The Ship Who Sang 3: Stages of womanhood

RichardAbbott

Women's lives are often divided into three parts - maiden, mother, crone - with some women's groups advocating a four-part division into girl, maiden, mother, elder (to include an explicit child phase, and give the final stage a more appealing name). Did Helva progress at all through these or did the brain-ship encapsulation effectively close off her development? Did she come over as female? Young? Wise? Naive? Which female stage would you allocate to her?

clash_bowley

Huh? Helva was a virgin in a titanium sphere, so 'maiden'. Case closed.

Apocryphal

I think she did change - not a lot, this could have been developed more - but she does start off as fairly naive and through experience becomes more of a mature woman. I'm not sure I subscribe to the 'parts' model mentioned above. The women I know have either been the same since I met them, or exhibit any of the supposed phases depending on the day.

RichardAbbott

Helva thought of herself as mothering the large numbers of embryos she transported on one trip, though the story implied that nobody else agreed with her. One feature of her life is that personal maturity _couldn't_ come through sexual maturity, so I'm not sure I agree with @clash_bowley 's comment that the two are necessarily linked. There are, surely, plenty of women who are not built into a spaceship but become adults without sex... I guess I was wondering with this discussion starter whether Anne McCaffrey succeeded in conveying this?

clash_bowley

Sigh... I was being technically correct, which is, as everyone knows, the best KIND of correct!

RichardAbbott

> @clash_bowley said:
> Sigh... I was being technically correct, which is, as everyone knows, the best KIND of correct!

NeilNjae

I don't think Helva's story covers the whole of her life. In the first story she is a naïve young woman, smitten by her first love. In the end she is a mature, self-confident woman choosing her own path and her own partner. It's a tale of women's liberation and independence, rather than seeing a woman as defined by her relationship to her children.

clash_bowley

@NeilNjae said:
I don't think Helva's story covers the whole of her life. In the first story she is a naïve young woman, smitten by her first love. In the end she is a mature, self-confident woman choosing her own path and her own partner. It's a tale of women's liberation and independence, rather than seeing a woman as defined by her relationship to her children.

Agreed. This isn't in the same thought system as the mythic maiden/mother/crone.