The role of women in Player Piano

The role of women is highly limited in Player Piano, and the few women who are highlighted prove that point.

Few women are featured in the novel, but we are first introduced to Anita, Paul's wife. The novel suggests Anita is a character who we aren't necessarily supposed to like, but she is a good example of the role of women in this highly advanced society.

Though women are limited in what they can do, Anita proves she is still ambitious. She's always pursuing Paul's advancement to Pittsburgh, and in that sense she's living her ambition through Paul, because that is the only way she can do it. Explained later in the novel, if it weren't for her marriage to Paul, and his career, she would be part of the "lower" world, of which she now resents.

Anita doesn't seem to have many friends, and she understands there is a reputation to live up to. She's stuck in the society the way it is, and she never questions it. It's almost as if she is brainwashed by the idea of the society.

Women are seen as virtually unnecessary. The high-ranking jobs are all filled by men, and the novel portrays a very hierarchal society. Even the stereotypical "jobs" a woman is supposed to have, such as cleaning, cooking and doing laundry, have all been easily replaced with machinery that can finish these jobs in seconds.

This novel is very different from the others we have read, which have been heavily weighed on feminism of some sort. Player Piano gives us an insight that we have not seen in our prior novels.