Negotiating patriarchal hegemony: Female agency in Christina Dalcher’s Vox

Abstract

Contemporary critics have opined that the vision of dystopian texts has come true about the present situation rather than about the future. In today’s technologically driven world, where the gulf between speculative fiction and political reality seems to have narrowed, feminist dystopian fiction has gained immense popularity. These texts address gender ideologies and issues and often use current social conditions to demonstrate the sexism inherent in patriarchal societies. This article aims to analyse the novel Vox (2018) by American writer Christina Dalcher within the framework of feminist dystopia to highlight the unbridled nature of violence used against women and the eventual emergence of the female body as the locus of self-articulation and resistance against the dystopian authority. It also demonstrates how the novel creates a narrative space within which the feminine body is transformed from a static object of representation to a potent subject of the text.