also be so repugnant and terrifying? To go underground is to enter the ultimate interior. Why should we be so uncomfortable about dwelling in this seemingly safe place?


When the Time Traveler first sees a Morlock, one of these “white, ape-like…creatures of the half-light,” he believes it is a ghost or a trick of the light (56). There is something ethereal and phantom-like about them, perhaps due to their pallid hue (see Melville’s chapter on whiteness in Moby-Dick for more on this). The element most frequently associated with the Morlocks is bronze, the material from which the hollow base of the sphinx statue and the rims of the wells are made. This calls to mind the Bronze Age and primitive man. The Time Traveler refers to a Morlock as a “Thing,” a “little monster,” and a “human spider” as it scampers down the well (58-59). Another fictional creation with supernatural climbing abilities is Dracula (he climbs head-first down a castle wall and is compared to a lizard), also a product of the 1890s. The end of the nineteenth century is pervaded with a fear of degeneration and anxieties about illusory progress.

Interestingly in The Time Machine, both the Morlocks and the Eloi are products of degeneration (63). It is not as if only the creatures living down below devolved, while everyone on the surface stayed just fine. This implies that it is not the fact that they live underground that is the cause of the Morlocks’ fall into atavism. It is also notable that in his dealings with the Morlocks, the Time Traveler is reduced almost to their level: “I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with—hands, feet, and teeth” (69). Later on, while he smashes the Morlocks with what is essentially an iron club, I cannot help but feel that the Time Traveler is starting to degenerate a bit himself (there are also a handful of extremely violent remarks made by the Time Traveler that clash with his usually more objective and scientific persona—see page 29 for an example).

For all the horrors associated with the Morlocks and their subterranean, machine-filled dwelling in The Time Machine, living underground is portrayed in a far more positive light elsewhere. In the case of a cozy hobbit hole or of a hollowed-out embankment by Gaudi, for example, there is something almost sacred about the earth. In agricultural communities like the Shire, the earth is the direct source of food and nourishment. In Gaudi’s case, this is the earth of Catalonia—to dwell within that earth and truly appreciate the land was part of the regional spirit. What is it that makes us embrace the earth as the foundation of life, and at other times to decry it as a terrifying and unnatural place to live? For instance, with some Modernist houses like Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoie or the Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the key ideas is about living on an elevated plane away from the ground, which is dirty and profane. What made some Modernists reject the earth, while others (like Frank Lloyd Wright) held the land to be sacred?

Gaudi, Park Guell, Barcelona.

To conclude my post, I am putting a link to a video posted on another class blog, from the University of Edinburgh. It is a fascinating video, and I recommend watching the whole thing. But if you do not have half an hour to spare, go to about fifteen minutes in for a segment on the tunnel dwellers of New York City. Given the choice of sleeping out on a bench, exposed to the weather, and living underground, some have chosen the latter option and have lived in these tunnels for years.

Undercity: http://text-city.tumblr.com/post/3186495940/undercity-contributed-by-stephanie-wong

***Most of the architecture references in this post are derived from material covered in ARC 203 and 242.