Tales of women on the edge of the partnership-domination continuum: Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

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Introduction 
 
Historical events affected the ways human beings have constructed and 
developed the social and cultural structures in which they live. Historic and religious 
books explain that our history has always been characterized by wars, violence, rigid 
hierarchical structures, where women have always had a subordinate position. Although 
this is true, history is filled as well with many tangible examples of societies based on 
cooperation and equality between sexes, which used force and violence to defend 
themselves rather than to attack and conquer.  
Following a decade of research which led her to revisit thousands of years of 
human history, in 1987, the American scholar Riane Eisler published her bestseller The 
Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. By means of a feminist perspective 
and a multidisciplinary approach, Eisler challenges the traditional interpretations of 
historical events proving that human behaviour, whereas genetically based, is 
determined by the interaction between biological and socio-cultural dynamics. The 
author proposes her cultural transformation theory, asserting its validity with its 
appliance to different cultural contexts, showing the existence of two main trends: the 
androcratic (or domination) model, which includes both patriarchy and matriarchy 
systems, and the gylanic
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 (or partnership) model. Studying myths and linguistics, with 
the help of  J.P. Mallory, Marija Gimbutas and other archaeologists, anthropologists and 
sociologists, Eisler shows the pre-existence of peaceful societies as the Minoan 
civilization of Crete, symbolized by the Chalice, which were overturned by warlike 
societies as the Kurgan culture, symbolized by the Blade.  
This thesis aims to investigate the partnership and domination models within 
Anglophone novels Woman on the Edge of Time by the American writer Marge Piercy 
and The Handmaid’s Tale by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. Reading these 
books through the lenses of the partnership-domination continuum can be functional in 
awakening the consciousness towards the flaws of our contemporary, male-dominated 
society, and at the same time in raising awareness towards a possible, better future for 
the entirety of humanity. Atwood’s Republic of Gilead is a perfect example of the 
                                                           
1
 Gilany is a neologism coined by Eisler.  It derives from the Greek gyne (woman) and andros (man), 
linked by the letter l for the Greek verb lyo (to set free) and lyen (to resolve). The letter l also indicates 
that the female and male halves of humanity are linked rather than ranked.
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domination systems, in which power, violence, and control are at the foundation, 
leaving no space for cooperation, support and nurturing. Conversely, these latter 
traditionally women-associated ethics are at the core of Piercy’s Mattapoisett, a village 
of the future which perfectly adapts to the partnership system. This view of the world 
appears difficult to comprehend essentially for two main reasons:  
 
In male-dominant societies anything associated with women or femininity is 
automatically viewed as a secondary, or women’s issue to be addressed, if at 
all, only after the “more important” problems have been resolved. Another 
reason is that we have not had the necessary information. Even though 
humanity obviously consists of two halves (women and men), in most 
studies of human society the main protagonist, indeed often the sole actor, 
has been male.
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In this regard, it is fundamental to note that when The Chalice and The Blade 
was first published, in the 1980s, gender was still widely perceived as binary. 
Nowadays, it has become incrementally viewed as non binary and as a social construct. 
Thereupon, it can be argued that a better, more functional and beneficial society should 
take into account people of any gender, not just male and female. While the Republic of 
Gilead, a male-dominated system, fails to account for this issue, the village of 
Mattapoisett, a partnership-oriented society, is able to highlight the matter by presenting 
itself as a nearly perfect, harmonious world that is bred from the dismantling of gender 
binaries. 
The first chapter illustrates Eisler’s cultural transformation theory, focusing on 
the domination and partnership models to understand how they are structured, what 
values and beliefs are taught and transmitted, how these shape society institutions and 
influence people. Crucial importance is given to gender issues and the way women are 
positioned in both social systems, underlying how they can contribute to create a more 
flourishing and stable world. From a historic point of view, gender began to gain 
attention in the 1700s and the 1800s: during the Age of Enlightenment the feminist 
voices of the Renaissance came together into a movement to demand equality for both 
sexes. In Europe, the late 1700s saw the publication of two fundamental works:  
Declaration of the Rights of Women and Female Citizens (1791) by the French 
intellectual Olympe de Gouges, and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by the 
                                                           
2
 Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1987, 
p. xviii.
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British scholar Mary Wollstonecraft. In the United States, feminist activism took root 
when female abolitionists sought to apply the concepts of freedom and equality to their 
own social and political situations. Their work brought them in contact with female 
abolitionists in England who were reaching the same conclusions. By the mid-19
th
 
century, issues surrounding feminism had added to the tumult of social change, with 
ideas being exchanged across Europe and North America.
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 This discussion brought to 
the birth of the Suffrage Movement in the mid -800s, which essentially fought for 
women’s right to vote. Gender issues remained isolated within feminism, however, and 
it began to reach a larger audience, through research and education, only in the 1960s, 
though remaining confined within women’ studies. During those years and throughout 
the 1970s, a second wave of feminism arose broadening the debate to new issues. In the 
1980s, the elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in 
Great Britain fuelled by strong religious movements, which criticised the “sexual 
revolution” of the previous decades, brought to a revival of conservative ideas in 
western world. All these social and cultural events influenced both Piercy’s and 
Atwood’s novels. 
The second chapter illustrates a freer and equal world in Marge Piercy’s novel 
Woman on the Edge of Time. Here a glimpse on a possible future is showcased through 
the future’s village of Mattapoisett. The novel is set in the 1970s and shows the injustice 
inflected by the modern society on a poor, troubled Chicano woman. However, it is also 
influenced by the positivism brought about by the achievements of the feminist 
movements and therefore manages to portray a fairer world, which has learnt from the 
mistakes of the past generations, and it is essentially based on the partnership principles 
of equality, cooperation and empathy. In this world, women gave up their right to give 
birth to gain equality, and birth is now entrusted to technology, while maternity is 
shared by every member of society. In the future the role “mother” persists and at the 
same time is multiplied: by replacing female biological reproduction with technological 
birth mothering concept is reinforced through narrative constructions of multiple, extra-
uterine bonds. In other words, Piercy’s technological mothering, focusing on women’s 
historical labour, amplifies new possibilities for maternal stories. 
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The next chapter focuses on Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, showing how the 
Republic of Gilead perfectly fits the domination social system. Although extreme as an 
                                                           
3
 Elinor Burkett and Laura Brunell, Feminism. Encyclopedia Britannica, March 24, 2021 
https://www.britannica.com/topic/feminism.  
4
 Elaine Orr, Mothering as Good Fiction: Instances from Marge Piercy's "Woman on the Edge of Time" 
in The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 61–79.
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example of this kind of society, Gilead helpfully sheds lights on how rigid and violent it 
can be in its total control of its citizens, particularly female ones. Society is 
hierarchically structured in a way in which even the most powerful women, the Wives, 
are subordinated to men. Women are forbidden to write or read, they cannot vote, hold 
property or jobs.  They are sub-humans, merely used as technological devices: primarily 
as birthing tools. As the novel overtly demonstrates, Gilead society is damaging and 
disrupting for everyone, men included, and will eventually collapse. Although the 
author does not openly explain why, it is plausible to assume its rigid and abusive 
structures did not evolve, causing in fact its own end, with its citizens fighting to gain 
back the freedom they had been deprived of.  
In conclusion, as Eisler points out, the social and cultural organization of 
modern societies is perceived as the result of the natural and gradual course of events, 
the fruit of human progress. Yet evolution, in the sense of the movement from lower to 
higher stages, has not been linear but abounded with technological, cultural, political 
and economic regressions. The novels of Margaret Atwood and Marge Piercy are 
instrumental in this sense: by analysing and understanding the faults of our patriarchal 
society, and being cognisant of the fact that women and men are equals, we can build up 
a more beneficial, gylanic world for everyone to live in, recognising the same 
importance and authority to both sexes. The way in which society shapes male and 
female roles and relations is central to social beliefs and institutions and shows the 
importance of the formative years of life: what people in a society consider normal or 
abnormal, moral or immoral, and even possible or impossible is profoundly affected by 
the kinds of relationships children experience and observe.
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 For instance, socially 
accepted use of violence in intimate relations – or its dismissal as “domestic” violence 
and thus a personal rather than a criminal matter – further reinforces habits of violence
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and can affect the way children might consider this kind of behaviour as “normal” and a 
legitimate instrument through which “alpha males” maintain order. Therefore, it is 
necessary and appropriate in a dominator society. On the contrary, a society that 
integrates into the socialization of both boys and girls the universal teaching of 
empathic and goal-oriented self-regulation skills can maintain order through different 
means, and thus avoid, or at least drastically reduce violence – whether intimate or 
                                                           
5
 Riane Eisler and Douglas P. Fry, Nurturing our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape 
Our Brains, Lives, and Future, New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 10. 
6
 R. Eisler, Education for a Culture of Peace: Human Possibilities, p.19. In A. Riem Natale and R. 
Albarea, The Art of Partnership. Essays on Literature, Culture, Language and Education Towards a 
Cooperative Paradigm, Udine, Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese Srl, 2003, p. 25.