a whole new story

When I first read the story, “When It Changed,” I initially thought that the main character was a male. In the first sentence of the second paragraph, it said “Katy and I have three children between us” and that made me think of a husband. However, it wasn’t until later on that I found out that the men died out generations ago that I realized that the main character was a female. After the men died out, it made me wonder about how the women reproduced and have children. Unless it was something really bizarre, like in Left Hand of Darkness, I didn’t quite understand how reproduction was possible. Also, another interesting fact that I noticed was that the women were really short, midgets by our standards. For them, one meter was already extremely tall. That put into perspective just how short the rest of the population must be; the average height may have only been around 0.75 meter. Later on in the story, Katy tried to shoot one of the men who came to Whileaway. Afterwards, she was shaking and said that she never touches a rifle because she knew she’d kill someone. I believe that the author, Joanna Russ, was trying to show that even in a society without men, destructive human traits still exist. In this case, Russ showed that women are also capable of killing others.