LITR 5439 Literary &
Historical Utopias
complete Looking Backward
7.6 honor motive x profit motive
12.29 extended family metaphor
http://what-when-how.com/social-sciences/leisure-social-science/
one reason the book is dull is its bourgeois desire to have everything in one’s own home, which prevents one from achieving chronotopes of the road
11.38 What a paradise for womankind
Sound of common sense, ch. 12
13.19
[interesting for implications of progress and dissent]
Sf doesn’t age well—telephone, annunciator
Preview Book of Acts > nation
Christian Socialism
Cf. Christian Humanism
[16.12]
"That would depend," I replied, "on
whether an angel came to support you with
her sympathy
19.11 checking the accumulation of riches
Bellamy from family of ministers, Dr. Leete as sermonizing, arguing morally +
application
Ctrl F “simpl”
Defense of More & Bellamy: tediousness of explicating whole world demonstrates
challenges of utopian fiction
21.14 the pleasures and inspirations of a refined social life
Popularization of economics, tedious but readable
Cf. Ian on how
Assignments for Herland
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935--lived from Civil War to New Deal
niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
--most familiar to recent English / Women's Studies majors as author of feminist classic The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Mostly self-employed and self-publishing sociologist / economist / social reformer concerned with women's issues
Many publications on women's economics:
Women and Economics (1898). The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903)
Herland first appeared in 1915 in Perkins Gilman's magazine The Forerunner, 1909-1916
How much is Herland about the men who visit it? What are their assumptions about women and civilization, etc.?
Why does the men's characterization seem stronger than the women's (< male narrator)
What conventions of utopian fiction continue?
("conventions" here means formulas, standard or stock elements)
utopia as novel?
Literature concerns conflict: How make perfect world interesting?
5 coach metaphor
*A literary feature common to utopias is the substitution of dialogue (and its contest of ideas) for action.
61 the simplest possible plan [cf Columbus's use of superlatives]
80 so perfectly rendered
Chapter 7
"It is after you have mustered your industrial army into service," I said, "that I should expect the chief difficulty to arise, for there its analogy with a military army must cease.
End of chapter 15
I sat up in my room that night reading "Penthesilia" till it grew gray in the east, and did not lay it down till I had finished it. And yet let no admirer of the great romancer of the twentieth century resent my saying that at the first reading what most impressed me was not so much what was in the book as what was left out of it. The story-writers of my day would have deemed the making of bricks without straw a light task compared with the construction of a romance from which should be excluded all effects drawn from the contrasts of wealth and poverty, education and ignorance, coarseness and refinement, high and low, all motives drawn from social pride and ambition, the desire of being richer or the fear of being poorer, together with sordid anxieties of any sort for one's self or others; a romance in which there should, indeed, be love galore, but love unfretted by artificial barriers created by differences of station or possessions, owning no other law but that of the heart. The reading of "Penthesilia" was of more value than almost any amount of explanation would have been in giving me something like a general impression of the social aspect of the twentieth century. The information Dr. Leete had imparted was indeed extensive as to facts, but they had affected my mind as so many separate impressions, which I had as yet succeeded but imperfectly in making cohere. Berrian put them together for me in a picture.
millennialism in Looking Backward & Herland
2d. How essential is “millennialism” (apocalyptic or end-time narrative) to the utopian narrative?
Define "millennialism?"
1. A thousand years . . . .
Looking Backward
1 so prodigious a material and moral transformation
ch. 4
"Only a century has passed," [Dr. Leete] answered, "but many a millennium in the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary."
2nd meaning: "millennium" can mean refer spec. to the "thousand-year reign" following the Second Coming, or more broadly as a synonym for "apocalypse," "end-times," prophecy, etc.
ch. 19
"That is the most astounding thing you have yet told me," I exclaimed. "If lying has gone out of fashion, this is indeed the 'new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,' which the prophet foretold." [Revelation 21.1]
"Such is, in fact, the belief of some persons nowadays," was the doctor's answer. "They hold that we have entered upon the millennium,
Literary objective 2d. How essential is “millennialism” (apocalyptic or end-time narrative) to the utopian narrative?
Millennium or apocalypse can take many forms, but very frequently involved in utopian stories
Why?
Millennium usually implies a large-scale change--everything changes at once--
Revelation: "New Heaven and New Earth"
Looking Backward: less violent change, but look for moments where Dr. Leete tries to explain how or why things changed
How convincing? What possible suspicions?
What are the reader's options?
Looking Backward published 1888
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species 1859
Scopes Monkey Trial 1925 ( > Inherit the Wind)
Chapter 5
"As no such thing as the labor question is known nowadays," replied Dr. Leete, "and there is no way in which it could arise, I suppose we may claim to have solved it. Society would indeed have fully deserved being devoured if it had failed to answer a riddle so entirely simple. In fact, to speak by the book, it was not necessary for society to solve the riddle at all. It may be said to have solved itself. The solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which could not have terminated otherwise. All that society had to do was to recognize and cooperate with that evolution, when its tendency had become unmistakable."
"Such a stupendous change as you describe," said I, "did not, of course, take place without great bloodshed and terrible convulsions."
"On the contrary," replied Dr. Leete, "there was absolutely no violence. . . . "
Herland, ch. 5
They made a brave fight for their existence, but no nation can stand up against what the steamship companies call "an act of God." While the whole fighting force was doing its best to defend their mountain pathway, there occurred a volcanic outburst, with some local tremors, and the result was the complete filling up of the pass—their only outlet. Instead of a passage, a new ridge, sheer and high, stood between them and the sea; they were walled in, and beneath that wall lay their whole little army. Very few men were left alive . . . .
For five or ten years they worked together, growing stronger and wiser and more and more mutually attached, and then the miracle happened—one of these young women bore a child. Of course they all thought there must be a man somewhere, but none was found. Then they decided it must be a direct gift from the gods, and placed the proud mother in the Temple of Maaia—their Goddess of Motherhood—under strict watch. And there, as years passed, this wonder-woman bore child after child, five of them—all girls.
"Millennialism" in both Looking Backward & Herland
2c. How does the introduction of “millennialism” (end-time or apocalyptic narrative) transform the plot of the utopian narrative?
Herland creation story depends on violent apocalyptic narrative
Looking Backward depends on an alternative "post-millennial" millennialism that is a tradition in liberal American Christianity--less about Judgment Day, more about establishment or fulfillment of Kingdom of God on Earth, America as "New Jerusalem" (Brook Farm, the Transcendentalist Utopia, started with similar theories by Unitarian ministers.)
Northrop Frye, "Varieties of Literary Utopias." Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel (Cambridge: Riverside, 1966). 25-49.
27 The symbol of conscious design in society is the city. . . . The utopia is primarily a vision of the orderly city and of a city-dominated society.