I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is an existential masterpiece. I know it will be one of those novels I continue to think about for many years to come.
Thirty-nine women and one child live in a cage monitored at all times by guards. They don’t know how they got there or what the purpose of their captivity is. The child devises a way to track time and they learn there’s no coherent schedule for when things happen— feeding, sleeping and guard shifts are basically random.
One night, as the women are about to receive their food rations, an alarm goes off and the guards flee. Luckily for the women, they left the key in the cage, and the women escape their captivity. For the first time in countless years, the women are free.
Theories
I thoroughly enjoyed over-analyzing this book. One of my favorite things about it is how much is left up for you to interpret. There are many clues given, but no explanations, so I have a few theories about what the explanation for things could be.
The women are on another planet.
The women toy around with the idea of another planet, often in an unserious manner, but I think it serves as a good explanation for their environment.
The terrain is similar to that of some places on Earth, but the scale is way off. The child ends up walking for a large majority of her lifetime and never once comes across an ocean or mountain range— it’s the same endless flat, sometimes slightly hilly landscape dotted with cabins. There’s not a single place on Earth where something like this would be possible.
There are no animals or insects anywhere on the surface and the only plants are described as scrawny and unable to produce healthy flowers or seeds.
The planet still experiences seasons like Earth, but they’re longer and significantly more mild than Earth’s— it’s typically warm with slightly cooler periods interspersed.
The child still makes an effort to keep track of time on the surface and her estimations are indicative of being on another planet.
“They asked me how long it had been from one sunset to the next: by my clock it had been just over twenty-two and a half hours. Clearly that didn’t prove a thing, because we had no idea what my heartbeat actually was.“
Let’s assume that her heartbeat is accurate. This is undeniable proof that they are on a different planet if that’s the case. An Earth day is always a full 24 hours, so a 22.5 hour day is definitive proof they’re on another planet.
How did they get to this other planet?
The bunkers are actually some kind of spacecraft.
In the final lavishly furnished bunker the child finds, she comes across many books about astronautics. This not only serves as further evidence to me that they’re on a different planet, but also as evidence that they traveled to this planet in some sort of spacecraft. It’s likely that the engineers and astronauts received better quarters as well.
All the bunkers are evenly spaced out from one another in a precise pattern and identically constructed. They are all climate controlled with large stores of food. The electric components also all remain powered for the duration of the child’s lifetime.
The women’s amnesia can also be explained as being a result of their long trip. They may have been put in a coma for the duration of their journey which would have effects on their memory.
Why are they here?
The goal is to create a new home for humanity.
In the guards’ bags on the bus, the child finds they all have the same book on gardening which indicates that the guards’ were responsible for growing food and terraforming the surface once they arrived to the planet. This would explain the pitiful plants and small trees the women find around— the guards’ may have been given resources, but were still far from botany experts.
Many of the women have hazy memories of a possible war or some sort of incredibly stressful, violent event.
‘We don’t even know if there was a war,’ said Dorothy. ‘I can recall only vague images: I see flames, people running in all directions, and I think I’m tied up and frightened. It goes on for a very long time. I’m still frightened, but there aren’t even any images any more.’
‘There’s my day-to-day life, and then a sort of panic which I’ve always been terrified of reliving. Then, I’m here, lying on a mattress and everything feels perfectly normal.’
I think in this timeline, Earth was made uninhabitable possibly due to wars or neglect of the environment or something else entirely, and they were sent to this planet to essentially start humanity over.
The women were likely test subjects and were captured to be sent to this planet. Somehow they have the ability to survive on the surface without masks while the guards do not.
Over the years, the corpses in the bunkers had mummified; these had become skeletons, dressed in the all-too-familiar uniform, equipped with their weapons and strange masks which hid their facial bones.
If their survival ability is due to a genetic factor, this would explain why the women can’t find any immediate similarities with one another.
Speaking of genetics:
Frances is the child’s mother.
Frances is the woman the child throws herself at to be comforted by in the beginning of the book. She’s overwhelmed with a feeling of needing to be held by her. Maybe there’s some sort of instinctual maternal bond she feels towards her.
Later, it’s noted that Frances may have been pregnant when she arrived.
“Frances had been married with two children, Paul and Mary. When the disaster struck, she’d been planning to have a third, and, because her memories were so terribly hazy, she didn’t know whether she’d been pregnant and lost the baby or had simply intended to have another child.“
Not long after that, Anthea insists she must have had a miscarriage if she were pregnant. But, I’m not so sure about that.
The women don’t understand why the child is the only child in the group of the 40 of them— they believe it must have been some sort of mix up. Among the many other groups they find over the years, none of them contain children, leading to the assumption that the child must have been a mix up. But it’s more likely that the guards knew Frances was pregnant, let her give birth, and included the child in their group intentionally knowing that she would have no memory of any of this anyway.
None of the women remember much of anything about the events leading up to or the first few years after being put in the cages thinking they must have been drugged. By the time they start to form memories again, the child is a toddler. It’s entirely possible that Frances was pregnant and gave birth during this time.
The child’s writing is eventually found.
I like this the most as the explanation for how we’re able to read the child’s writings. Someone eventually finds her writing and publishes it for us to read. Which means either that there were others that survived when the alarms went off, or others eventually went to explore and inhabit the planet. So in a way, the story ultimately has a happy ending if that’s how you choose to think about it.
I love that the book is intentionally vague which is not necessarily something I’d be super thrilled about normally. Just like the narrator, we desperately want to know what this world is— if it’s even Earth. How they got there. What the point of it all was. We as humans, curious about everything, want to find meaning in things— the why, the how. Even though we can never have all the answers, we still try to learn as much as we can. Which brings me to my final theory:
The book is meant to be primarily metaphorical.
This one is probably an unsatisfying answer to those who want concrete answers, but to me it feels like the best way to understand the book. It’s not really a story that’s meant to be totally coherently understood— you’re not supposed to be able to 100% dissect the story.
Such a big theme in the book is the exploration of what it fundamentally means to be human. I think that’s a big reason why there’s so many different ways to interpret the story— we all have meanings personal to us.
The child was raised in an environment completely antithetical to a healthy and happy upbringing. She was dehumanized by the guards and othered by the women. They never even bothered to give her a name— she’s only ever referred to and acknowledged as “the child”. And yet, despite all her challenges, she still has curiosity. She wants to critically engage with the world around her. She wants answers. She wants to explore. She has hope— very often more than the other women who know what life used to be like. Even before she dies, she has hope that others will find her writing one day.
I Who Have Never Known Men is a fantastic story about hope, humanity, curiosity and persistence. Do you agree or disagree with my explanations? What are your theories?
