How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Whileaway doesn't have true cities. And of course, the tail of a culture is several centuries behind the head. Whileaway is so pastoral that at times one wonders whether the ultimate sophistication may not take us all back to a kind of pre-Paleolithic dawn age, a garden without any artifacts except for what we would call miracles. (1.8.3)
Whileaway is a world of hovercrafts and advanced genetic engineering, but it is also a world of deep forests and sprawling farmlands. Whileawayans seem to have struck a perfect balance between technological progress and ecological sustainability—so much so that they seem well on their way to creating a new Garden of Eden.
Quote #2
"I went hiking last vacation," she said, big-eyed. "That's what I like. It's healthy."
I know it's supposed to be virtuous to run healthily through fields of flowers, but I like bars, hotels, air-conditioning, good restaurants, and jet transport, and I told her so.
"Jet?" she said. (1.7.3-5)
This brief conversation is our first important clue that Jeannine's America is far less technologically advanced than Joanna's. It would be impossible for a New Yorker like Jeannine not to know what a jet was if they existed at all in her world, and so we should assume that they don't.
Quote #3
The first thing said by the second man ever to visit Whileaway was, "Where are all the men?" Janet Evason, appearing in the Pentagon, hands in her pockets, feet planted far apart, said, "Where the dickens are all the women?" (1.7.7)
Joanna's America is a nation run entirely by men. By juxtaposing it with Whileaway, a world run entirely by women, The Female Man doesn't just flip America's reality on its head. The novel emphasizes one crucial difference between Joanna and Janet's worlds: on Whileaway, men no longer exist, and so it is no surprise that women run everything. However, on Joanna's Earth, women exist, but are deliberately barred from positions of power.
Quote #4
The Depression is still world-wide.
(But think—only think!—what might have happened if the world had not so luckily slowed down, if there had been a really big war, for big wars are forcing-houses of science, economics, politics; think what might have happened, what might not have happened. It's a lucky world. Jeannine is lucky to live in it.
She doesn't think so.) (2.10.2-4)
The Female Man suggests that the reason why Jeannine's America is so different from those of the other three J's is that there have been no major wars to incite technological and social change. How does this circumstance affect Jeannine's life, specifically?
Quote #5
Whileaway is engaged in the reorganization of industry consequent to the discovery of the induction principle.
The Whileawayan work-week is sixteen hours. (3.12.1-2)
Whileawayans feel as though they are always working, that the only leisure time they will ever experience is during the first five years of their daughters' lives. However, if the Whileawayan work-week is sixteen hours, that makes it at least three times shorter than what it takes to live above the poverty line in America today. What distinguishes Whileaway's economy from those in Joanna's and Jeannine's worlds?
Quote #6
Under the Mashopi mountain range is a town called Wounded Knee and beyond this the agricultural plain of Green Bay. Janet could not have told you where the equivalents of these landmarks are in the here-and-now of our world and neither can I, the author. (4.17.1)
Although the novel suggests that Whileaway is North and South America (more or less, and with colonies on a few extra planets to boot), it's not possible to cross-chart Whileawayan geography with precise locations in Jeannine's, Joanna's, and Jael's worlds. Is this ambiguity significant?
Quote #7
There's no being out too late in Whileaway, or up too early, or in the wrong part of town, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers—the web is world-wide. (4.18.1)
Considering the fact that The Female Man was written well before the World Wide Web was a thing, this description of Whileaway's social networks is pretty astounding. Joanna Russ imagined a world a lot like the one we live in now; however, whereas Whileawayans are connected by familial kinship networks, our global connections are mediated by technological networking.
Quote #8
You can walk around the Whileawayan equator twenty times (if the feat takes your fancy and you live that long) with one hand on your sex and in the other an emerald the size of a grapefruit. All you'll get is a tired wrist.
While here, where we live—! (4.18.2-3)
On Whileaway, sexual violence is nonexistent, but on Joanna's Earth, it is so prevalent that Joanna-the omniscient narrator doesn't even have to finish her sentence for readers to know what she means.
Quote #9
It takes four hours to cross the Atlantic, three to shuttle to a different latitude. Waking up in a Vermont autumn morning, inside the glass cab, while all around us the maples and sugar maples wheel slowly out of the fog. Only this part of the world can produce such color. (8.9.1)
The Female Man has no love for patriarchy in America, but it sure has a lot of affection for the landscapes and cities of America's east. Aside from the fact that Joanna Russ was born in New York, is there any significance to the novel's eastern setting?
Quote #10
Schrafft's is full of women. Men don't like places like this where the secret maintenance work of femininity is carried on, just as they turn green and bolt when you tell them medical events are occurring in your genito-urinary system. (9.7.9)
The America we see through Joanna's eyes is a nation where some areas—like the Pentagon—are clearly"male" spaces, while others—like The Home, The Kitchen, and restaurants like Schrafft's—are "female." How does the segregation of men's and women's territories in Jael's world compare to the state of things in Joanna's?