“The Water Cure” is a twisted fairy tale of toxic masculinity.
Like all dystopian narratives, the feminist variety uses stories about how bad the world might become to point out how bad it already is. Not surprisingly, feminist dystopian narratives are now enjoying a boom, from Hulu’s tele vision adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”— Atwood recently announced that she is writing a sequel—to several books by both new and established novelists, including Louise Erdrich’s “Future Home of the Living God,” Christina Dalcher’s “Vox,” and Leni Zumas’s “Red Clocks.” These writers depict a range of inventively punitive societies: in one, women are punished for speaking more than a hundred words per day; in another, the government takes pregnant women into custody to manage a fertility crisis. The novels extrapolate from a very real prospect of curtailed rights, especially reproductive rights, to imagine what it would be like to live in a society of forced marriages and pregnancies. The typical dystopian novel is at least as much about the world it’s set in as it is about the characters who inhabit it.
This story is from the January 7, 2019 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the January 7, 2019 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
