2. How would Solaris be different if the protagonist were a woman?

[John]

2. How would Solaris be different if the protagonist were a woman? Would she have a male visitor? Is the Solaris ocean female? Why or why not?

[Zombie]

I don't know if the ocean is female or what it would have been like but that is an interesting question to ponder. I think that the visitor would probably have been male.

[Eadie]

I think if the protagonist was a woman it would not be much different. Her visitor would be whoever was foremost in her memory. I don't think the Solaris ocean has anything to do with being male or female.

[Pip]

I think a female protagonist would concentrate more on trying to communicate and less on confronting the ocean. Her visitor could be either gender. I agree with the ocean being genderless. Isn't the whole point that the ocean cannot be anthropomorphised and therefore the scientists are having difficulty communicating with it?

[Kate]

I immediately thought of Sigourney Weaver when I read this question :) I don't think that the gender of the protagonist would make a huge difference in this case and it never occurred to me to assign a gender to the ocean. Any attempt to do so pretty much plays into Lem's point that we anthromorphize too much and that will make it impossible for us to truly understand an alien intelligence. I still don't understand what on earth they were thinking when they tried to hurt the ocean with the gamma rays, that is a horrific act of attempted xenocide?? and frankly after that aggression they deserved whatever they got. I'd like to think that a group of female scientists would have been less likely to go there.

[Sushicat]

I also think that the emphasis of contact would have been more about communication rather than confrontation. As for the rest, I don't think there would have been much difference.

[Wolf]

It is actually kind of sad that with all his imagination in other regards Lem was unable to come up with even ONE female scientist. Or did you spot one amongst all these names? So I can't even imagine him writing a female protagonist.

And I was struck at one point, why the translator consequently chose the word "ocean" (which is male in German) over the words "Meer" (which would be neutral) or "sea" (female). Isn't that a little weird when it all is about the pointlessness of anthropomorphizing? Wouldn't the neuter serve this purpose better? I wonder about the Polish.

[[deleted user]]

Interesting point about language Wolf.

I think the ocean is beyond gender.

A female protagonist based on the answers to the first question could just as likely have a female visitor as a male. I don't think sex of the protagonist would change much of the overall story.

[Kristel]

Interesting question, I didn't think of the Solaris ocean as any gender. I really thought of it as beyond gender as Book notes above. I thought of those that appeared to people as complex relationships; relationships of closeness, ambiguous emotions and probably guilt. Those that have a tenacious hold in our memories. So I think the visitor could be any gender.

I don't let the choices that authors make about gender a big deal. If the author wants to concentrate on men's experiences, I am okay with that. It was written in 1961. I don't think the women's movement was very hot and heavy then but it was definitely on the rise. I do find the information that the translator did not use neutral words interesting and does any one know if perhaps the original Polish used gender specific words? And giving things like boats, ships, storms gender specific names is just a whim anyway.

[Wolf]

Well, now you have made me download four scholarly articles which might provide the answer to the grammatical gender of Lem's ocean (even though even that won't say much) and probably raise a bunch of more questions. I've already looked up Polish grammar and now at least know there are three genders in Polish, too. And they have (at least) a neutral and a masculin word. In the Polish wikipedia article, only the masculine, ocean, is used. But that still doesn't really answer the question, we would need a Polish reader for that. Or a definitive statement about it from the papers I'm going to read.

Scanning the first one, I came across the interpretation of Kelvin's flight from Prometheus to Solaris as a metaphorical birth ("mothership") and at the same time sexual act including orgasm (shaking of the capsule, heat and one of his comments about not coming too soon or something). I know I will argue with this author in my head. A lot.

[Kristel]

Wolf wrote: "Well, now you have made me download four scholarly articles which might provide the answer to the grammatical gender of Lem's ocean (even though even that won't say much) and probably raise a bunch..."

I like that you are willing to look into all this. I always find this stuff interesting and makes me think deeper about the books that I've read. When were the articles written? I found articles about The House on the Borderland that also described the book in sexual Freudian descriptions.

But I can see the Prometheus --- Solaris trip as being important from the words picked.

[Wolf]

The one I mentioned is from the early nineties! I'd thought they'd been over the worst of Freudian interpretation by then. The worst one I ever read was "Rumplestiltskin as anti-male manifesto". I still gag when I think of it. ;)

It's a good thing that you bind me a little tighter to looking into this- I have piles of papers I was faszinated by at one point or another - but became fascinated by something else before I read them

How do I keep missing the most interesting books on the list? Maybe because I'm so busy with the ones I already know about and always wanted to read... Thanks for The House on the Borderland. And yes, I can see without reading it how that would attract Freudians...

[Jen]

What an interesting discussion thread.

First, I agree with Kate and Pip in that the gender of the ocean doesn't make sense given the various points that Lem is trying to make about this mysterious entity.

Second, I'm not sure the gender of the protagonist has anything to do with the gender of their visitor. As several have already stated, the visitor is determined by who is most relevant to the specific person and I don't see gender playing a role in that.

Finally, I'm not sure how things would have been different if the scientist had been a woman or a man. If we go by stereotypes (women being softer/less confrontational/more emotional) then I guess you could argue differences. I work as a researcher and I can't say I see a huge difference in the approach of men and women with regard to how they approach scientific questions. Perhaps more differences when it comes to relationships.

I liked Wolf's point about language. I hadn't even thought it. I read in Spanish too and the gender of various words does make a big difference in how I perceive and interpret text. I think this was an interesting issue in Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Ugh, Freudian interpretations (says the cognitive behavioral psychologist). Many literary interpretations that use Freud's psychosexual theory make me gag too.

[Patrick]

This discussion about language is quite interesting. The same pattern would present itself in French: ocean is male (un océan), sea is female (une mer). I wish Aga was still around, she would give a definitive answer about Polish.

I also picked up on the fact that all scientists named appeared to be male. So, I am not sure whether Lem purposefully chose males for these roles or it just fitted in the old stereotypes about males vs females in certain occupations. Regardless, I am not sure that a woman scientist would have necessarily triggered a male visitor; the Solaris ocean seemed to have its own whims, anything could have happened.