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.
Work Cited of The
Conquest of Gola
Germana, Monica. Scottish Women's Gothic and Fantastic
Writing. Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Larbalestier, Justine. Daughters of Earth: Feminist
Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
—. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction.
Wesleyan University Press, 2002.