The Two of Them

The Two of Them is a 1978 science fiction novel by Joanna Russ, shortlisted for the Retrospective Tiptree Award.

Plot (spoilers)

The Two of Them features another strong female protagonist, Irene, who rescues an adolescent girl from a male-dominated quasi-Islamic society. Like many of Russ's short stories ("The Little Dirty Girl"; "Bluestocking"; "The Autobiography of My Mother" in The Adventures of Alyx) The Two of Them concentrates on a mother-daughter-type relationship.

Influences, Impacts, Intertextualism, Connections

• Joanna Russ dedicated The Two of Them to Suzette Haden Elgin, who allowed her to use characters and setting of her short story, "For the Sake of Grace", "as a springboard to a very different story of [Russ's] own".

• The Clewiston Test is the title of a novel by Kate Wilhelm, and the name of a test that the protagonist of The Two of Them, Irene, asks for (on p.142 of The Women's Press edition). Russ's use of this allusion highlights the way that her novel echoes and answers situations and themes from Wilhelm's novel.

• There are echoes of "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Aunt Dunya's fate.

• The novel opens with a direct reference to Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll (as a comparison point for characters' clothing) .

Editions

• 1978 - Berkeley-Putnam
• 1979 - Berkeley
• 1986 - The Women's Press, London (first British publication). ISBN 0-7043-4035-6.
• 2005 - Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut. With a foreword by Sarah LeFanu.

1986 Women's Press Edition, Judith Clute illustrator (cover illustration)

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hardcover 1978 edition

Further reading

• 2005 review of The Two of Them by Gwyneth Jones

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