Imagine you are the youngest from a group of 40 women who found themselves in an underground prison cell; no one knows how they got there and no one seems to know who the others were before their capture. You do not have any memory of the real world, nor the basic right of a name. I Who Have Never Known Men explores ideas like community, humanity, grief, hope, love, and the significance of time as we know it. Jacqueline Harpman’s book is a fictional story based on a philosophical perspective of what the world would be like if there were only women left in the world, without completely eliminating the previous existence and importance of men.
The cell was guarded by male guards, who would whip them if they misbehaved. Before accepting their fate, the prisoners tried to escape, talk to the guards, and when none of that worked, tried to terminate their lives with no success. If you are thinking that this is portraying men as the enemy, or evil, let me elaborate so I do not give you the wrong idea. Men are mentioned a couple of times by some of the women who had families before the incident – husbands, sons, and dads. Moreover, (spoiler alert) when they look for more people, they end up finding deceased men in a prison similar to theirs, but it is not explained if these men were guarded by women or why they were separated.
Their fate would have been the same, except that luckily when an alarm went off, they had the opportunity to escape. With the door open, the 40 women were liberated from their captivity, and with renewed hope, went to explore the grounds above them. To their disappointment, none of them recognized their surroundings, as if it were a different world. “I am not sure this is the sky above Earth. I can’t find the Great Bear, which is the only constellation I used to be able to recognize,” said Anthea, one of the main characters. The seasons did not pass like they did on Earth.
Two years passed, and seeing that there was no luck finding anyone alive, the women decided to form their own community. Harpman did a good job at making me understand what these women were going through, having to survive by using the food and other reserves from the different bunkers, losing hope little by little as they grew older.
The main character, whom everyone called “child,” was different from everyone else, always saying that she was not like the others because she had no recollection of her life before, saying, “I must be lacking certain experiences to make a person fully human.” Her curiosity leads the book to be so enriching. Seeing her question things that seem so obvious to us leads to more questions. If women are capable of living and satisfying their needs without men, why do they miss them? What is love for someone who has never been embraced by parents? Is time only important if you have people with you to spend it with? Her love for learning and courageous personality makes the reader root for her to find the answers. Other questions about their unique circumstance arise throughout the book. Why did the guards disappear? Are they actually on Earth? What had happened before? Was there a war of some sort? Were they the only humans left in the entire world? If so, would she be left alone and forgotten?
The book leaves a lot of the questions unanswered, but that is what makes it so worth reading. How much of humanity is transmitted through the world and how much is our own? The different scenes of the book gave me a new perspective of what humanity really is and how many of the things we think as normal, others might not see it as such. “Nothing was ordinary, since nothing had ever happened to me.” This scene of the book was particularly special because it applies to a lot of situations in our world today, how many times we take our “ordinary” for granted.
If you are looking for a short read before ending the year, this is a good option. Many lessons occur that I believe will vary depending on the reader’s interpretation. Overall, I give this book a solid 8/10 because of the richness of Harpman’s description and philosophical approach to different societal topics through the dystopian story of a woman looking for her humanity.
