Household chores and the Bradbury blues

A domestic robot, developed by Quasar industries in the US, hoovering the house. ‘I felt that I, as a woman, could be expected to be a robot performing all duties with no feelings,’ writes Maureen Joy. Photograph: Photoshot/Getty

Reading Deborah Orr’s piece (At last, the cure for feminism: sex robots, 10 June) transported me back to the 1960s when I was a young woman with three children under five and a giddy dog. I remember washing the kitchen floor for the third time that week with a mad dog licking away my tears as I wept, not for my situation, but because I had read Raymond Bradbury’s I Sing the Body Electric and felt that I, as a woman, could be expected to be a robot performing all duties with no feelings. More than 50 years later, after a reasonably happy and successful life, I am still battling it out with the same man and still ask myself, as I’m sure he does, from time to time, “Should I stay or should I go now, if I stay there will be trouble and if I go there will be double”, or is that “If I go there will be trouble and if I stay there will be double”? Sounds like the EU referendum to me.
Maureen Joy
Sheffield

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