Octavia Butler’s Critique of Religious Patriarchy and Sexual Violence in Dawn

By Courtney O’Banion Smith.

In her book Dawn, Octavia E. Butler scrutinizes issues of patriarchy and gender through the protagonist, Lilith. The Oankali—a terrifying, biotechnologically superior alien species—all but force this African American woman to become the thankless savior of humanity. A self-proclaimed feminist, Butler’s fiction often features Black women as strong, complicated heroes through which she challenges expected gender roles and confronts traditional religious beliefs. Through her use of religiously significant names and Lilith’s experience of two attempted rapes, Butler challenges heteronormative patriarchal expectations held by evangelical Christian traditions, showing how they harm us all.

Paul Titus, an African American man the Oankali raised from a teen boy, is the first human Lilith meets. His name alludes to Paul of the Bible and Paul’s protege, Titus. In the New Testament, Paul’s letter to Titus relays instructions regarding how men, women, and enslaved people who believe in Jesus Christ should act. Paul writes that women should be taught to “love,…to be…pure,…kind, and to be subject to their husbands” (Titus 2:4-5). At first, Paul Titus is “hospitable” to Lilith as Paul says men should be, even offering her some food (Titus 1:8). As they eat, Lilith rejects Paul Titus’s request to stay with him and reaffirms she wants to return to Earth. At her refusal, he reaches the limits of his Pauline hospitality and puts down his pie, which he never even offered to share.

Although Paul informs Titus in his letter that men should be “temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance,” Paul Titus exhibits those qualities less and less the more he realizes Lilith does not want to have sex or to stay with him on the Oankali ship (Titus 2:2). Lilith becomes proportionally more afraid of Paul Titus as he becomes angrier at her repeated rejections. In desperation, Lilith invokes Paul Titus’s mother, equating herself to a woman he loves, hoping to stop him, but now enraged, he hits her instead. The expectations implied by his name, the Oankali’s suggestions that he may have sex with Lilith, and their suggestions that Lilith may stay with him set Paul Titus up for a disappointment so great, he loses control and any trace of Pauline qualities.

“They said I could do it with you. They said you could stay here if you wanted to. And you had to go and mess it up!” He kicked her hard.

Ironically, Paul Titus warns Lilith that other men on Earth will be like “cavemen” and will physically and sexually abuse her. However, when she refuses to stay, he behaves like the men of his warning and even blames her for it. Although the Oankali permit Lilith to reject the only man she’s seen, she suffers at his hands for seemingly not behaving per Paul’s instructions that literal interpretations of his letters typical of conservative Christian communities require of men and women. As Jill E. Marshall explains, Paul did “not view marriage as an egalitarian relationship. Rather, he [wanted] wives to be subject to husbands, thereby creating a hierarchical relationship between husbands and wives.” While Nikanj, Lilith’s third-gendered Oankali mate, heals her broken arm, she points out that Paul Titus “did what [the Oankali] set him up to do.” Lilith recognizes Paul Titus’s victimization, and she blames the Oankali as much as she blames Paul Titus. Thus, Butler reveals how everyone suffers under the heteronormative patriarchal expectations evangelical Christians argue are Biblical and therefore preferred per Paul’s letters.

Patriarchy asserts itself again despite Lilith’s role as the leader of all surviving humans. Later, a group of men try to take a different woman named Allison by force because it’s Allison’s “duty to get together with someone,” as Jean, another woman in the group, declares. With her Oankali-enhanced strength, Lilith intercepts the attempted rape, breaking the arm of one of the men. Lilith tells the group that “Nobody…has the right to the use of anybody else’s body.” Paul Titus’s assault primes Lilith to respond violently. Butler flips gender tropes that only men can be strong and perpetuate patriarchy by giving Lilith physical superiority (to a superhuman level, which the entire group sees for the first time here) and using Jean, a female character, to insinuate that a woman’s duty supersedes consent. Lilith’s preternatural strength aids her in protecting Allison and establishing order through overpowering the men. By turning these tropes on their head and showing the ways lived patriarchy plays out, Butler reminds us that ideas about men and women are not monoliths and women often champion the ideas of patriarchy. Butler flips gender roles here, subverting readers’ expectations and emphasizing the damage heteronormative patriarchy perpetuates for us all.

Like Paul Titus, Lilith’s name is also an ironic religious allusion. According to ancient Jewish literature, Lilith was the first woman God created to be Adam’s wife. Lilith saw herself as Adam’s equal, but due to the power struggle that ensued, she left the garden and refused to return. Then, God created Eve to replace her. Butler rejects and revises Eve’s story by using the name Lilith for Dawn’s protagonist. Whereas Eve is the submissive mother of humanity in the Bible, Butler redeems willful, independent Lilith as the mother of a hybrid-humanity who bears numerous Oankali-human children in the Xenogenesis trilogy.

Butler amplifies the harmful limitations of conservative Christianity’s assumptions of gender. Against the backdrop of the Oankali’s power and manipulation, Butler uses Lilith to embody the reversal of traditional gender stereotypes. These reversals show what these assumptions promise men and require of women, which ultimately harms them both. As Aparajita Nanda asserts, “Butler queries and challenges dogmatic adherence to patriarchal Christianity [and] wrestles with religion as an authoritarian doctrine of oppression.” Butler’s use of ironic religious names and New Testament allusions invite a critique of the ways conservative views of Christianity perpetuate harmful power structures. As Nanda confirms, Butler creates a “lens to revisualize and reconfigure a world view,” so we might choose a different way.

Courtney O’Banion Smith has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing-Poetry from Texas State University-San Marcos and a Master of Arts in Theopoetics and Writing from Bethany Theological Seminary. A writer, educator, and neurodivergent parent to neurodiverse children, she lives, writes, and teaches in Houston, Texas.