Oryx and Crake: Feminist Theory

Even though the story features a male protagonist, the feminist lens is perhaps one of the most interesting lenses to apply to Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. The society seen in the books is quite different, but it gives us all too familiar reminders of our own.

The main character, Jimmy is very comfortable with manipulating women. He doesn’t see them as beings worthy of respect, but as toys that he can play with for fun. He has no respect for his mother, his girlfriends, or any other women in his life. The only one that he sees differently is Oryx. He cannot manipulate her, so he is forced to appreciate her as a real human being.

Jimmy’s disrespect for women starts at a young age. He looks for praise from his mother, but he usually does not receive it. His mother’s moods are very unstable, meaning that Jimmy never knows how she will react to his actions. Instead of continuing his constant search for approval, he begins to search for any emotion that differs from the usual. “As he grew older and more devious, he found that on the days when he couldn’t grab some approval, he could at least get a reaction. Anything was better than the flat voice, the blank eyes, the tired staring out of the window” (Atwood 32). As time goes on, Jimmy begins to care less and less about his mother’s emotions and he starts to treat her like a toy. After tormenting her, “he would pat her, standing well back as with strange dogs, stretching out his hand, saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ And he was sorry, but there was more to it: he was also gloating, congratulating himself, because he’d managed to create such an effect” (Atwood 33). Obviously, he was not really concerned about his mother’s feelings, but happy that he could manipulate them so effortlessly. When his mother left his family at a young age, it was not the end of his manipulation but only the beginning.

His disrespect for women is apparent in most of his memories. When describing his time at school, He does not remember his teacher’s name. He only addressed her by her most defining physical characteristic. “Her name wasn’t Melons – that was a nickname used among the boys in the class – but Snowman can’t remember her real name” (Atwood 71). He also mentions that the other boys in the class treated the teacher the same way, meaning that Jimmy’s disrespect of women was partly because of his society. This attitude continues into young adulthood, when Jimmy enters college. When he goes to visit Crake at school, he does not find the women that are “on offer” to be attractive because they did not put much effort into maintaining a traditionally feminine and beautiful appearance (203). These women are some of the smartest, most accomplished members of his generation, yet Jimmy believes that “[c]onsidering their slovenliness, their casual approach to personal hygiene and adornment, they ought to have fainted at [his] attention” (203-204). He thinks that women should appreciate his attention and that women are “on offer” when they are not in a relationship. Clearly, they are human beings that are living their own lives, and nothing is being offered to him, but he sees it differently.

The area where Jimmy’s disregard for the emotions of women is most prominent is in his dating life. In his college years, he relies solely on manipulation for sex. He allows the women to believe that he needs to be saved, relying on the fact that their sympathy for him will force them to stay with him. “At first Jimmy would run to their aid: he was tender-hearted, he’d been told, and nothing if not chivalrous. He’d draw out of them their stories of hurt, he’d apply himself to them like a poultice. But soon the process would reverse, and Jimmy would switch from bandager to bandagee… It was touching the lengths to which they would go. Would this make him happy? Would this? Well then how about this? But he took care to never get any less melancholy on a permanent basis… why would he be stupid enough to give up his grey rainy-day allure – the crepuscular essence, the foggy aureole, that had attracted them to him in the first place?” (Atwood 189-190). Since Jimmy’s relationships are build solely on pity, he has to be very careful not to improve too drastically; he needs his girlfriends to see some improvement, so they think they are helping, but not enough that they will expect any real commitment.

When Jimmy gets out of college, his dating style doesn’t change too drastically. His relationships are still relatively void of meaning, as he only dates women who are already in relationships. They are only with each other for mystery and fun; never anything meaningful. He still sought out damaged women to manipulate. No relationship had any more meaning than the next and he was always comfortable in assuming that whenever he broke it off with one woman he would always be able to find another (Atwood 249). He maintains this same attitude until he meets Oryx and everything that he could rely on in the past about women and relationships is turned around. “Oryx had neither pity for him nor self-pity. She was not unfeeling: on the contrary. But she refused to feel what he wanted her to feel. Was that the hook – that he could never get from her what the others gave so freely? Was that her secret?” (Atwood 191). Jimmy had seen Oryx before as a young teen and he became obsessed with her. Jimmy and Crake first saw Oryx on a child pornography site, which was common in their desensitized society. Despite Oryx’s extremely difficult childhood, she remained positive and refused to be manipulated by Jimmy; making him fall for her like he hadn’t yet fallen for anyone else.

I would argue that the lives of the women in the story are very restricted, both by society and by Jimmy. While their society is more open to certain things like genetic engineering and augmenting human features, some things are less open than what we are used to. The society is split into different sections, and the divide is more extreme than anything we see today. The Pleebands are where the majority of the population lives. They are filled with diseases that the population has become immune to. The inhabitants of the Pleebands are the poorest, but also the freest. The middle class lives in Modules. Many of the inhabitants of modules work for big companies at a lower level. The final section is the Compounds. They are smaller communities that are protected from danger and disease, but also heavily controlled. Jimmy lives in different Compounds throughout his life and no one seems to notice how heavily their life is invaded by the companies that own the towns. Because of such strict rules applied to every aspect of life, both women and men are very restricted. However, women are restricted even further because of the desensitization of the society that allows women to be objectified. Jimmy was just one example and I would assume that he would be one of the more docile.

To conclude, I think that Margaret Atwood did an excellent job in portraying an honest view of how women might be treated if our society ever begins to look like this one. I also think that the fact that Jimmy, the protagonist of the story, treated women in this way further demonstrates how deeply the disrespect penetrated their society. I believe that, like many other aspects of Atwood’s writing, this is a warning to the reader about the direction in which she believed that our society is progressing. Looking at the text in this way allowed for a very interesting new perspective that I really enjoyed.