Parable of the Sower and Patriarchy

Parable of the Sower and Patriarchy

Patriarchy: a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. This system has been prevalent in much of American society. Throughout this country’s history, women have been put in positions secondary to men. Sometimes, it feels like women can finally have power within this society, but it never lasts long. Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower is a brilliant example of this. The protagonist Lauren Olamina, a black girl, fifteen years old at the start of the novel, grows and develops over the course of its three-year span. Even though this story is framed through her eyes, it is not entirely about her. There are fundamental male characters throughout the story that impact her journey; her father, brothers, Harry, Bankole, the community, and God. Lauren herself for a portion, even masquerades as a man to present herself as stronger while traveling. Despite the protagonist being female, men are significant to her plot. 

The first person Lauren mentions in the novel is her father. In the first paragraph, she writes, “Today is our birthday—my fifteenth and my father’s fifty-fifth” (Butler 8). This seems like an unnecessary point to mention, but Lauren views her dad as an important figure in her life and makes the effort to write that her and her father share a birthday forty years apart. She wants us to know this information. In the following sentence she writes, “I’ll try to please him—him and the community and God” (Butler 8). A traditional stereotype of women is that they exist to please a man, thus taking away their agency. Lauren is aware that she’ll never meet this expectation, qualifying the sentence with “try”. This is also the first mention of God in Lauren’s narration, creating a precedent for how God will be portrayed moving forward. However, this precedent is underscored in the following chapter when Lauren mentions “...my father’s God stopped being my God” (Butler 12). In this statement, Lauren creates a divide between her and a significant male figure in her life, signifying a rejection of pretenses and a move toward establishing her own identity. But, she doesn’t want to upset him by admitting that. “...I’m a coward…I let my father baptize me in all three names of that God who isn’t mine anymore” (Butler 12). Lauren still wants to appear good in her father’s eyes despite harboring different beliefs. Her defiance is kept to herself. That in and of itself acts like a form of submission. 

Her younger brother, Keith, on the other hand, openly defies her father.  “...Keith lives outside” (Butler 101). He takes his life into his own hands, goes past the gates, and is only reprimanded the first time he comes back. Lauren doesn’t dare to go outside as her dad instilled a value in her not to do so. She only leaves when it’s feasibly impossible to stay. By this point, her father has passed away and her community is reduced to ash. Having nothing left makes her feel like she can take control, yet she is still in the grasp of a society that sees women as vulnerable. At the start of her travels with Harry and Zahra, Lauren voices, “I was thinking of traveling as a man,” to which Harry replies, “That will be safer for you” (Butler 168). The belief that being a man will make one safer is a consequence of a society that has for years deemed women as docile caregivers and men as strong breadwinners. 

Appearing as a man gives Lauren an edge in her travels. She does what Micah Moreno refers to in their thesis as gender passing. As they state, “Lauren passes as male to avoid the acts of violence that she might be subject to as a female” (5). Being a woman, let alone a black woman in this society is difficult. When Butler exposes sex, pregnancy, and rape to young children within the novel, Lauren is expected to handle it as girls like her are seen as more mature for their age. So, it’s no wonder Lauren wishes to pass as a man as one way to increase her chances of survival. While Moreno discusses the concept of gender passing in their thesis, they also address the intersection of race, as, generally, passing is a concept for racial identities. Those who are lighter-skinned could pass as white, granting them more privileges. Lauren, while passing in gender, is firm in her blackness which presents its own problems. As Lauren discusses passing as a man, Zahra points out, “Mixed couples catch hell whether people think they’re gay or straight. Harry’ll piss off all the blacks and you’ll piss off all the whites” (Butler 168). This world isn’t entirely accepting of those who go against the grain. It’s a rough situation either way. So, Lauren chooses to maintain her identity while also putting on this performance; a sort of stance against the power structures of society that dictate how people are supposed to act. This is similar to how singer-songwriter Janelle Monáe “only performed in tuxedos for the first ten years of [their] career” (Rodine 154). They are unapologetic in their presentation of non-conformity but are still very present in their blackness. The performance for Janelle is a form of liberation, but for Lauren, it’s for survival. “It…felt strange to be called ‘man.’ I didn’t like it…” (Butler 200). Lauren doesn’t like having the masculine label but accepts it because otherwise, people would have different things to say about her capabilities. 

Later on, Lauren meets a man named Taylor Bankole as she travels north. She feels almost immediately smitten by him. “I like him too much already. I’ll have to be careful” (Butler 238). The moment she meets a single man on the way, she almost loses herself. Bankole possesses power over Lauren, no matter how much she believes she’s in control. There is an inherent power dynamic in the relationship due to their age and experience differences. Bankole even calls himself a child molester when Lauren reveals her age (Butler 266). Although they’re technically both legal adults and have mutual feelings, their almost forty-year age difference raises eyebrows for the reader about the true nature of their relationship. Amidst this revelation, Bankole acknowledges that “You should have a nice youngster…I should have the sense and strength to send you off…” (Butler 267). This statement showcases he wants to take responsibility for letting a relationship like this happen, but won’t as he has something to gain from it. The conversation between Lauren and Bankole when he asks her to leave the group with him denotes an air of finality as he ends with the line, “Yes. You’ll come” (Butler 273). Lauren comes to the conclusion that this is not out of disregard for her objections but rather something else. This something else is not explained. She makes an excuse not to doubt his intentions to maintain her seeming control. Bankole agrees to her proposition to start the first Earthseed community at his property because he wants to marry her and it’s easier to accomplish that if they are settled in one location. Lauren needs the assurance that he plans to do that. Bankole wants Lauren to feel like she’s the one in control, but he has the power. “Do you imagine for one minute, girl, that I would let you get away” (Butler 279). With this agreement, Bankole leaves Lauren no choice in the matter. 

The first person in the novel mentioned is Lauren’s father. The last person is Bankole; besides the group. Throughout the novel, we follow Lauren navigating her life over three years. It’s important to highlight the fact that the novel starts and ends with Lauren in relation to a man. The novel portrays Lauren as strong and independent, but at the same time, she lets men have at least some control over how she acts, from her father, to Bankole, to how men around her influence the way she presents herself. Her father convinced her not to go past the gate, she built Earthseed off of Bankole’s land, and she dressed as a man to survive better because society puts men in a real position of power and women in positions where they feel like they have power when in reality they don’t have nearly as much as the men. So, they do things to make it seem like they have that power like being in charge of a small group and guiding them to relative safety. In this world, that’s not even guaranteed. The people in charge create systems that perpetuate a cycle of harmful stereotypes that lead women not to be able to have true control over their lives without the presence of men. Lauren as a character has her own agency, but in the end, as society presents it, that will always be overshadowed by a man. 

Works Cited 

Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. 1993, ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB15997733.

Moreno, Micah. “Survival by Any Means: Race and Gender, Passing and Performance in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.” Springer eBooks, 2020, pp. 195–212. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46625-1_11.

Zoë Rodine, Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computers, and Embodied Posthumanism, MELUS, Volume 47, Issue 1, Spring 2022, Pages 154–174, https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlac018