The Conquest of Gola (Leslie F. Stone, 1931)

          In “The Conquest of Gola,” Leslie F. Stone wrote two diverse fictional and gathered them into one part. The short story applies on a hidden level and obvious level as well. In simple words, there is some part of the story referred to the manifest or obvious level where all the readers could easily recognize. In the other hand, she also applies latent or hidden content where the story is presenting beneath the facade. However, there both levels support the story in which the latent level is essential, and the manifest level is also quite exciting.

            The women which the story is telling are described as unquestionable women, although their appearances are different from the normal female. The women in the story have “beautiful golden coats, […] movable eyes, […] power to scent, hear and touch with any part of the body, [and] absorb food and drink through any part of the body most convenient to us at the time”. They are also “able to call forth any organ at will, and dispense with it when its usefulness is over!” Stone occurs to create the superior, vague, and infinite creatures which able to communicate with each other by using telepathy and the great thing is, they are able to read through inside men’s mind. It is obvious that the author described how women lead greater than men. The appearance men in this story also unlike the normal human being, the men in this story pictured with no hair and green-color skin. However, both men and women in “The Conquest of Gola” are specifically gendered, and they use that gendering to identify themselves (Germana).

        Another interesting thing from the story is how Stone placed men in insulting and sarcastic shape. She packages the men in the story, not as a complete human being; instead, she describes them in parts such as their hands, faces, feet, and chests. In this story, the men are being criticized and assumed to be as deficient creatures. This proven in the story when the men selected to being used as specimens for the experiment, when Glebe, “choos[es] what she judge[s] to be the finest specimens.”

        “The Conquest of Gola” detailed on how both men and women thought themselves greater to each other, where the women are destined as rulers, and the men appear from the society which makes men as leaders. In fact, the men have the perception that it is mirthful how women could ever gain practical civilization without support from men. As a man from association says, “Women are all right in their place, but it takes the man to see the profit of a thing like this.” Stone has given us the suggestion that the people in Gola are greater in shape, intelligence, and behaviors. In the end, the author clearly defined women as the greater race.

        The interesting fact from this part is, Stone has obviously divided men and women into two diverse races. Usually, the word “human” describes as the entire genders, but not in this story. Stone draws this fight among men and women as a type of war where the two races unable to appreciate one another. Maybe Stone has the feeling that this case is happening in this world time over time? She also mentioned that the women are being attacked, or get disturbed by men, who always aim to take everything from women until they could take the lead (Larbalestier).

        The story also gives a brief message on sexuality. In “The Conquest of Gola,” women occurred to be totally understood of sexual organisms, with various male companions whom they exploit for their satisfaction and reproduction as well. There is no such kind of marriage found inside the story. Instead, only wisdom that you “come of age and [are] allowed two consorts of [your] own.” There is an obvious class set up among women and men overrun powers. This might be something like a view of what is happening in the world now, where women, in reality, are being used as same as how the man described in the story as being used by women (Larbalestier, Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century).

        The conclusion could be taken from “The Conquest of Gola” is, this story gave a brief of questions to the issue that is happening over and over again in the Earth regarding of gender and the discrimination which following it. However, with shifting inequality by making the women superior and men located on the underneath might also not a good answer to solve it. Instead, human still has much homework on what they have to change in this gender case.