Dame unise, feminist maiden who fares well with the patriarchy: Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ‘the prodigal daughter’ and the emerging tradition in feminist speculative fiction

Abstract

In her discussion of recent feminist utopias, Joanna Russ notes that the authors have likely read one another and that their ‘works form a remarkably coherent group in their presentation of feminist concerns and the feminist analyses which are central to these concerns’ (Russ, 1981: 71). My essay further explores the emerging tradition in feminist speculative fiction. It notes the common elements connecting three novels—Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong (1976), Suzy McKee Charnas' Motherlines (1978), and Elizabeth A. Lynn's The Northern Girl (1980)—and analyses Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ‘The prodigal daughter’ (1981) in terms of its relationship to these connections. References to Louise Bernikow's Among Women (1980) link these feminist imaginative works to feminist reality, reality which is more closely adhered to by Salmonson than by the authors of the novels. While the novels' feminist protagonists succeed in isolation from the patriarchy, Salmonson's feminist hero, Dame Unise, succeeds because she is able to cooperate with a patriarch. Positive images of patriarchy are absent from the novels; Salmonson's story emphasizes such positive images.