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

2 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 1 (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.