Having discussed science, feminism, and character relationships in my earlier posts on Gwyneth Jones’ Life, it seems only natural that I should bring this series to a close with some remarks on how the book deals with gender. In many ways, this is likely to be more recap and summation than a substantially new discussion, because gender pervades all the aspects of the book I’ve looked at so far.

The novel’s central sfnal idea – the discovery that Anna spends her professional life finding and demonstrating – is that there a virus has emerged which affects how genes, and the traits associated with them, are “shuffled” during sexual reproduction (198). Usually, only the parents’ X chromosomes take part in this process; the Y chromosome, which (by and large) only males possess, is too small and unlike its counterparts to do any swapping. Genes on the Y chromosome, therefore, are passed only from father to son, whereas X-linked genes can show up in either male or female offspring. Where the phenomenon that Anna calls Transferred Y deviates from this pattern is that it allows the Y chromosome to get involved in gene-swapping. In the long run, according to experiments and simulations run by Anna – and, later, by other teams around the world – TY looks set to lead to the disappearance of the Y chromosome from the human race.

As far as I understand it (and not being a scientist, I’m not completely sure I do…), there is no suggestion, at least from the scientist characters, that this will lead to the end of biological sex differences within human beings; there will still be biologically-male (and fertile) individuals, but they will, like females, have two X chromosomes. Gender, however, is a rather different matter.

Anna steadfastly refuses to spend much time worrying over the implications of all this, focusing on it as a purely scientific issue – a question to investigate in the lab – and ignoring the warnings of colleagues that she could be playing with fire. It is, after all, already happening (indeed, there are already a number of unknowingly-XX males around, living perfectly ordinary lives but for a higher risk of infertility); she is not the cause of the phenomenon, and she had no intention of interpreting it, either. But science does not happen in a vacuum.

It is only late in the book, when her TY investigations have become a media storm – nothing stirs up public fear and anger like a perceived threat to masculinity – and her marital problems with Spence are coming to the surface, that Anna faces what she has learned. Angry and upset over the revelation that Spence is having an affair with insipid Meret (“the not-too-clever sweet feminine younger one” (326), as Anna puts it), Anna finds the temptation to fall back on gendered ways of thinking and fighting about their relationship horribly alluring. “I have become woman”, she reflects; in the Joanna Russ sense, that is: for all her attempts to escape it, she has finally been confronted with her role in the battle of the sexes:

I can be a matriarch like Rosey, who though she loves Wol truly, never forgets to treat him with contempt. Throws him out when he fails to satisfy, allows him back on sufferance. It is what they expect, it is the way relations between the sexes have to be. You have to keep the whip hand, or else they will turn on you. […]

I was afraid of Transferred Y, and I pretended other reasons, but this is why. I didn’t want to think of what it meant for real people because that means me, that means Spence… all that dirt about sexual relations, that I didn’t ever want to handle. (320-1)

I’m not completely sure how to interpret Anna’s thoughts, here (and would welcome suggestions). After some discussion on this point with Niall, my sense is that, regardless of whether or not TY will affect biological sex – or even most of the visible physical traits linked with it – the cultural narratives surrounding gender, and linking gender with sex, are sufficiently powerful that TY is dynamite. Is this Ramone’s “something new”, that will change relations between human beings beyond recognition?

Above and beyond the fact that previously Y-linked (and thus male-only) genes would presumably begin to turn up in females, simply the idea of the chromosomal difference between men and women being ‘lost’ is something that would – and, in the book, apparently does – be profoundly disturbing for some. This is regardless of the fact that, as far as I can tell, there would still be two main biological sexes (my genetics knowledge doesn’t really stretch to speculating upon how this would affect rates or presentation of intersexuality); males and females would all be XX at a genetic level, but nonetheless there would still be as many differences between any given two individuals, regardless of sex, as there ever were.

Consciously and unconsciously, people have so much invested in narratives of gendered thought and behaviour – and, in particular, in narratives of gender and of the battle of the sexes as they shape family life. Rosey, again:

“I used to think Steven and Joe were aggressive because of the childhood they had before they came to us. But boys will be boys. I was so relieved to have a girl.”

If you put a child in frilly ankle socks at birth, thought Anna, by the time she’s three no one will ever know whether genetic predisposition or nurture made her turn out wet as a haddock’s bathing suit. (285)

The possibilities are not spelled out in the book, so I can’t be sure I’m thinking along the right lines, here, and would love to know if anyone has any other suggestions. In particular, does anyone else get the sense from the book that the ‘loss’ of the Y chromosome could make a measurable difference to men – and/or to women – without an accompanying cultural shift? Are there likely to be physical or chemical implications to TY? Or might something like TY itself be enough to prompt a cultural shift? And what about transsexuality and transgenderism?

Following on from my posts on science and feminism in Gwyneth Jones’ Life, it’s time to take a closer look at the two central relationships that shape and define so much of who Anna is and what she does: her marriage to Spence, and her on-off friendship (and more) with Ramone. Both are formed during Anna’s time as an undergraduate, and both send complicated tendrils out through the novel’s various themes.

Neither of them, it has to be said, are particularly easy to like.

Superficially, at least, Spence seems likeable. He’s sensitive, he’s smart, he’s quietly funny; he’s even attracted to Anna’s intelligence. (Well, mostly.)

She had no idea she was sexy. Picture it: Marilyn Monroe is sitting beside you – a brunette Marilyn, which is so much classier, and brainy, which to the male is subconsciously incredibly attractive, resist the dreadful idea as he will. […] He guessed [the other guys] had to be aware, at some level, of her wide shoulders, hand-span waist, and curvaceous little bottom; of the pert, round-as-apples breasts under her clean and modest tee-shirts. (20)

Later in this same reflective passage, Spence goes on to congratulate himself on how his “vintage feminist” mother would be proud of how much he’s not like other guys (“The menfolk of Annandale were an unregenerate lot, stubbornly resistant to the siren lure of female intelligence” (21)). So near, and yet so far; at no point during his panegyric to Anna Apple Boobs does Spence think about his object of desire as a person, whose intelligence is important to her for its own sake rather than as something that exists to attract him, Liberated Feminist Man.

This, I suppose, is the problem with Spence (or at least my problem with him). He has the occasional flash of understanding, but ultimately he never manages to move beyond thinking of Anna as part of his story: the love interest, the adjunct to his narrative arc, the woman that only he can recognise and rescue. Before his writing career takes off and his affair with (young, naive, worshipful) Meret develops, Spence is at his happiest and most focused when faced with Anna’s news of her accidental pregnancy. Oblivious to Anna’s devastation (the knowledge of her pregnancy, coming at such a crucial time in her research and spelling out the ways in which her life is out of her control, is “like a raw bereavement” to her (120)), Spence starts making wedding plans within minutes. This, you feel, is the moment he’s been waiting for: the chance to Do The Right Thing. He never stops to think about whether it is what Anna wants, and Anna is too sunk in her misery and too determined to be self-reliant to tell him, in small enough words, that it is not. This will be the pattern of their relationship.

The fact that Anna has her own story – that, indeed, the nature of Anna’s work means that in many ways Spence is far more a part of Anna’s story than she is of his – is something that he struggles with, throughout. It’s there on the several occasions when he casts himself in the role of house-husband (in Leeds, in Sungai, on the south coast in the final section of the book): he alternates between cheerful ebullience and depressed boredom, frustrated by his lack of purpose. Anna, consumed with her work, is too distracted to need, or be grateful for, his attempts to care for her. Their gender roles are flipped in more ways than the obvious: Spence takes on the job of neglected, long-suffering (whiny, demanding) wife, while Anna is the dynamic husband with her mind on higher things than domesticity (the distant, superior spouse who ignores the household labour – both physical and emotional – she doesn’t see). The problem lies in the roles themselves; the faults of those performing the roles only compound the issue.

Anna’s other major relationship, with gender-challenging Ramone, is less of a constant in her life but still a major influence. Whereas Anna so often takes Spence for granted, she spends a lot of time thinking about Ramone, “this mischievous, erratic guardian spirit” (8). Anna is frequently annoyed with Ramone, cutting off communication with her on more than one occasion, but she is always anxious to understand her: what she stands for, and what she means to her:

Who is Ramone Holyrod? she asked herself. Someone I invented. My exterior soul. The person I wished I could have been; my repository for those parts of my self I couldn’t use or didn’t want in my real life. Ideas that would have made it impossible for me to pursue my life’s work. Truths that would make me an outlaw.

Or a crackpot. (355)

Unlike Spence, Ramone has her own story, which intersects with Anna’s only at intervals: she has a career of her own with as many peaks and troughs as Anna’s does; she has a difficult, devoted relationship with her schizophrenic mentor, Lavinia; she cycles through purpose, despair, desire, turns her words into actions, changes her philosophy of life on several occasions, and adopts new personae for new situations.

Ramone’s story also comments upon Anna’s, both directly – through Ramone’s own, impassioned reflections – and through the implicit contrast between them. Anna knuckles down, Ramone acts out; Anna dresses neatly and unobtrusively, Ramone breaks every rule of cleanliness and self-presentation; Anna marries (in a church, no less) and forms a home with Spence, Ramone goes through a string of complex and sometimes abusive relationships, and has spells of living rough. Above all, Anna absorbs what the world throws at her, as a woman, and tries to make her way through life without rocking the boat too much – whereas Ramone shouts and fights and writes aggressive books and pisses off her closest friends on a regular basis. They make each other think, and deconstruct, and kick out, more than anyone else in their respective lives.

In the end, and quite inadvertantly, Anna does what Ramone never quite manages: she overturns the gender paradigm. Perhaps, anyway; but that will be the subject of the next post.