A review by caedocyon
House of Women by Sophie Goldstein
3.0
Mmmm, interesting. I have been picking up and putting down this book at SPX a few years in a row, so I was pleased to find it at the library. There's lots of meat to the story (colonialism and empire and "bringing civilization," with more-or-less nuns and the evils of heterosexuality and science) but what you make of it is up to you. I can't decide what I think. The art is interesting, though.
Some misc. thoughts:
- highlights the absurdity of teaching the natives english and reading and embroidery when the women don't care at all what the natives' lives and culture are actually like outside the compound. What do they think the native women are going to do with this education, other than become prey to any human/colonizer who wants to take advantage of them? (Sexually, or physically/scientifically, or economically)
- Rivkah is a super unflattering Jewish stereotype/villain, both physically and in character traits
- the four missionaries are depictions of some of the violent ways white women act on their colonial subjects
- at what point did Rivkah construct her little shrine? All her own creation or something she brought from the empire, with a few additions of her own?
- wow did i ever mention it really annoys me when sci fi writers unthinkingly borrow elements of human gender for aliens? In the case Goldstein is trying to play with the natives' gender/sex, and yet there's still binary gender completely legible to humans and the native women have boobs and etc etc
- I do like the way Goldstein draws women's bodies, though
- lurking, unseen, scary, accidentally deadly male natives = ?
- the white man who's "gone native": irrevocably damaged for life in polite society; protective of the white women in ways they don't know about or ask for; takes advantage of native women
Some misc. thoughts:
Spoiler
- highlights the absurdity of teaching the natives english and reading and embroidery when the women don't care at all what the natives' lives and culture are actually like outside the compound. What do they think the native women are going to do with this education, other than become prey to any human/colonizer who wants to take advantage of them? (Sexually, or physically/scientifically, or economically)
- Rivkah is a super unflattering Jewish stereotype/villain, both physically and in character traits
- the four missionaries are depictions of some of the violent ways white women act on their colonial subjects
- at what point did Rivkah construct her little shrine? All her own creation or something she brought from the empire, with a few additions of her own?
- wow did i ever mention it really annoys me when sci fi writers unthinkingly borrow elements of human gender for aliens? In the case Goldstein is trying to play with the natives' gender/sex, and yet there's still binary gender completely legible to humans and the native women have boobs and etc etc
- I do like the way Goldstein draws women's bodies, though
- lurking, unseen, scary, accidentally deadly male natives = ?
- the white man who's "gone native": irrevocably damaged for life in polite society; protective of the white women in ways they don't know about or ask for; takes advantage of native women