45 pages • 1 hour read
Marge PiercyWoman on the Edge of Time
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Dolls
Content Warning: This section discusses racism, domestic violence, sex trafficking, and mistreatment of patients in a psychiatric hospital.
Dolls function as a motif representing traditional feminine traits under patriarchy, such as fragility, beauty, and a lack of agency. When Connie imagines helping her niece raise a family, she recognizes that this is only a fantasy and compares it to paper dolls: “[T]he only dolls she had had as a child, dolls with blond paper hair and Anglo features and big paper smiles” (8). Such dolls are easily destroyed, representing the fragility of her dream of family life. They also have white features, hinting at The Intersectional Nature of Feminist Struggle; the “ideal” woman under Western patriarchy is implicitly a white woman. This ideal is far removed from Connie’s own life, and not just because of her ethnicity. Rather, her life has required her to be tough and independent, and it has aged her prematurely.
Significantly, one of the most conventionally feminine characters in the novel, Connie’s niece, goes by the nickname “Dolly” rather than her given name, Dolores, which means “sorrow” in Spanish. Both pertain to her situation, as she is abused and trafficked by her boyfriend, Geraldo. Her dream is to marry Geraldo and have a child, but ultimately, she is merely “playing house”: Geraldo has no intention of marrying her or relinquishing his control, suggesting that patriarchy is likely to deny women even the most modest and socially acceptable of their aspirations. Piercy thus uses the doll motif to emphasize how some traditional feminine traits are tied to a patriarchal system that denies women their full humanity.
Dawn
Dawn is a young child, the daughter of Luciente and another citizen of Mattapoisett. She bears a remarkable physical resemblance to Connie’s lost daughter, Angelina, and throughout the novel, she symbolizes a better and more hopeful world. This symbol is echoed in her name, which literally refers to the beginning of a new day.
When Connie first encounters Dawn, she is still mourning Angelina’s loss and grieving her own failures as a mother. She is deeply attached to the idea of herself as a mother and sees motherhood as the most important part of her identity, so she is horrified when the citizens of Mattapoisett explain that they do not reproduce biologically but technologically. However, Connie’s disgust with the future changes when she sees Dawn. She mistakes her for a happy and whole Angelina: “How she laughed, like dry bells, like bells partly muffled, how she laughed” (149). Unlike Angelina, whose life with Connie was marked by trauma, pain, and hunger, Dawn lives a free and joyous life. She becomes a symbol of what Angelina (and Connie) might have been in a different and more just society, and after seeing her, Connie assents to all of Mattapoisett—even the parts that she finds strange.
Significantly, the last sight Connie ever sees in Mattapoisett is Dawn’s face in the snow: “One flake sat for a moment on the end of her delicate, sensuously curved nose, snow on her beautiful Mayan nose where Connie imagined that she pressed a quick kiss” (406). Symbolically, Connie is bidding Dawn and the future farewell. Piercy’s ending is ambiguous, and it is uncertain whether this farewell is merely Connie recognizing that she will not return to Mattapoisett or Connie bidding goodbye to the idea that the future could be a good place—or even that Mattapoisett itself will ever exist.
Trash and Refuse
Images of garbage and refuse serve as a motif to represent the way people who do not conform to societal norms are thrown away, treated poorly, and ignored. When Connie enters Rockdale, she imagines it as a refuse pit for people like her: “[A]ll who were not desired, who caught like rough teeth in the cogwheels, who had no place or fit crosswise the one they were hammered into, were carted [there]” (29). The imagery in this paragraph emphasizes that Rockdale is a place of death rather than renewal; as Connie reflects, “Little [is] recycled here” (29). This perception is not just in Connie’s mind; rather, the hospital staff also view its patients as “human garbage.” When Connie is first admitted, the nurses refuse to speak to her or listen when she tells them she has broken ribs. They treat her body roughly and are show contempt for her “fragile possessions,” dropping them “with a gesture like emptying an ashtray” (13).
Significantly, one of the things Luciente finds most shocking about Connie’s world is its treatment of literal garbage. She is surprised that Connie assumes anything can be thrown away and says, “Thrown away where? The world is round” (261). This emphasis on renewal and recycling extends to Mattapoisett’s justice system, which goes to great lengths to integrate people into society rather than punish or discard them.
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By Marge Piercy
