The realists couldn't work out why the ten women hadn't ganged up to overpower their two guards, why they didn't work out they could dig their way out under the electric fence. The women were twits, one said. They should have fought back. She also felt the rabbit trapping was far more successful than you'd expect and that the book had the longest mushroom season ever! It just wasn't plausible. The willing suspenders, on the other hand, talked more about about the book in terms of metaphor, allegory and parable, though they didn't all agree on which of these the book represents, if any! Some also felt that Wood, in the opening scenes, showed the disempowering of the women, explaining why they didn't fight back.
One issue we grappled with was some vagueness in the plot. It's the story of 10 women plucked ("foolishly lured and tricked") from their normal lives and transported to a nightmarish place in the outback where they are imprisoned behind an electric fence and controlled, labour-camp style, by two boorish men, bruiser Boncer and the preening Teddy. We are not given the full background but it's clear that the women are being scapegoated for their sexuality. Some had been raped or assaulted while for others the sex had been consensual (think affair with a politician or the flight attendant in a “mile-high” situation). In all cases, though, the women are being punished to protect the man/men. As time passes, and as circumstances at the facility change, the women move from disbelief and anger, through resignation, to a sort of acceptance and an attempt to make the best of their situation.
Some members struggled with the story, with its darkness and/or with the lack of full disclosure about parts of the plot. How did the women let themselves be taken there? Who had taken them? Who were Boncer and Teddy waiting for? One member particularly hates women being presented as victims, which resulted in her disliking the book. She was frustrated by their impotence. Most of those who liked the novel, agreed that they initially felt a little uncertain, for various reasons, but on reflection found the journey worthwhile, seeing it as a provocative, absorbing story about women and power, sexuality, femininity and femaleness.
Dystopia
Is The natural way of things a dystopian novel, like, say, Margaret Atwood's The handmaid's tale? Not all were comfortable with this idea, feeling it was too near, too real, "not that much removed from our reality", to be a true dystopia. Others felt dystopia simply means a world characterised by all that is bad or negative, and that this book satisfies that.But what are Wood's targets? In some dystopian novels, they are clear - climate change, totalitarian regimes, for example - but it's more nebulous here. The novel was inspired by the idea that women are still being abused and scapegoated, but Wood's focus is not the trauma they experience, but in the way "femaleness" and "womanhood" is (mis)constructed in our society. Complicating our pinpointing of targets is that partway through we realise that guards/gaolers Boncer and Teddy are also victims: this is not a simple gender dichotomy story. It's more complex, about current social system/mores that allow powerful people (more often men) to control and manipulate the less powerful (more often women).
And what about that ending? Did it offer any hope? Some of us thought Yolanda's action at the end showing her rejection of society's power plays, and Verla's finally relinquishing her long-held beliefs and attitudes about her feminine powers, contained hope.
And two words force their way through everything in Verla, pushing through all these months, through failure and fear and degradation, fighting through this last defeat. They thrust up through Verla's centre, bursting into flower in her mouth. Two words: I refuse.
But others just hated that designer handbag scene, and the way the other women leapt unthinkingly into what they wanted to see/believe.
Characters
The book has a lot characters, and we don't get to properly know them all. However, we liked getting to know the two 19-year-olds, Yolanda (rabbiter) and Verla (mushroom gatherer), and were able to feel sympathy for them. In becoming the hunter, Yolanda took back some power for herself, a member suggested, making this book a metaphorical story of power, rather than a psychologically-focused story.We did think, though, that, psychologically, Hetty represents abused person's behaviour. We wondered about the grotesque doll the women make for her. What does its grotesqueness mean? That what she was doing represented a perverted sort of nurturing?
Landscape and nature
Landscape description and nature imagery feature throughout in the novel. One member shared a 2010 interview with Wood in which she commented on her frequent reference to birds, saying they represent flight, escape, freedom - as they do here too:Outside the cockatoos are starting up for the evening. Boncer sits, staring at Yolanda, running there leash slowly through his hands.
However, in this novel there are also hawks and crows, suggesting "prey" and "death", which is also relevant here.
Verla keeps seeing a white horse, which is her personal escape image, perhaps referencing the idea of a "knight on a white charger" as she believed her "cabinet minister" would save her.
Another member suggested that Yolanda's gradual reliance on and ultimate "return" to nature might be Wood suggesting that human survival is closely tied to a positive relationship with landscape and nature.
So, what is the "natural" way of things? There's irony in the title's suggestion that women "somehow, through the natural way of things, did it to themselves", that they lured abandonment, abduction, mistreatment. Natural? No way!
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