“Influence of Women”
Tony Song
Final Paper The equality between men and women has been a hot topic of discussion during the 20th century. Women have repeatedly been left out of important political decisions on both societal and domestic issues. Until recent times, men have maintained supremacy in every facet of American and white European cultures. Only in the past 100 years have women begun to gain ground in seeking equality with men. Despite the asymmetrical balance of powers, the significance of the female figure in society is irrefutable. The great male leaders of the United States were all taught and nurtured during the all-important years of youth by their mothers. During the Colonial and Post-Revolutionary War eras, it was the domestic mother who taught values and nurtured the great leaders of this nation. The rather new voting privileges for women have diversified and strengthened the democracy of this country. During the Second World War, women at home in great numbers helped the explosion of the weapons and machinery resources required for the soldiers. History has shown the great influence and importance of women. In the novel Galatea 2.2, the time period the narrator recounts is during the 1990’s. This decade experienced great growth in computer technology in which the world had never experienced. The author of Galatea 2.2, which mirrors Richard Powers the character, illustrates man and his over zealous ambitions of creating a mechanically conscious mind. The project is a naïve fantasy which can not be attained by man. It is the women of Galatea 2.2, who are often nameless, that shock reality back into the narrator, signifying their importance in the technological era. One of the most influential women in the novel is C. Powers frequently reminisces of times they have had together years before the Center. His close, intimate relationship with C. greatly influenced Powers. His first novel is mainly stories he wrote for her and stories she told him. The connection between the two characters was the book. However once the book was published and was warmly accepted, it was the “one that by accident ate her alive” (Powers 108). The book which he wrote for her is “now revealed to have had another goal all along, [which] begins to undermine their relationship” (Fitzpatrick 547). Part of Powers’ great desire for the success of the experiment can be seen as a way for him to create the perfect woman where C. failed. Powers “encounters in Galatea the real-life thefts that authority brings” (Fitzpatrick 548). This authority pertains to his relationship with C. During the deterioration of their relationship Powers explains he and C. “slipped imperceptibly from lovers to parent and child” (Powers 225). In this state of parent and child, Powers realizes “the more care I took, the more I turned her into the needy one. And the more I did that, the needier she became” (Powers 240). The failures Powers encounters with C. are connected to his relationship with Helen who will be explained later. Because of his lost connection with C., Powers is greatly dissatisfied with literature and spends the greater part of the novel in turmoil about his future as an author and the validity of literature in a world increasingly dependent on technology. With C. being one love of Powers’ life, A. is the other. A. is the twenty two year old graduate student who will face Helen in the test. Powers suggests that “A. was the person C. had only impersonated” (Powers 238) and he begins a “full-blown obsession” (Powers 236) with A. in which he imagines “a whole day around her” (Powers 236). Powers mentions again he and C. moved to a city named B. in the same pages of the novel he describes his obsession over A. The retrograde in the letters (C, B, A) involving the women in Powers’ love life can be seen as an inverse to the forward progression of letters for the implementations which eventually ends up as Helen. Likewise, the regression in