One of my favorite series of books is the Delirium series by Lauren Oliver. It’s about a dystopian society in Portland, Maine where love is considered a disease and everyone gets a procedure at age 18 that will make them incapable of loving. The series follows Magdalena Haloway, a girl who is anticipating her 18th birthday when she can receive “The Cure”. She already has a lot of pressure on her as her mother had gone through three failed procedures before being taken to the crypts to rot. Lena feels that she must be better than her mother and be a functioning member of society by going along with the rules. However, she ends up falling in love with a boy, Alex Sheathes, and the three books of the series follow her struggle to survive while keeping her ability to love.

Oliver creates a society that seemingly doesn’t discriminate against one gender because everyone must receive the cure, but it is interesting to think about how it would benefit both genders in different ways. Lena is originally supposed to get cured, marry Brian Scharff, and have two or three children after graduating from university. Her life is all planned out by the government, but they still value her education. It almost seems like having a world without love would benefit women in the sense that they would know for certain they’d be able to receive an education. They also wouldn’t be pressured into any specific jobs or majors. The thought of that could definitely be liberating for some women.

However, having an outside force plan your whole life sounds a lot like a symbol for the patriarchy. Women in this society get to receive higher education no matter what, but their tradeoff is that they must marry someone whom they do not love or know very well to begin with. It goes along with the idea that a woman must always aspire to marriage. She should want an education and career but her end goal must be marriage. Anything she accomplishes in life will bring her that much closer to marrying a good man, which usually just means a man with money.

This society also relies on social class too heavily. Marriages are chosen based on social standing and the answers people have given during their interviews, which occur before having their procedure done. If a girl isn’t as well to do as her peers, her life won’t be seen as important in the eyes of the government. Even though she goes to college, she won’t have as good of a job and she’ll be forced to marry a man in the same social class as her. There is no hope to climb the ladder, so to speak.

The government also symbolizes the patriarchy in the sense that the cure stifles a woman’s passions. In our society, women are always told to stifle their opinions and when they are able to voice them, they can’t sound too angry. If someone can’t love, they can’t have passion and, subsequently, they can’t get too angry. There are never any protests in this society. Nothing changes or gets done because everyone is content with how they’re living. This is a stark contrast to the wilds, a place where the uncured people live, and how people there start their resistance in regular society. Lena is being interviewed before her procedure when a heard of cows come rushing into the room, a form of protest started by some of the invalids living amidst her society. In a society like this, there would be no women’s march, no political rallies to gather support, and no one to acknowledge the clear problems that are there.

On the other hand, there would be no catcalling or harassment in a society like this. There’s a strict curfew so everyone is in their homes at night. Women wouldn’t have to cross the street when they see a man coming toward them. They wouldn’t have to feel scared of every man they see simply because he’s a man.

A society like this also negatively impacts men. It maintains the dangerous stereotype that men must be these unfeeling creatures. They can’t cry or show deep emotion at the risk of emasculating themselves. They must uphold gender roles and be the masculine force, protecting their family in all ways. Most kids have both parents in this society but the man is still pressured to be the breadwinner. Lena’s aunt, who takes her in after her mother’s supposed death, is always seen either doing dishes or cooking. The reader never finds out if she has a job or not. Of course, not every woman in the society is a housewife but plenty of them end up that way.

A society like this negatively impacts both genders in all aspects of life. It maintains the worst stereotypes of our society and amplifies them so that they are made normal. Overall, neither men nor women would thrive in this society. Even though it can be jarring at times, people need change and passion.