A Woman of the Future by David Ireland
Ringwood, Vic: Penguin Books Australia, 1980 (1984 printing) (first published in USA 1979)
ISBN 0140056572
What a strange book. A bildungsroman with a difference for sure. I've been meaning to read some David Ireland for a while - I have had this book, as well as The Unknown Industrial Prisoner and The Chosen floating around my house for years , but when the urge to read Ireland finally overwhelmed me, it was A Woman of the Future that first came to hand.
A Woman of the Future is the story of Alethea Hunt, told by herself through a collection of notes, poems and anecdotes which she collected before her disappearance (this is explained in an "editor's note" at the beginning of the book).
This collection describes Alethea's life in an Australia set in the future, where most things are familiar, but some things are decidedly strange. For example some people have things growing out of their bodies - sheets of paper, a cannon, a coffin, flowers, etc. If this happens it means the person is ineligible to join the class of Servants - those who have jobs, run society, and see themselves as superior to the Free, who don't have to work, but if they do it is at menial tasks. The Servants refer to the Free colloquially as "Ids" - short for idiots.
Alethea seems destined for greatness - that's what everyone around her thinks. As she progresses through her schooling she is consistently good at everything, and enjoys her superiority. She is particularly pleased to be better than the males she encounters, either physically or mentally.
Which brings me to a big paradox in this book - Alethea succumbing to the ubiquitous sexual exploitation that occurs throughout. She is raped, bought and sold by boys, and seems to have sex with anyone who desires her (which is everyone). She does this initially to see what sex is: what it is in that contact that gives men the power to control women and society in general. She soon realises that the act is more a release for the man rather than the women (except occasionally), and that it is women who have power over men in the sexual sphere. Alethea eventually develops a kind of disgust toward men, yet still submits to their desires.
Her search for greater truth leads her to contemplate her country. The absurdity of people worshipping 200 year-old artefacts in a country with tens of thousands of years of human habitation. The abiding mystery at the "dead heart" of the continent. The sneering of Europeans at the lack of culture in Australia when, as Alethea points out, European culture doesn't extend much beyond great cities even in Europe.
As she matures she begins to realise that what she is seeking is not only greatness, but love - to love and be loved. Her sexual adventures become a search for love, but all she finds in men is lust and possessiveness, except for her father, the one sympathetic figure in the book. He loves Alethea fully and unconditionally, as he does Alethea's mother, his wife.
Alethea's mother is a figure aloof, watchful, always writing notes (for what purpose we are not told). In the characters of Alethea's parents, the message that it is women that are superior seems to be reinforced, even though it is Alethea's father who does all the work in the family, both financial and domestic. He often questions his life choices, but always encourages Alethea to achieve the greatness that he believes she has.
As the book progresses, the time of the examination which decides whether one is a Servant or Free approaches. Alethea wonders how those that "fail" reconcile themselves to that fact, even though she strongly believes that the intelligent should be superior to the average (the fact that there are awards for sports and music but none for academic achievement is often an irritant for Alethea as she is growing up).
In the last few pages, Alethea realises that she is changing: not like others, but fully transforming. She leaves home, and the last page of the book (another "editor's note") informs us that she has disappeared, possibly transformed into a leopard.
As I stated at the beginning of this review, this is a very strange book, and while there are definite themes, I'm not sure I've grasped them all or fully understood those that I have recognised. One of the main themes is the relationship between men and women. The graphic nature of the sex scenes certainly has shock value, but I think it goes to show that this thing which seems to have such power is nothing more than a messy effluxion of fluids that is at heart meaningless. The power women have over men, emotionally and spiritually, and their failure to use that power, is noticeable throughout the novel. Alethea discovers her power, and it's not only sexual in her case: but she can't bring herself to exercise it. In the end she finds that she can't be bother with males at all.
Love is at the heart of the novel. Alethea is constantly dissecting her parent's affection for her and each other. She accepts her father's love as a given, and wonders whether her mother has lost the ability to love. Alethea wonders whether she can love - her sexual exploits are an attempt to find love as she tries to decipher whether boy's professions of love are more than mere attempts to gain sexual favours. She develops a theory that women only love men after the men have professed love for them. By the end of the book she is coming to the realization that she would trade greatness for love - is that the weakness of women, when men think they can have both?
A Women of the Future won both the Miles Franklin and Age Book of the Year awards when it was published (despite one of the Miles Franklin judges describing the book as "literary sewage"). I did wonder if this book was written with prize-winning in mind: it has a sniff at times of confected-ness in its shock value and literary depth.
It is worth spending a little more space on the style Ireland has used. As mentioned earlier, the book is constructed in a series of short (mostly less than a page) vignettes: either notes, extracts from school assignments, or poems. The "editor's note" mentions that they may not be in chronological order, but the story begins at Alethea's birth, which she describes as if she can remember it, as she does her earlier years; but all written in the same style (no indication in the writing of a developing intellect - she has emerged fully-formed).
The episodic nature of the writing means the reader takes a while to piece together Alethea's world and the strange-but-familiar world of Ireland's future Australia, but once the reader enters and orients themself, they get carried along with the flow of Alethea's experiences and thoughts, joining her in trying to decipher the world and people around her.
I'm still deciding whether I actually enjoyed A Woman of the Future. Self-consciously not a "standard" novel, I'm not sure whether the style chosen is as effective as it could be. David Ireland was seen as a major Australian novelist in the 1970s, mentioned in the same breath as Patrick White. He has since faded from the scene, and it's not clear that his works will last in the long term (although Text Classics re-published his major works 10-15 years ago). It's also not clear to me whether, based on my experience reading A Woman of the Future, I will read any more David Ireland.
Cheers for now, from
