Preying on the Working Mother:

Michael Crichton's Real Villain

Ellen Arnold

What's as lethal as a Crichton virus? As deadly

as a Jurassic dinosaur? More threatening than a giant
ape from the Congo? In Michael Crichton's 2003
novel, Prey, it's the most frightening monster of them
all- it's Mommy, Mommy with a job!
On the surface, Prey is about the future threat
posed by nanotechnology. But the true danger, the
novel encourages us to believe, is already here: the
ambitious, selfish working mother. As a bestselling
novelist, Crichton has a lucrative ability to capitalize
on whatever the current zeitgeist might be, and Prey
taps into a cultural undercurrent of anxiety about
working mothers that runs swift and deep. Susan

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 Arnold
Douglas and Meredith Michaels, in their 2004 book
The Mommy Myth, describe a media trend during the
last decade that has portrayed the working mother as
"a selfish careerist who neglected her kids, was too
stressed out when she was with them and deserved
whatever guilt she felt" (204). While feminists
continue to call for the sharing of equal responsibility
between parents, family-friendly corporate policies,
tax subsidies to lessen economic pressures on
families, and most of all "flexible, affordable, locally
available, high-quality ... day care" (Warner 48),
mainstream media consistently blame women
themselves for the crushing choices that they must
make every day between career and family. In Prey,
Michael Crichton dramatizes the terrible results of
one mother's choice to dedicate herself to her career
rather than to her family, portraying her as the villain
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when things go terribly wrong. His Julia Forman is
the embodiment of the demonized working mother
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described in The Mommy Myth: driven by ambition,
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neglectful of her family, sometimes riddled with guilt,
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and above all a danger to society as we know it.
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In the first quarter of the novel, significantly
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to care for the kids while his wife Julia obsesses over
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her career in medical technology. For a novel that is
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140 Arnold 141
supposed to be about the dangers of combining
corporate greed with emerging technology, the book
spends a disproportionate amount of time on the
Forman family dynamics, so much so that the reader
at first might believe that this - Julia and Jack's
unconventional family arrangement - is the subject of
the book. Indeed, the two plots overlap in a way that
is surely not coincidental or haphazard. Julia's
professional ambition leads her both to neglect her
family and to develop a malevolent swarm of
nanoparticles that seems poised to wipe out
humanity, and the two results are portrayed as
equally horrendous. In Crichton's novel, not only
does the working mother threaten domestic harmony
and traditional gender roles, but she just might
jeopardize the entire human race as well.
Some might argue that the part of Crichton's
thriller that deals with the Forman family portrays an
equal opportunity-style reversal of roles. After all,
Julia is the smart, successful breadwinner, and Jack is
a self-named "house-husband" who suffers from a
malaise akin to that identified by Betty Friedan in
American housewives of the 1950s and 60s. In fact,
much of the humor in the book comes from Jack's
ridiculous assumption of traditional motherly roles
and the angst that comes along with them. He wears
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Arnold
an apron and reads Redbook magazine. He stands in
front of the mirror and suffers what many stay-at-
home mothers will recognize as an identity crisis, the
result of too much time spent changing diapers and
reading bedtime stories, too little time spent with
other adults: "I went in the bathroom, stripped off
my T-shirt, and stared at myself in the mirror," he
says. "I was startled to see how soft I looked around
the gut. I hadn't realized. Of course I was forty, and
the fact was, I hadn't been exercising as much lately.
Not because I was depressed. I was busy with the
kids, and tired a lot of the time. I just didn't feel like
exercising, that was all" (106). Jack, it seems, like
many other stay-at-home moms before him, is
suffering from "the problem that has no name"
(Fried an 15-32), that formless, oppressive sense of
having lost oneself while involved in the care of
others.
Jack is discovering what many stay-at-home
mothers have learned before him: being a full-time
parent is hard work, thankless, frustrating, and often
unfulfilling. In an excerpt from her 2005 book, Perfect
Madness, Judith Warner reports that despite American
mainstream society's idealization of motherhood,
many full-time mothers find the experience
"incredibly stressful," and as many as 30% of mothers
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Arnold 143
with young children suffer from depression (44). Jack
Forman, looking at his chubby figure in the bathroom
mirror, might empathize. His feelings of self-doubt
and despair seem directly related to the fact that he is
out of a job and relegated to housework and
childcare. It may seem obvious, but it's worth
pointing out that work can be very good for a person.
As Kathryn Keller discusses in her 1994 analysis,
Mothers and Work in PopularMagazines, "[B]yworking,
women experience autonomy, independence, and
self-worth. These are benefits not easily relinquished"
(147).
So, on one level, Crichton's novel inverts
traditional gender roles and in this way pays a degree
of lip service to something that feminists have been
arguing for decades and still argue: a necessary
ingredient for true equality of gender roles is for men
to take on more responsibility for caring for children
and home. However, this is a novel that toys with
gender role reversal only to demonstrate that
traditional gender roles should never be subverted.
In fact, the novel dramatizes the negative
consequences that result when Mom becomes a career
woman.
One of the elements of the narrative supporting
this interpretation is the point of view. The story is
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 Arnold 144
told solely through Jack's eyes, so as we are
encouraged to identify with Jack's problems, readers
are simultaneously discouraged from identifying
with, sympathizing with, or understanding Julia's
character. Like Jack, we are only confused and
angered by her. An argument between Jack and Julia
early in the book explores the dynamic that has
developed between them as a result of Julia's
demanding work schedule. Here, Jack confronts her
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with the reality of her lack of involvement in the
family: "When are you here? When was the last time
you made it for dinner, Julia? Not last night, not the
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., night before, not the night before that. Not all week,
Julia. You are not here" (86). Julia's answer sounds
like the self-description of the typical American
working mother, overworked, wracked by guilt, tom
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in too many different directions: "I'm a good
mother," she says, "and I balance a very demanding
job, a very demanding job, and the needs of my
family. And I get absolutely no help from you" (86).
However, Crichton's Julia is lying, and the reader
knows it. She has made no attempt to balance family
and work, and she gets plenty of help from her
husband - so the fact that she uses the very words of
so many real women has the effect of questioning the
legitimacy of their complaints. Crichton's point of
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Arnold 145
view is straightforward first-person, no irony, no
distance between the author and the narrator. Thus
when Jack complains about Julia's absence, the reader
is presumably expected to feel that he is right and she
is wrong.
The novel also subscribes to a shameless double-
standard: Julia is wrong for working, but when Jack
goes back to work he becomes the hero. In the second
part of the book, Jack is hired by Julia's company to
try to salvage the project from disaster. Time and
again after Jack joins the team, he saves the day. On
his first day, he is attacked by a rogue swarm of nano-
particles while investigating a rabbit that they have
killed. Although he is almost killed by the encounter,
less than two hours later, he is planning a mission to
spray the swarm so they can be tracked at night. As a
result of this mission, two of his original team of four
die, and Jack and the other two are trapped in two
cars. Jack finally saves himself and rescues the other
two, though the odds seem hopeless and none of the
other people watching will lift a finger to help.
As for Julia, if she represents the result of the
fight for equal roles for women at home and at work,
she surely demonstrates failure. She is a failure as a
wife and mother, and ultimately she fails at her work
as well. Though there are other women who work in
Arnold 146
the novel, and there are other mothers, Julia is the
only mother who also works outside the home in the
novel. Mae Chang, for instance, is a single, childless
scientist who later works with Jack to correct Julia's
mistakes. Ellen is Jack's sister, a psychologist who
has never married. Mary Morse is a Ph.D. student in
French history and a young mother whom Jack
imagines "studying, bouncing the baby, with a book
open on her lap" (120). What makes Julia different
from and more culpable than Mae, Mary, or Ellen is
that she attempts to straddle the worlds of family and
work. Unlike Mae or Ellen, she has chosen to have a
family. Unlike Mary, she has also chosen to dedicate
long hours solely to her work (not tending to the
children at the same time, as if that would be
possible). So Julia is the working mother, and she is a
frightening paradigm. From the time the book opens,
Julia is neither a loving mother nor a caring wife. She
is cold and distant with her husband. What's worse,
she borders on being abusive toward her children,
slapping baby Amanda repeatedly when she won't lie
still for a diaper change. It's also clear that Julia has
not always been this way. Jack reminisces about
times when Julia worked less, when their family was
more traditional and contented. In one scene, he
notices that the family photographs of happier times
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Arnold 147
are dusty and neglected; in another he remembers a
family project of planting a now-diseased tree outside
in the yard: in both cases he contrasts happier days
with the current discontent of their family. He
attributes the change to Julia's promotion to vice
president, increased responsibilities and longer hours
at work.
Because Julia cannot effectively juggle her home
life and her professional ambition, not only does she
neglect and even abuse her family, but she make ill-
advised decisions at work, with dreadful
consequences. The novel hints at the dark results of
Julia's professional/personal imbalance from early on,
mostly through foreshadowing and symbolism. For
instance, an early description of Julia portrays her as a
woman being consumed by something dark and
sinister:
[A]s I watcbed, her lips turned dark red, and
then black. She didn't seem to notice. The
blackness flowed away from her mouth
across her cheeks and over her lower face,
and onto her neck. I held my breath. I felt
great danger. The blackness now flowed in a
sheet down her body until she was entirely
covered, as if with a cloak. Only the upper
half of her face remained exposed. Her

Arnold 148
features were composed; in fact she seemed
oblivious, just staring into space, dark lips
silently moving. (82)
Later, Jack and the reader discover that the black
cloak covering Julia is the predatory nano-swarm,
Julia's experiment gone horribly out of control.
Because Julia and the company that she works for
have been desperate to discover a way to make the
nanoparticles self-sustaining and capable of learning,
reproducing, and evolving, they have failed to take
proper precautions to control the swarm. In essence,
Jack eventually learns, Julia has been involved in a
Frankenstein-like experiment to create life, all because
of the recognition and money that will result. Thus,
the blackness that covers her body and obscures
Julia's true self in this "black cloak" scene represents
immoral and improper passions - egotism, selfish
ambition, and failure to consider the consequences.
Julia's infection by the swarm - her professional
, drive - manifests itself in ways that suggest the
novel's deep uneasiness with female sexuality. As
Julia's infestation develops, Crichton's descriptions of
her focus more and more on her sexuality. Jack
notices as her personality changes, the lines of her
body become more defined; she exudes a sexual
power he has never noticed in her before. He
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Arnold 149
describes her body as "chiseled," "tight," "like a high-
fashion model" (83-84). However, Jack does not find
himself attracted to her more strongly. Rather,
descriptions of her highly sexualized body are more
often juxtaposed against scenes involving anger, fear,
anxiety, or disgust. For example, the frightening
description of Julia's envelopment in the black cloak
occurs in the middle of Jack's jealous fantasy about
his wife and another man: he imagines "Julia's thigh,
over another man's leg. Julia's back arched. Julia
breathing heavily, her muscles tensed" (81). Next,
Jack "dreams" Julia is undressing in front of him,
slowly unbuttoning her blouse. It is then that she
reveals the blackness covering her body. The black
cloak (which, as we've seen, is a result of her
egotistical professional drive) transforms Jack's desire
into fear, even horror: "Watching her," Jack says, "I
felt a chill that ran deep into my bones" (82).
In a similar way, Julia's choice to dedicate herself
to her career changes her into a sexual predator,
perhaps the most disturbing consequence portrayed
by Crichton. Once the swarm fully controls Julia, it
seeks to reproduce itself through a horror-movie
version of human sexuality. Julia kisses her victims,
allowing some of the swarm to pass from her body to
theirs. In a scene that conflates desire and fear, sex
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Arnold
and violence, Jack watches a security videotape of
Julia forcing herself on one of his colleague~:
Julia walked up to Charley, and kissed him
full and long on the lips. Charley struggled,
tried to wrench away... .Julia continued to
kiss him. Then she stepped away, and as she
did I saw a river of black between her mouth
and Charley's Julia wiped her lips, and
smiled. Charley sagged, dropped to the
ground. He appeared dazed. A black cloud
came out of his mouth, and swirled around
his head. (439-40)
Julia has become the ultimate femme fatale. Her
sexuality is synonymous with fear, violence, death.
When she begins to pursue Jack next, aggressively
demanding "just a little smooch...come on, it won't
kill you" (444),Jack understandably runs for his life.
At the end of the novel, Jack philosophizes about
the sheer ignorance and breathtaking egotism that led
Julia and her colleagues to engage in their risky
experimentation. "They didn't understand what they
were doing," he says, echoing a now-trite warning
about the tragedy that can result when technology,
ambition, and limited knowledge collide (502).
Underneath the science fiction lesson is a moral about
social roles. Crichton purposely places his science
150 Arnold 151
fiction thriller within a novel about a mother who
works too much, a father who has to pick up the
slack, and a home that is fractured as a result. Within
the larger context of a novel that begins by pointing
out Julia's failures as a mother and wife, Crichton's
description of Julia being covered by the black cloak
becomes social commentary. In this context, the black
swarm represents Julia's particular professional
ambition, her choice to work, and the point becomes
this one: a mother who works eventually ceases to be
a mother, a woman, or even a person at all. She will
become incapable of separating herself from her
work; she will become her work. In Crichton's novel
. a working mother is a bad mother precisely because
she is so consumed by her work that she becomes
incapable of emotion and human interaction,
sacrificing herself and her family to the ambitions that
motivate her.
In the last part of the novel, Crichton reveals that
the person whom Jack and the reader have believed
to be Julia is really the swarm of nano-particles, which
has learned to exist parasitically on a human host,
mimicking the host's appearance and controlling her
behavior while the actual person within it shrivels
and perishes, covered and dominated by it. When
Jack learns how to temporarily draw the swarm of
 ~; ,; ~-~--=. -.=.
Arnold 152
nano-particles off of Julia's body, he finds himself
faced with" a pale cadaverous form," the real Julia:
Julia's eyes were sunk deep in her cheeks.
Her mouth was thin and cracked, her skin
translucent. Her hair was colorless, brittle.
Her collarbones protruded from her bony
neck. She looked like she was dying of
cancer. Her mouth worked "Jack...the
children." (469)
Again, reading the swarm as representative of Julia's
improper professional drive is revealing. Once that
swarm is removed, Julia can express her proper,
motherly emotions, her overriding concern for her
children, but of course she is at this point beyond
hope. She has been eaten alive by her career and she
must die for her sins.
Preyis very much product and producer, both
effect of and contributing cause to a culture that
believes good mothering and working are mutually
exclusive. As any popular novelist knows, the best
way to sell books is to feed the public what they will
be comfortable swallowing. In the same way that
Crichton's Jurassic dinosaurs represented fear of
genetic tinkering in the 90s, the career-driven Julia in
Prey echoes mainstream America's simultaneous
vilification of working mothers and deification of
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Arnold 153
women who choose to dedicate themselves to their
children and their homes. Over and over women are
told that they are not real women if they choose to
work instead of or even along with being mothers. To
take an example from the tabloids, the recent break-
up of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt was attributed by
many to Aniston's dedication to her career: "He
wanted a baby, but she - the selfish, unnatural,
unfeminine creature - refused," says Rebecca Traister
I in Salon.com(qtd. in "Motherhood" 17). At the other
end of the spectrum, women are expected to believe
I
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that motherhood is the holy grail, the ultimate
achievement for them as women, and that to be good
mothers they must devote themselves solely to their
f families. Consider a cover for a March 2004 issue of
I
Time, which pictures an angelic two-year-old clinging
to his mother and gazing up at her reverentially as
her hand cradles his head. The only parts of the
woman pictured are her nurturing hand and a sliver
of her figure. It is her relationship to the child that is
important, not her as an individual. Mother and child
. are both dressed in white. Inside, an eight-page
article claims that a growing number of professional
women now opt to stay home with their children:
"Caught between the pressures of the workplace and
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the demands of being a mom, more women are can only be accomplished if half of the humans
sticking with the kids" (Wallis 51). concerned are denied equality.
In his introduction to Prey, Michael Crichton
describes the tendency of the universe toward
"restless and perpetual change, as inexorable and Works Cited
unstoppable as the waves and tides" (xii). Then he
Crichton, Michael. ~. New York: Avon Books, 2003.
uses this inevitable change as an argument for
Douglas, Susan J. and Meredith W. Michaels. The Mommy Myth: The
adopting a conservative attitude toward our place in Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women. New
York: Free Press, 2004.
the cosmos. In effect, his argument serves as a
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 10thAnniversary Ed. New York:
statement of the moral lesson of his book: "It is...a Norton, 1974.

powerful argument for caution, and for adopting a Keller, Kathryn. "Chapter 6: Women's Magazines and the Changing Family
Structure." Mothers and Work in Popular Magazines. Westport, cr:
tentative attitude toward all we believe and all we Greenwood Press, 1994. 147-64.
do" (xiii). Though Crichton's moral appears within "Motherhood: Did Jen Do Something Wrong?" The Week 28 January 2005: 17.
Wallis,Oaudia. 'The Case for Staying Home: Why More Young Moms are
the context of a futuristic science fiction novel about Opting out of the Rat Race." ~ 22 Mar 2004: 51-59.
Warner, Judith. "Mommy Madness." Newsweek 21 February 2005: 42-49.
the dangers of technological experimentation, it is
also a statement of the political values that underlie
the novel. This is a novel that, above all, argues for
prudence, tentativeness, and conservation of the
values of the past. Paradoxes such as this one echo
our society's schizophrenic attitude toward working
mothers. Preyis a novel set in the future that yearns
for the past, a novel about change that argues for
caution, a novel in which a mother who works is the
villain, but a father who returns to work is the hero.
Ultimately, it is a novel that claims to be concerned
with the well-being of humanity yet argues that this