Degree Project
Level: bachelor’s Same Old Same Old
The Women of the Future in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
Author: Liselotte Berggren
Supervisor: Carmen Zamorano Llena Examiner: David Gray
Subject/main field of study: English (literature) Course code: EN2028
Credits: 15 ECTS
Date of examination: 2021-06-04
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Table of contents
Introduction 1
Patriarchal Structures in Speculative Fiction 7
Dystopian Angels and Post-Apocalyptic Monsters 10
Wise Man’s Weak Trash 15
Better a Pretty Lie Than the Ugly Truth 19
Conclusion 23
Works Cited 26
Introduction
Speculations about the future are, and have been, a common feature in literature although, and perhaps because, it is impossible to predict. Speculative and science fiction – genres which incorporates speculations of a possible future (Atwood 18) that “reflects contemporary realities … with the potentials of technology” (Pearson et al. 3) – while focused on future societies, are, however, most commonly reflecting the present society’s flaws, rather than a brand-new world order (Gilarek 223). This is not less true for feminist novels such as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, a postmodern literary novel which blends aspects from several different time periods and genres together with the matryoshka doll narrative structure where one narrative is placed inside the next (Schneeberger 544). Two of the novel’s six narratives are set in a futuristic society –a dystopian Korea and a post-apocalyptic Hawaii – which both present the issues of a society that relies heavily on patriarchal structures. As Anna Gilarek points out, feminist science fiction often critiques the patriarchal structures of society by recontextualizing current problems in “defamiliarized, unreal settings” (221). In a futuristic dystopian society where “individuals are … controlled and repressed by violence, fear or threats” (Atayurt 72), the cloned woman Sonmi-451’s narrative engages with several themes, ranging from body and age fixation to heteronormative ideals, which are central to feminist critical discourses. This civilization later collapses, which is in line with Robyn Wiegman’s argument that “the apocalyptic … writes the present as the failure of the future”
(807), suggesting that the present society’s deficiencies form the basis for future collapse – a view that is shared by Kirsten Imani Kasai (1383). However, despite a future collapse due to society’s present failures, Cloud Atlas presents the present societal structure, as expressed by an Archivist in Sonmi’451’s narrative, as “the
natural order, in harmony with human nature” (Mitchell 234). As a novel dealing with themes of capitalism (Danilescu 259), cosmopolitanism (Barnard 208), colonialism (O’Donnell 85), as well as feminism (Rickle 160), this idea is held by characters throughout the novel and illustrates one of its core aspects – the absence of change.
The narrative structure of Cloud Atlas provides a likeness to a matryoshka doll where one narrative resides within another (Schneeberger 544), thus placing the futuristic narratives at its core. The novel begins with a journal written during the Victorian era only to shift mid-sentence to love letters from the 1930s. These too are interrupted in the middle by a detective story which in turn is interrupted by a contemporary narrative in 2012. This story give way to the first futuristic narrative,
“An Orison of Sonmi-451”, which, after a mid-point stop, gives way to the post- apocalyptic narrative “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After” before the whole structure is repeated in reverse. Despite being the two narratives that lie in the future, both Sonmi-451’s and Zachry’s narratives are placed in the middle of the novel. Due to this, being the novel’s only uninterrupted narrative, “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’
Ev’rythin’ After” is simultaneously both the novel’s middle and end.
“An Orison of Sonmi-451”, is set in a dystopian Korea, now Nea So Copros, where the protagonist Sonmi-451 is a clone. These ‘fabricants’, as these female clones are called, are the slaves of society in which they are made to serve the ‘real’
humans, the purebloods, by imbibing soap “designed to deaden curiosity” (Mitchell 186) and repress individuality (187). When soap no longer affects her, Sonmi-451 begins a journey of ascension into personhood and is mixed-up in the Union, an organisation working to overthrow the present corpocracy, Unanimity. After seeing society’s immoral treatment of fabricants, Sonmi-451 writes the Declarations of the
rights of fabricants. However, as it is later revealed to the Archivist recording Sonmi-451’s story, all events were planned and set into motion by Unanimity to imbue purebloods with fear of the fabricants.
“Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After” is set in a post-apocalyptic Hawaii, on Big I, and follows the young man Zachry. After the collapse of society, people have returned to living in small tribes and Big I is now inhabited by two tribes: the peaceful Valleysmen and the brutal Kona. When the Valleysmen receive a visit from the Prescients of the island Prescience I, Zachry is forced to house the woman Meronym for a year. During that time, Zachry must fight both the Kona and the imaginary ‘devil’ Old Georgie on several occasions to keep his resentment for Meronym at bay. After a joint venture up Mauna Kea, however, Meronym and Zachry return to find their home destroyed by the Kona and must flee together to Prescience I.
Each narrative in Cloud Atlas belongs to one literary genre and period, and coupled with the novel’s matryoshka doll narrative structure, the novel provides a setting to discuss ethical and moral questions. As Dalene Labuschagne points out,
“each fragment is fairly recognizable as, respectively, a journal record, an epistolary record, a crime novel, a memoir, a holographic film, and an oral tale” (8). However, as Aaron Schneeberger adds, “Cloud Atlas depicts … encounters between modes of representation” (544), making the question of ethics – how people treat the gendered, sexually oriented, and ethnic Other – one of the novel’s major themes (Schneeberger 543). As the narratives are being recounted to the protagonist of the subsequent narrative, these moral values are being questioned and critiqued while the present narrative’s failings are overlooked only to be brought into focus in the next narrative. This also follows Gilarek’s idea of speculative narratives as
presenting the flaws of the present (223), which in Cloud Atlas are predominantly focused on patriarchal and capitalist structures. However, Sonmi-451’s narrative is the only one without critique. In this narrative, women, albeit cloned, are forced into submission, and seen in terms of their beauty and serviceability, but due to the fall of civilization, the narrative is ‘lost’. The recording remains, but the ability to understand it does not and hence, the inhabitants of the post-apocalyptic future are unable to critique it and are enabled to repeat the same mistakes. Thus, Sonmi-451’s and Zachry’s narratives can be seen as parallels as they both rely on the same heteronormative, highly gendered and objectifying societal structures, albeit in vastly different settings.
Labuschagne continues to argue that it is through this act of storytelling that Cloud Atlas “upholds … the absence of the truth” (17) – a common postmodern trait (Hutcheon 93) – and through this the novel offers several different aspects of the unchangeability of mankind. By letting each narrative continue into the next in the form of storytelling, where the previous narrative is read, watched, or heard by the character in the subsequent one, the legitimacy of history as a metanarrative is questioned. In addition to this, Labuschagne draws upon the idea of ‘archivization’
to add that an event cannot be recorded and archived without also being changed by the recorder (Labuschagne 11). Therefore, she contends, “the scene that [the archive] preserves is only the one found in the mind of the viewer, the reader, a reader – and this scene is only found there by this reader, who in turn cannot express it without changing it once again” (11). The archivization in Cloud Atlas, suggested by its narrative structure, thus illustrates a process of recreating history through its recording. Lynda Ng uses the analogy of “the ouroboros – the snake eating its own tail” (118) to illustrate a form of “narrative self-cannibalization, with one story-
strand consumed and contained within the next” (118), which symbolises the theme of recursion in the novel. This view is also held by Hélène Machinal, who argues that this recursive element in human nature renders the notion of societal progress futile (149). Furthermore, in Patrick O’Donnell’s argument that “everything is always the same; nothing is ever the same” (70), there is a suggestion that human nature never changes, only the ‘setting’ in which events take place. Cloud Atlas’
future is thus as dependent on heteronormative norms and the male gaze as its past narratives.
However, Jennifer Rickel argues that the recursive elements throughout the novel only act as an illustration of the perpetuation of human exceptionalism, where inequalities are rationalised “as a necessary side effect of society’s advancement”
(163). The clones are “humans by appearance, machines by purpose” (Danilescu 265) and thus closely relates to Donna Haraway’s cyborgs – “a hybrid of machine and organism” (Haraway 149). In science fiction, this cyborg is traditionally seen as the next step in human evolution as it uses technology to ‘upgrade’ the human (Mirenayat et al. 265) which is seen as the solution to the constraints of boundaries present in society (Haraway 154) since it transcends “the dichotomies of organic and inorganic, human and animal, male and female” (Gomel 341). In the first four narratives, future humans are presented just so, as Nietzschean “übermensch” – superhumans – the “masters of the earth” (170). However, while Sonmi-451’s is a society which has mastered the technology of genetics to create clones, making them superhumans of sorts, they ultimately perpetuate the inequalities built into society by relying on female slaves and a highly gendered society.
While Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas has been analysed several times regarding its theme of recursions, it has not been done with a feminist perspective in mind. The
novel’s recurring capitalist structures is discussed in several instances by Danilescu (259), Rickel (170) and Ng (118), as well as its recurring colonialist tendencies (O’Donnell 85). Although Rickel does point out that Sonmi-451’s narrative relies on “a gendered conception of the human” (172), the perpetuation of patriarchal structures in a future society is not explored. Likewise, Luke Hortle’s discussion of the future human in terms of queer theory does arrive at the conclusion that Sonmi- 451’s is a heteronormative society (254). However, he also argues for the novel’s return to neohumanist values, where the novel “symbolizes a hopeful future of political inclusivity to counteract liberal humanism’s violent exclusions” (271).
Hortle’s argument that the novel presents a hopeful view of the future of humanity (271) might be true, but the novel’s narrative structure also refutes this. Through its matryoshka doll structure (Schneeberger 544) with its ouroboros-like narrative self- cannibalisation (Ng 118), and its reliance on postmodern storytelling devices to question truth and the historical metanarrative (Labuschagna 17), mankind is presented as inherently unchanging. If, like O’Donnell argues, the narrative structure of Cloud Atlas supports the notion that human nature never changes (70), then there is no, and will not be, a future Nietzschean “übermensch” (Rickel 170), and neither will there be another, less patriarchal, future. Thus, this thesis argues that, as opposed to Hortle, the narrative structure of Cloud Atlas suggests that society’s patriarchal structures will be perpetuated through the depiction of continuous female submission to masculine and heteronormative ideals, as well as the objectification of the female body through the male and cosmetic gaze in its two futuristic narratives.
Patriarchal Structures in Speculative Fiction
Although speculative fiction today is increasingly incorporating queer sexuality and non-normative characters, patriarchal structures are still prevalent. As Pamela B.
June points out, heteronormativity is what is considered normal in a society while deviations from this are considered “unnatural” and “immoral” (601) and,
“[b]ecause of its insistence on gender roles, [it] is instrumental to the maintenance of patriarchy” (602). Likewise, Catherine Rottenberg adds that “[b]y compelling and encouraging ‘women’ to live up to norms of femininity and ‘men’ to attempt to embody masculinity, heteronormative regimes reinforce their hegemony” (441-442, italics in original). While Josefine Wälivaara argues that non-normative representation in science fiction has been lacking (228), Wendy Gay Pearson et al.
argues that it is “a genre for exploring [queerness], as well as for interrogating the consequences of societies and futures in which conditions render the lives of many unlivable” (5). Furthermore, the subgenre of feminist dystopia thus “questions [the patriarchal structures’] political and/or moral theory by depicting a future in which this ideology grounds the systemic oppression of the female sex by the male sex”
(Little 16). Feminist speculative fiction, which rely heavily on technological advancements, thus play an important role in challenging patriarchal structures through, both bodily and societal, stereotypes and ideals.
Despite being a contemporary novel, written in 2003, the themes of recursions and the unchangeability of mankind in Cloud Atlas creates a view of women which is congruent with first wave feminist criticism where women are presented through the simplistic angel/monster dichotomy to reinforce the patriarchal structures. As Eva Figes writes, “[m]an’s vision of woman is not objective, but an uneasy combination of what he wishes her to be and what he fears her to be, and it is to this
mirror image that woman has had to comply” (17). In a patriarchal society, man holds the power to define both himself and women and due to this, there is a divide in the way women are depicted; they are either angelic or monstrous (Figes 17-18).
The same distinction is made by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, who also add that the male author can “assume patriarchal rights of ownership over the female
‘characters’” (12). The perfect female character, the angel, is described by Virginia Woolf as “intensely sympathetic”, “immensely charming”, “utterly unselfish”, and
“pure” (316) and since, as Simone de Beauvoir puts it, “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, woman” (606), these patriarchal definitions play a large part in creating the ideals and expectations for how women should behave. Since Cloud Atlas showcases a sense of the past repeating itself, these first wave feminist frameworks – while otherwise rather outdated in critiquing contemporary literature – are suitable to distinguish the novel’s sense of returning to previously held views. Thus, this angel/monster dichotomy is as prevalent in the novel’s futuristic narratives as in its past narratives.
Furthermore, given the novel’s combination of speculative narratives and recursions of the past, women are depicted as closer to nature and while cloned women are considered less human, they are still under the influence of an oppressive male-dominated society. Women, Griffin states, are “closer to nature than men”
(Griffin 11), as well as the weaker sex (60), and since man has power over nature, he also has power over woman (13). Likewise, as the ‘natural’ mother, women should want children, should want to take on the role as the nurturer (Griffin 50). In speculative fiction, however, cloned women often stand as a metaphor of the patriarchy (Belton 1212; Carroll et al. 137) and are often incapable of this ‘natural’
ability, which moves them further away from being natural women. As a clone, and
thereby an improved human (Mirenayat et al. 265), this should, in theory, provide the necessary foundation for transcending the oppressive boundaries present in society (Haraway 154). However, since clones can be rationalised as being less human due to their otherness and technological aspects (Chu 78), they do not need to be treated as a human and can thus be taken advantage of. The similarities between this and the traditional patriarchal view of seeing women as man’s creation – “created by, from, and for men” (Gilbert and Gubar 12) – are striking. “Women in patriarchal societies”, they write, “have … been reduced to mere properties … by male expectations and designs” (12, italics in original), which is precisely what the clones in Cloud Atlas are.
Cloned and fabricated women, as well as ‘real’ women, in speculative fiction are similarly made to comply with female beauty ideals stemming from the male and cosmetic gaze. Beauvoir argues for the creation of women through societal expectations (606) and to this, Judith Butler adds that the body, male and female, is used to create gender by following normative behaviours and expressions (18).
Hence, the female body becomes a woman by following the appropriate expressions of her sex that are present in a patriarchal society. Following this, both the male and cosmetic gaze provides important determiners for the creation of women. As Diane Ponterotto argues, “[t]hrough the ‘male gaze’, the female body becomes territory, a valuable resource to be acquired” (147) and which has “objectifying consequences”
(148). However, the male gaze, Bernadette Wegenstein argues, tends to present the objectified woman as a “whole, fulfilled, ideal” (184) while the cosmetic gaze sees the female body as in need of modifications (151). The fabricated women of Cloud Atlas, seen as inhuman objects with beautiful exteriors, thus present the perfect image of women through the male and cosmetic gaze.
Dystopian Angels and Post-Apocalyptic Monsters
Through the binary image of women – the angel and the monster (Gilbert and Gubar 17) – women either succumb to being a delicate and submissive angel, or she is entirely monstrous. Despite the uncanny qualities of clones that arise with the, as Seo-Young Chu puts it, “intellectual uncertainty over whether [it] is genuinely human and alive” (78) that comes with inhabiting what Masahiro Mori calls the uncanny valley – the place where “the aesthetic response [to humanoid artefacts]
drops abruptly from sympathy to profound revulsion” (Chu 76) – the female clones of Cloud Atlas do in fact more correspond to the angelic qualities of women due to their submission to patriarchal ideals. Albeit non-augmented, the women of the post- apocalyptic future are subject to the same structures as the fabricants, while the men are expected, and to some extent forced, to embody the norms of masculinity, which, as Rottenberg argues, reinforce the heteronormative hegemony (441-442). The non- conforming post-apocalyptic woman is thus monstrous compared to the submissive clone.
The fabricants in Sonmi-451’s narrative offer the embodiment of female submission to patriarchal structures through their enslavement at the diner Papa Song. Despite being rationalised as less human (Chu 76), fabricants do have human appearances and although they are never described as being decidedly female – Sonmi-451 is “not xactly1 a girl” (Mitchell 226) – they use feminine pronouns such as “her” (187), “she” (187), and “sister” (190). These fabricants are thus more female than male, which, given that Sonmi-451’s is a dystopian world, also contends with female dystopia’s use of fabricated women to symbolise patriarchal oppression
1 The two futuristic narratives in Cloud Atlas uses different spellings and lexical meanings to showcase how language changes through time. In “An Orison of Sonmi-451”, words such as exactly, exercise, extra, and expensive has dropped the initial e-, while in “Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After”
words are contracted extensively.
of women (Carroll et al. 137). As these fabricants are being drugged to forget their individuality (186), they dedicate their lives to pay off their debt to Papa Song (186) – a debt they are born with (192). When the debt is paid, they are brutally slaughtered in what is humorously called the “pleasuredome” (341), while thinking they will acquire freedom and individuality. This industrialised slaughter suggests what Gilbert and Gubar call “the beautiful angel-woman’s key act” (25). The surrender of a woman’s self “dooms her both to death and to heaven. For to be selfless is not only to be noble, it is to be dead” (Gilbert and Gubar 25). The fabricants devote their lives to service to achieve individuality, which, paradoxically, is the sure path towards death. Furthermore, the diner being called Papa Song implies a male superior, especially as Sonmi-451 refers to the company as “him” (188) and invokes thoughts of a father figure. Thus, with the diner representing their family, the fabricants are sisters under the command of their ‘papa’. Furthermore, as docile, the fabricants are said to be the happiest of all in Nea So Copros, but Sonmi-451 disagrees:
If, by happiness, you mean the absence of adversity, I and all fabricants are the happiest stratum in corpocracy, as genomicists insist. However, if happiness means the conquest of adversity, or a sense of purpose, or the xercise of one’s will to power, then of all Nea So Copros’s slaves we surely are the most miserable. (188)
Happiness cannot come out of slavery and submission, as Sonmi-451 points out, and although “the very word slave is abolished” (Mitchell 189, italics in original), the fabricants are not perceived as human and can thus be treated however the
purebloods see fit. As Sonmi-451 states, “[t]o enslave an individual troubles your consciences, … but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically” (187). Sonmi-451 disagrees with the idea that clones are less human and therefore dedicates her life towards writing her Declarations of the rights of fabricants (347). Due to this, it is easy to see Sonmi-451’s ascension into personhood as an analogy of women’s liberation from the oppressive patriarchal structures. However, it soon becomes clear that this is not the case. On the contrary, Sonmi-451’s whole journey, as is revealed in the very end of the narrative, is nothing but a mere “theatrical production” (348) and Sonmi-451 is nothing more than a pawn used to reinforce the very structures she intended to change.
Furthermore, the same patriarchal structures are visible in the novel’s post- apocalyptic future, albeit predominantly from the male perspective. Following Ng’s argument of a linear progression of mankind (118), these patriarchal structures should have been subverted in a post-apocalyptic future. However, that is not the case. After civilization’s fall, Sonmi-451’s life’s work is forgotten but she is nonetheless remembered, albeit as a god (244) – a Virgin Mary-like figure – and it is to her the tribes pray (245). The fabricated women in the previous narrative have disappeared but Sonmi-451, who performed exceptionally well in reinforcing the patriarchal structures, have become, quite literally, a pure and perfect ‘angel’. The angel/monster dichotomy is thus highly present, which also serves to illustrate the unchanging nature of humankind. The post-apocalyptic future has, due to the fall of civilization, regressed both technologically and societally as they now live in small tribes that depend on bartering and goat herding as well as on traditionally heteronormative ideals. At sixteen, the protagonist Zachry is forced to house the foreign woman Meronym from the island Prescience I (249), and since his father
was killed by the rival tribe Kona, he, as “the oldest man o’ the dwellin’” (250), has to represent his family. This is consistent with Rottenberg’s argument that making men “attempt to embody masculinity” (442) will reinforce the heteronormative hegemony, which June argues will subsequently reinforce the patriarchal structures (602). While Zachry’s mother runs the home (250), as Griffin means any woman in a patriarchal society should (50), Zachry must take the role as the head of the family.
When Meronym moves in, Zachry describes her as having “that vin’gary stink o’
Smart” (251) and for that, he resents her. According to Griffin, “education for the female is unnatural” (50) and although this is a view that is not reflected in the novel’s contemporary narrative, it is reflected in Zachry’s world, which also suggests a return to earlier views of women. Here, knowledge is bad and women with too much of it are undesirable, as becomes clear when Zachry’s girlfriend Roses is jealous of Meronym. This, Zachry dismisses by saying “[d]on’t be jealous o’ her! She ain’t like you, Roses. She’s got so much Smart in her head she’s got a busted neck” (255, italics in original). Zachry, it is thus implied, prefers his women less ‘Smart’ since a knowledgeable woman is unattractive. Likewise, it is because of her ‘Smart’ that Zachry is persuaded by the imaginary devil Old Georgie, disguised as a dead ‘priest-king’ up on Mauna Kea, to kill her:
List’n to me, Valleysman, the soosided priest-king spoke, yay, list’n. We Old Uns was sick with Smart an’ the Fall was our cure. The Prescient don’t know she’s sick, but, oh, real sick she is. … Put her to sleep, Zachry, or she’n’her kind’ll bring all their offland sick to your beautsome Valleys. … Kill her, bro. She ain’t no god, she’s only blood’n’tubes. (279, italics in original)
The Prescient woman Meronym brings the sickness of knowledge to the valley and cannot be left alive as she will spread the disease to the rest of the tribe, or so the priest-king reasons. Meronym does not conform to the idea of the ideal woman and is not as submissive and angelic as Sonmi, and therefore she must die. Due to this, Old Georgie resembles the embodiment of the patriarchal structures as he tries to persuade Zachry to kill her. Although Zachry fails in his attempt – which, together with his initial reluctance, symbolises his attempt at resisting the patriarchal structures – the message is clear: women with knowledge are monsters that should be ‘killed’, while those compliant, like Sonmi, are angelic.
However, the fact that Zachry fails to kill Meronym initially leads to the belief that Old Georgie has lost and that the patriarchal structures have been subverted.
This, however, is not entirely the case as he shortly thereafter gives in to Old Georgie’s persuasions to slit a sleeping enemy’s throat (300). Although Zachry perhaps should not be blamed for killing a man who has murdered an entire village, including Zachry’s family, this act, still seeing Old Georgie as a representation of society’s patriarchal structures, is exactly what Old Georgie wants. Zachry knows he should not kill the sleeping man and that Old Georgie wanting him to do it is probably reason enough not to (301), and still, he does it. However, just as Old Georgie represents the patriarchal structures, the Kona, blood-thirsty savages, can be seen as the submission to these structures – specifically the norms of embodying masculinity as there is also a distinct absence of women among the Kona. Although Zachry sees himself as a civilized man, this act renders him a savage – like the Kona – because the savage “sat’fies his needs now. … He’s swellin’, he’ll shoot up a woman. His master is his will, an’ if his will say-soes ‘Kill’ he’ll kill” (303, italics in original). Hence, Old Georgie – the patriarchal structures – won in the end,
although not through the death of the ‘monstrous’ woman Meronym, but by forcing Zachry to embody the norms of masculinity, which, according to June, “is instrumental to the maintenance of patriarchy” (602).
Wise Man’s Weak Trash
Another view of women that is used in the novel and which perpetuates the patriarchal structures is the female submission to man’s will, which renders her his property. According to Griffin, the patriarchal woman is “closer to nature than men”
(11). This view, she argues, has both “served to oppress women” (13) and supported the idea that men are “free of … the exigencies and needs of natural limitation” (13).
Thus, both women and nature must obey the will of man. Likewise, cloned women without reproductive abilities stand farther away from being ‘natural’ women and are therefore expendable (Carroll et al. 139). This renders the cloned woman a more literal property, while the ‘real’ woman seems to have more freedom. This freedom, however, is only illusory as she is still forced to behave according to man’s will.
In Sonmi-451’s case, both the female submission to the will of man and her expendability are prominent throughout the narrative. Even after her ‘escape’ from Papa Song, Sonmi-451 is forced to obey the men around her. Initially, she is brought to the university at Mount Taemosan to serve as the Ph.D. student Boom-Sook’s test subject (Mitchell 203). However, after arriving, she becomes his “Cind’rella” (212) whose sole purpose is to clean and make tea (208) and she realises that “[i]n Papa Song [she] had been a slave; at Taemosan [she] was a more privileged slave” (232).
However, while her stay at Taemosan is far from pleasant, she never stops being submissive and demure, which gives her the deprecating nickname “I-Do-Not- Know-Sir-451” (209). Later, when she is taken cross country and they are stopped
by enforcers, her male companion Hae-Joo tells her to “keep smiling, act vapid”
(322) – because that is how women should behave. The dystopian society reinforces the ideals of what Griffin expresses as women’s practice of muteness (47), and Sonmi-451 tries to conform to this, whatever the cost. This is confirmed by the enforcer himself, who feels he should warn Hae-Joo that “girls are obedient and demure until they have you married, then they start yacking and never shut up”
(323). A little further on their way, Hae-Joo also gets the advice that he should “pay the xtra dollars to conceive a son when he gets married” (336), implying both that sons are more valuable and that man is the master of nature, not the other way around. This is the same man who, after having thrown a living fabricant doll over a bridge and down onto the rocks below, chuckles and says “[c]heap riddance … to very xpensive trash” (334, italics in original). That the female doll is living does not change the fact that she is merely a toy to be discarded after its owner has grown tired of her (335). Sonmi-451’s fabricated existence and reproductive inability makes her and other fabricants less human (Chu 78). However, Sonmi-451 must
“[force herself] to remain silent” (334) when the man kills the doll and, despite her and the doll’s inhumanness, she considers him a murderer, “[o]ne so shallow, moreover, he did not even know it” (336). This contends with Gomel’s argument regarding people’s ability to overcome the brakes of killing others by “shifting the perceptual map of humanness” (341) and thus, just like the industrialized killing of the fabricants, this murder is not even considered as such, and the fabricants are nothing short of expendable goods.
However, in contrast to Sonmi-451’s highly technological society, the people of Zachry’s future have lost their technological knowledge to alter nature, but the same worldview with regards to women remains. After the fall, the tribes live in the
shadows of the civilization that once was, walking among the “ironwood trees”
(239) and living off what nature provides. However, Meronym tells the tribe the tale of how men lost and regained the ability to make fire, although, she tells them, it is rather a story about how people got their spirit (285). According to the story, Wise Man summoned Crow and told him to fly to the Mighty Volcano and carry a stick with fire back to the people, which Crow managed to do, just before being consumed by the fire (284). In this tale, just as Griffin points out (13), nature is brought under control by men, and, under the influence of the hallucinatory “blissweed” (287), Zachry modifies this tale to the patriarchal view of women in his relationship with a one-night stand. Thus, in Zachry’s version, “she was a saplin’ bendin’ an’ [he] was that hurrycane, [he] blowed her she bent, [he] blowed harder she bent harder an’
closer” (288). It is Zachry that has power over the girl, and she must bend to his will just as women must yield to the power of men in a patriarchal society (Griffin 13).
Afterwards, Zachry is content that he has managed to “shoot up a beautsome girl”
(288). However, when he, moments later, is taken captive by the Kona and listens to them “discussin’ the girls what they’d torn open’n’shooted up” (289) during the raid, he is horrified. Although Zachry, convinced of his own civility and the Kona’s savagery, treats girls and women with more manners and respect, they still share the same view of women as the weaker sex, who either need man’s protection or can be taken advantage of. Ironically, as Griffin points out, in a patriarchal society,
“[w]omen are the weaker sex, … and therefore those women have survived who best succeeded in pleasing men” (60). The return to views like these is precisely what is happening in this post-apocalyptic future. The difference between Zachry and the Kona is thus not their view of women, but their adherence to morals, because while the savage Kona satisfies his needs immediately, Zachry and his kin has “got
sisses an’ daughters what need respectin’ so he’ll respect his bros’ sisses an’
daughters” (Mitchell 303). Both views, however, serve to perpetuate the view of women as the weaker sex and thus subordinate to man.
However, while the end of Zachry’s story creates the illusion of a hopeful future where the patriarchal structures and oppression of nonconformity are subverted, the novel instead dismisses this in favour of the perpetuated patriarchal structures. The story ends with Meronym saving Zachry from certain death by bringing him to the relatively safe Prescient I and this, Hortle argues, suggests the novel’s view of a hopeful and different future (271). The narrative itself, on the other hand, does not end there. Instead, it ends with Zachry’s son, who has listened to the story, expressing his disbelief of the tale. Zachry was “a wyrd buggah” (308), he says, and most of his “yarnin’s was jus’ musey duck fartin’” (308). Just as Labuschagne argues, accounts of the past cannot be expressed without changing it (11) and the son’s version of the story is inevitably different from Zachry’s, thus enabling history to repeat itself. While the son does realise that there is probably some grain of truth in the stories, the stories do not matter in the end because “[i]t ain’t Smart you can use ‘cos it don’t kill Kona pirates” (309). Zachry flees to Prescient I to escape the Kona, but the Kona have, a few decades later, arrived on the island, as fierce and dangerous as ever. The Kona stands for the submission to the norms and ideals that Old Georgie presents and the fact that this metaphor for the patriarchal structures has arrived on Prescient I, where it was not before, illustrates the way in which, even though there will always be hope for a different and better future, the past will always repeat itself.
Better a Pretty Lie Than the Ugly Truth
The creation of women is largely determined by the normative view and depiction of their bodies. A woman is created, Beauvoir states (606), and, as Butler adds, this is done through normative behaviours and expressions (18). Although women in a patriarchal society are expected to be almost invisible, their bodies are continuously being viewed and judged in terms of normative beauty ideals. Hence, not only should a woman behave ‘like a woman’, but she should also look beautiful. While the male gaze is responsible for objectifying the female body (Ponterotto 148), the cosmetic gaze is similarly responsible for the need to correct it (Wegenstein 151).
Because woman is created for man’s pleasure (Gilbert and Gubar 12), they should also strive to be sexually attractive (Ponterotto 137). Following this, the way in which women’s bodies are depicted thus becomes an important determiner of normative femininity and the perpetuation of a patriarchal society.
Sonmi-451’s dystopian future provides the ultimate objectification of the female body through the male gaze as the fabricants have beautiful female bodies, chosen based on aesthetics. As Luna Dolezal points out, “[b]odies are visible; they can be seen” (358) and “[d]espite the invisibility of women as social subjects, the physical aspect of female bodies has traditionally been subject to heightened scrutiny” (357). Thus, although women in a patriarchal society are supposed to be demure and, in some sense, invisible, their bodies are far from invisible. Different
“stemtypes” (Mitchell 187), such as Sonmi, Yoona, Ma-Leu-Da and Hwa-Soon (186), give the fabricants different appearances and in a society where these fabricant clones are drugged to behave the same, there is no need to rely on skill and personality. Instead, they are chosen solely based on aesthetics and Sonmi-451’s
manager “believed it was aesthetically pleasing to alternate stemtypes” (187). The female body has thereby been reduced to an object that can only serve.
Additionally, while these ‘women’ lack reproductive abilities, or indeed any genitalia, they are created to look like women, seen in terms of their sexual appeal.
The fabricants are grown industrially, but instead of removing the focus on the female body, the fabricants have been genetically modified to have the bodies of young, beautiful women. Patricia Melzer points out that female bodies “remain fetishized sexual objects within a male-dominated economy” since “technology allows male subjectivity to reinsert itself into posthumanism through techno- fetishization of the female body” (187). Technology thus tends to be used to reinforce the patriarchal structures instead of rejecting them. Similarly, the fabricants are, despite creating feelings of unease, treated as sexual objects.
Although Sonmi-451 is not exactly a woman and does not seem to have any sexual desires, she still has, albeit “necessarily improvised” (345), sex with Hae-Joo when he wishes it after their visit to the slaughterhouse (345) – an act she considers both
“joyless” and “graceless” (345). Likewise, it is not uncommon that fabricants are stolen for brothels, “made serviceable after clumsy surgery” (315). Thus, fabricant women’s bodies are valued mainly for their sexual appeal, which is determined chiefly by men.
Furthermore, every female character that is presented in the narrative, no matter how small or insignificant to the plot, is described through the lens of the cosmetic gaze, while the men are described solely based on their qualities, if at all.
Although Sonmi-451 is created to look like the perfect picture of a beautiful woman, everyone is perplexed when she has a minor imperfection – a birthmark – which is referred to as a stain (Mitchell 198). The men Sonmi-451 meets are either not
described at all or described as having “honest faces and rural accents” (223).
Although Sonmi-451’s manager “should be understood in the context of his wife”
(189), implying a strong and independent wife, she is described mainly through her appearance. Her business achievements are ignored to instead focus on the fact that
“her seventy-plus years could pass for thirty” (190). The ageing female body, it is implied, is undesirable and should be avoided (Dolezal 367), which is a recurring message in the novel as Sonmi-451 meets both “a ruby-freckled woman with a teenage complexion but telltale older eyes” (228) and a woman who has “frozen her harsh beauty in its mid-twenties, long ago” (320). In the whole narrative, there is only one woman who has not had her face altered and her sixty-eight years could, in Sonmi-451’s eyes, have passed for three hundred (330).
Similarly, the post-apocalyptic future, while less technologically advanced, relies on the same male gaze as in Sonmi-451’s narrative to reduce women to mere objects of male desire. The girls and women in the valley are mostly not described at all and are simply mentioned by name, such as Zachry’s mother or the schoolteacher Abbess. However, those who are described, are done so solely in terms of their sexual appeal. Zachry’s fiancée Jayjo has “a firm’n’eager body” (243), his later girlfriend Roses is mentioned simply because he was “slurpyin’ her lustsome mangoes an’ moistly fig” (250), while old women are just “crone[s]” (244) and “crazy old bint[s]” (259). As Ponterotto points out, the woman is seen as an acquirable resource (147) and with Zachry being a young man in his early teens, it is not strange that he would focus on these aspects of the women around him.
However, the story is told by Zachry’s older self, and the male gaze continues throughout the narrative. When seeing the Prescients disembark the boat from Prescient I, Zachry ignores the men completely in favour of the women:
Oh, ev’rythin’ ‘bout ‘em was wondersome. Shipwomen too was mansome, see, their hair was sheared, not braided like Valleyswomen, an’ they was wirier’n’strong. Their skins was healthy’n’smooth without a speck o’ the scabbin’, but brewy-brown’n’black they was all of ‘em, an’ they looked more alike’n other people what you see on Big I. (248)
Zachry is clearly impressed by these women, mainly due to their beautiful and undamaged skin. Hence, the foreign women are more attractive than the ‘ordinary’
women in the valley, which is consistent with Ponterotto’s argument that “only the thin and fit body is beautiful, only the beautiful body is sexually attractive” (137).
Thus, Zachry objectifies the ship-women through the male gaze.
Nevertheless, while the Valleysmen lack the means to alter their appearances, they do have their own beauty ideals which are applicable to both men and women alike, suggesting a minor inconsistency in their otherwise regressed views concerning gender equality. Zachry is awed when he sees the Prescients disembark the ship and due to Meronym’s near perfect skin, no one believes her to be fifty years old (253) – an old woman in their eyes. However, old age is suspicious even in men since the oldest Valleysman that had ever lived had “sold his soul for some extra years” (253). Similarly, at a bartering, Zachry watches Meronym sketch people and observes that “[u]glies she gived more beautsome’n their faces’d got” and thinks
“[y]ay, when it came to faces, pretty lies was better’n scabbin’ true” (287). As people’s skin is marked by the sun and therefore, as Dolezal puts it, ugly and in need of intervention (367), Meronym chooses to alter their appearances the way she can.
Yet, since these beauty ideals pertain to both men and women, something that were
previously solely applied to women, Cloud Atlas suggests that small variations in the recursions may appear. After all, as O’Donnell points out, “everything is always the same; nothing is ever the same” (70), and while the cosmetic gaze now includes men, the gaze itself remains as a force to view people in terms of what they lack, which, combined with the gender expectations placed on men and women respectively in the narrative, still serves to perpetuate the creation of gender differences through bodily expectations.
Conclusion
Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas has been analysed several times with regards to its theme of recursions and mankind’s unchangeability – of both capitalist (Ng 118; Rickel 170;
Danilescu 259) and colonialist (O’Donnell 70) structures – and this recursive element is equally true for the perpetuation of the patriarchal structures. Although Hortle argues that the novel implies a bright future for queerness (271), its postmodern narrative structure together with its depiction of society’s patriarchal structures implies the opposite – the future will not be any different from the past and present (O’Donnell 70). Thus, the novel presents a strongly patriarchal society that is, and will be, perpetuated through the female submission to patriarchal norms and ideals of how women should behave, as well as female body ideals through the male and cosmetic gaze.
The dystopian Nea So Copros relies on patriarchal structures and although Sonmi-451 is seemingly trying to subvert this, she is simultaneously working towards the very perpetuation of these structures. While fabricants are considered less human – partly due to their reproductive inability, partly due to being fabricated – they are still seen through the lens of the male and cosmetic gaze when they are
created to look like perfect young women. Similarly, pureblood women must attempt to look decades younger than they are. The fabricants are a metaphor for the oppression of women in a patriarchal society (Belton 1212; Carroll et al. 137) and Sonmi-451 is opposed to the current societal structures where fabricants endure drudgery, yet she plays a part in upholding these structures. Using first wave feminist criticism such as Figes’ angel/monster dichotomy, Sonmi-451 is presented as an angel since she plays along according to the premade ‘script’ and never uses her own voice other than to follow the wishes of the men around her (17-18).
For Zachry in the post-apocalyptic Hawaii, things are not much different.
While the technological advancements of Sonmi-451’s world are gone, the same underlying patriarchal structures are present. The tribe upholds the traditional view of women as caregivers (Griffin 50), with men as the head of the family and Zachry sees all women through the male gaze in terms of their sexual appeal. However, as
“pretty lies” (Mitchell 287) are encouraged in favour of the ‘ugly’ truth for both men and women, giving this society a slightly different approach to beauty ideals, this does, taken together with the expectations of upholding traditional gender roles, serve to reinforce the patriarchal structures through bodily expectations.
Furthermore, Zachry’s resistance to giving in to the imaginary devil Old Georgie – the embodiment of patriarchal structures – as well as his failure to kill Meronym, implies a resistance towards these structures. However, as he later kills a Kona – the representation of the submission to traditional norms of masculinity – he becomes a savage himself. When Meronym later saves Zachry’s life by bringing him to her island, away from the Kona, a bright new beginning is implied, just like Hortle argues (271). However, as the narrative ends with Zachry’s son stating that Kona
pirates have arrived at this new island, it is implied that this bright new beginning did not take place and the patriarchal structures remain.
Thus, both narratives take place in a futuristic society and as they are both dependent on and perpetuating the patriarchal structures, Cloud Atlas implies the unchangeability of such structures. Although both Sonmi-451 and Zachry fights for societal change, for the subversion of patriarchal structures, there are, in the end, no changes. Sonmi-451 have, instead of subverting the oppression of female clones as she intended, served to reinforce their continued enslavement. Likewise, Zachry, while trying to resist the patriarchal norms of masculinity placed on him, finds himself unable to resist Old Georgie. Thus, they both have, unknowingly or not, served to reinforce and perpetuate the patriarchal structures.
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