I do not think Alice’s husband treated her very well as he took her on the spaceship. Spaceships are predominately male orientated place, so it was a surprise to all the males on the spaceship that there was a member of the opposite sex on the Falcon. The men don’t respond wonderfully to there being a female on board. I feel the men are sexist, prejudiced and tremendously narrow minded. Mister Twycott treated Sophy slightly negligently, as Sophy had no real control over anything; ‘She was left with no control over anything that had been her husband’s beyond her modest personal income’.
Men had control over women, I doubt the women agreed with this, but they were powerless to complain due to there place in society. Although the “Married Women’s Property Acts” of eighteen seventy and eighteen eighty two, which allowed women to retain and acquire assets independently of their husbands and for the first time eradicated the notion that a wife was the property of her husband, I still feel women were still treated as property by their husband. The men probably felt that a women’s is in the kitchen or doing knitting.
They do not realise that women are initialed to the same rights as men, whether it is going on a trip to Mars, or playing football. Randolph, Sophy’s son was extremely unpleasant towards his mother, he did not really care about her in the slightest, would he care if she were dead or alive? Randolph was considerably critical and vastly disagreeable towards his mother too. Everything she did was wrong in his eyes. The way Randolph treated Sophy was vastly obscene and he was not apprehensive to show his anger, ‘He showed a more manly anger now, but wound not agree’.
Randolph clearly did not have confidence in his mother in the slightest, ‘he had doubts whether she could be trusted in his absence’. The authors of The Son’s Veto and Survival have extremely similar attitudes towards woman, they both write that women are shy, easily persuaded into things by men. They both seem to think that men have a great deal of control over women and have an influence in the decisions they make. ‘She (Sophy) was left with no control over anything’. They both feel women only show their true colours in the most drastic of situations, i.
e. Alice on the spaceship. Some men, i. e. Sam (Sophy’s friend) treat women well and equally, ‘Such a lady as ye’ve been so long, you couldn’t be a wife to a man like me’. Sophy’s son Randolph told her whom she should and should not marry, and consequently she was extremely frightened to tell Randolph her plans. This shows that Randolph, a male, obtained a sense of power over his mother Sophy, just because of the fact she was female, ‘could she defy him! ‘ I do not sympathise very much with the sacrifice Alice made.
It was exceedingly disagreeable I my opinion when Alice was going to venture to the plant Mars for five years ‘after all, dear, it is only a five year appointment for David’. Living on Mars see would be away from her friends, distant from her immensely loving and vastly caring family just so she could be with her husband. Alice is too young to make such a rash and impulsive decision about something as significant and also as life modifying as this. She would not listen to reason due to her intense, temperamental stubbornness.
There was no reason why she could not live pleasantly on Earth and wait for her partner to return, or her husband could have stayed on Earth with her. I feel an extremely miniature portion of sympathy towards Alice, it is practically doubtless that here husband was the one that talked her into this, but he can not acquire the indictment for her decision. Alice had various chances to modify her decision, in spite of the fact that she did not, ‘all you have to do is to say you’ve changed your mind’.
I do not agree with Alice as she undoubtedly sacrificed others on the spaceship Falcon, including the crew and the passengers. She was certainly trying to obtain special, individual treatment as she was pregnant and she was a member of the opposite sex. To her it did not matter about the well being or the significance of others, it just matters about her in her eyes, this is tremendously egoistic self-centred. She was also extremely manipulative to try and achieve what she wants, ‘there was a man who died yesterday. Bowman. I thought I could have his rations’.
I sympathise more with Sophy as she sacrificed her self and not other as Alice did. Sophy sacrificed her home, where she lived (Gaymead) and her friends and family and also the change of marrying Sam. She knew that by marrying Mister Twycott, a rich upper class man, that she would benefit financially. She also knew that by marrying Mister Twycott people see Sophy as upper class, but Sophy attempted to act more higher in society by the way see talked, dressed and acted. Sophy probably would have married Sam if I were not for her manipulative, loathsome son Randolph.
