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In Women's Agency in the Dune Universe, Kara Kennedy argues that critics should seriously consider the Dune series as a feminist depiction of women.
Kennedy notes that the novel characterizes the all-female Bene Gesserit organization, the primary female characters in the series, as acting with what Kennedy describes as bodily agency. This bodily agency, Kennedy argues, offers a rebuttal to the traditional dichotomous western thinking, exemplified by Rene DesCartes, that both associates women with the body (not the mind) and characterizes the body as passive. In contrast, Herbert's depiction of bodily agency alludes to eastern philosophies such as Taoism and Hinduism, which Kennedy argues, emphasize a balance between mind and body. In these traditions, the body can act in concert with the mind and together they can function as an agent of change. The Bene Gesserit's intense pranabindu training, which all of its members must endure, engenders the women's powerful mind/body connection, making the female body a source of agential power.
In depicting agential women, Kennedy suggests, the Dune series engages directly with themes current in Second Wave feminism. She notes that Herbert's six- novel series was composed from 1965 to 1985, a period roughly contemporaneous with Second Wave feminism. Moreover, Kennedy reviews keystone texts of Second Wave feminism such as Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (trans. 1953), Betty Friedman's The Feminine Mystique (1963), Shulamith Firestone's in The Dialect of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), and Adrienne Rich's in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), among others. In a thorough analysis of the series, Kennedy illustrates the ways in which the Dune series addresses key themes sounded in Second Wave feminist writngs such the female body, female community, voice, and sex.
Kennedy also advances a convincing argument that Herbert's depiction of the women of the Bene Gesserit...