Woman on the Edge of Time Chapter 7 Summary

  • Jackrabbit tries to comfort Connie and gets an erection. He wants to sleep with everybody all the time. There is a certain amount of giggling.
  • More talk about the perfect society. All the talk about the perfect society can get a little dull (maybe that's why Piercy threw in the erection, to make sure you were paying attention).
  • Anyway, in the perfect society they make lots of things but nobody is in that much of a hurry, in part because they automate as much of it as they can.
  • Lots of discussion of how a future pillow factory works. If you ever wondered how pillow factories would work in the future, this is the place to go.
  • They get to the children's quarters. Connie wonders where the school is, but there is no school. The perfect future has no school. Nifty, huh?
  • Instead, kids learn from adults by doing.
  • They use science so men can breastfeed, too. Connie is jealous, and remembers breastfeeding her own child and is sad.
  • Whoops—they stumble on a couple of young kids having sex. They let the kids practice sex in the future so they know what's what by the time they grow up.
  • They don't think sex is bad unless it involves force or coercion.
  • Then Connie sees a kid who looks like Angelina, and she is so upset she bops back to the past.
  • Connie decides Angelina would be better off in the future, even with the child sex and the talking cats.