Challenging Binary Gender: Woman on the Edge of Time and Trumpet Amani Carson College

Examining the concept of binary gender proves valuable when exploring gender and sexuality within literature. This essay will examine this notion by focusing on how key novels relating to gender and sexual challenge the fixity of a gender binary, focusing specifically on how far Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and Jackie Kay’s Trumpet challenge this idea in their textual depictions.

Trumpet criticizes binary gender by its inclusion of issues relating to gender identity in a context of a contemporary society that fails to approach gender as anything but binary. In the novel, when considering the fact that recent widow Millie had been married to Joss - a woman who lived as a man - journalist Sophie asks herself ‘why?’, proceeding to ponder that ‘it’s all weird [...] a woman who slicked her hair with oil’.[1] This example is one of many in the text representing that the bulk of in response to Joss’s identity came after his death, in the form of others opinions, and was not indicative of dissatisfaction on his part. This contrast highlights the narrow-mindedness of Sophie’s viewpoint regarding the dismantling of a fixed gender binary, suggesting that the text is criticizing this standpoint.

Woman on the Edge of Time...