LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Midterm Submission 2005

Matt Mayo

Objectives Discussed:  3e & 3d.

06-15-05

Family Ties

In a utopian society, human beings work together for the common good. Commonality is the driving force behind utopian thought, as differences, especially wealth, are eliminated to foster equality. The English form of the word utopia originated from Utopia, Sir Thomas More’s 1516 text, which articulated ideas to promote positive social change in16^th century England. Hence, Utopian literature is commonly called “a Literature of ideas.” This Literature allows readers to experience a better world vicariously, and consequently, compare the organizational differences within the utopian society to their own.

            Utopian thought is absolutely contrary to Western laissez faire capitalistic culture. More, although predating the capitalist economic philosophy by several hundred years, presciently voices this creed in Utopia, where the use of money has been abandoned: “the desire of money with the use thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away” (More, 144). Utopian thought reasons that the elimination of money and property will eradicate greed, the root of society’s ills. Utopian society values labor over capital, cooperation over competition, and enough people over more people. The traveler Hythloday recalls, “they be all thereof partners equally, and therefore, can no man be poor or needy” (84). The elimination of difference, and the fostering of total equality are essential components in the definition of utopia.

Utopias value community property over private. This mandate effectively eliminates the traditional Western nuclear family. The utopian village raises the children, and normally, the utopian powers that be oversee the child’s development through adolescence, up into their entry into the work force. Some utopian societies separate children from their biological parents, and place them in the hands of those more qualified to properly raise and educate them. Although the narrative representatives, or powers that be, of these utopian societies could list many valid reasons for the practice of community ownership of children, it can be argued that this deconstruction of the nuclear family upsets basic the sensibilities of most Americans. After all, a hallmark of American ideology is ‘family values,’ meaning essentially the preservation of the nuclear familial unit. How important are individual moments, especially those that occur between parent and child, in life? Counter to utopian idealism, is one’s babe to be cherished and valued like a secretly stowed glimmering diamond? Or are private homes counterproductive to society and the art of people making, creating legions of ignorant monsters destined for the penal system?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland depicts three young male adventures, Vandyck, Jeff and Terry, who set out to discover a fabled society of women.  The young men are successful in this quest, and are subsequently educated on the ways of Herland through knowledgeable guides. The guide figure, serving much as a tour guide, is another common feature of utopian literature. Being immersed in all aspects of the society, as is the lucid Dr. Leete in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, the guide is immersed in the utopian culture, and usually carries on dialogue with the foreigner, revealing differences between the utopian and normative societal ideals, which are being critiqued. These explanations sometimes seem overly optimistic, and seem to gloss over inequities and hidden problems that certainly must exist somewhere in the society. As Terry in Herland often grumbled, “There must be men here somewhere.” Apart from the obvious, this also could suggest that there seems to be some unpleasantness under the veneer of contentment in depictions of utopian society.

In Herland, apart from the fact that there literally are no men about, ideas regarding familial structure are placed in opposition to the traditional American nuclear family unit. Once again, although many years before the United States, the idea is proposed in More’s Utopia. Hythloday states, “So the whole island is as it were one family or household” (84). In Herland, Vandyck reflects positively upon this distinction, “The big difference was that whereas our children grow up in private homes and families, with every effort made to protect and seclude them from a dangerous world, here they grew up in a wide friendly world, and knew it for theirs, from the first” (101). A contradicting term in this statement is theirs, it is theirs, but Herland is not theirs, in the sense of mine. In a utopia, everything in life should proceed congenially and expectedly, with no danger, adventure or surprise, and no incessant personal notions of vanity, or parenthood, shall upset this orderly procession.  

The female tutors of Herland generally gloss over any malcontents within the society, dubbing them insane. Not surprisingly, these undesirables are also forbidden to have children of their own. Vandyck’s tutor Somel states that, “we each have a million children to love and serve-our children” (Gilman, 71). The women of Herland give birth via parthenogenesis, conception without copulation, and are dedicated to the notion of people making. Vandyck observes: “very early they recognized the need of improvement as well as of mere repetition, and devoted their combined intelligence to that problem- how to make the best kind of people” (59). Soon after birth, children are taken from their biological mothers, and given over to the state, which subsequently raises and educates them to adulthood. This is presented as an entirely positive operation, with most girls eventually assuming the occupation they most desire.

Historical utopian societies seem to always fail. By adopting alternate familial structures from mainstream American culture, they separate themselves from mainstream ideology, and acceptance. If they are too visible, negative attention from authorities or the media will cast a bad light on the society, making them appear to be outlaws. As Bryon Smith pointed out, some utopian societies have lasted, but in doing so, have had to adapt, meaning specifically, ceasing the practice of alternate family arrangements. For example, The Church of Latter Day saints initially advocated polygamy, but subsequently abandoned the practice in a compromise with the United States government, so Utah could be admitted into the Union. The Oneidas, a community in mid 19^th century New York, adhered to complex marriage, a system where basically all members of the community where married to each other. Oneida still exists, but essentially as a corporation, retaining none of the unusual family structures of the original group. These arrangements typically die out after the first generation of utopians, as newer or prospective members become reluctant towards giving up propriety of their personal and emotional life.

This leads to the paradoxical question: what is human nature? To most Americans, human nature means love their blood line family, and private possessions. Is this simply a constructed American ideal? Because this utopian philosophy ignores the most base of human emotions, love, it debases the individual, and like Prometheus in Ayn Rand’s Anthem, would eventually lead some to a sense of hopelessness and despair, and the consequent desire to escape the dystopia.

Dystopia, “bad place,” is counter in meaning to utopia’s “good place”. Dystopia describes Ayn Rand’s Anthem. In the dystopia, the individual is oppressed by the all-encompassing dictums of his or her overseers, and personal motivations, such as raising a family, must be abandoned in favor of the good of the whole.  Prometheus is a- heroic individual who is suppressed by the dystopian culture. His primary agitation is his lack of control over his own genetic propagation, along with his undesirable assigned vocation of street sweeping.

Like Herland, Anthem’s powers that be have eliminated the nuclear family. Prometheus never knew his parents, his earliest memories drifting back to the gray confines of the state’s people making institution: “We remember the Home of Infants where we lived until we were five years old, together with all the children of the City who had been born in the same year” (Rand, 20). Subsequently, “When we were five years old, we were sent to the Home of the Students…for our ten years of learning. Men must learn until they reach their fifteenth year” (20). Thus, in this dystopia, the individual Prometheus is an ever-increasingly unwilling participant in the perfect utopia.

            The knowledge that coveting a woman is a sin does not stop Prometheus from noticing the enthralling Golden One, as she works on sewing the fields with her sisters. Subversively, Prometheus manages to open a dialogue with the Golden One, and it is soon obvious that love is arising between the two: a forbidden emotion. The major indicator of Prometheus’ feeling of selfish love for the Golden One occurs when he becomes jealous at the notion of her having to enter the House of Mating upon reaching the age of eighteen.

 The House of Mating is a completely impersonal mating ritual, for the sole purpose of human propagation, removing all the seemingly natural emotional accompaniments to sex and childbirth. Prometheus narrates, “the Time of Mating. This is the time each spring when all the men older than twenty and all the women older than eighteen are sent for one night to the City Palace of Mating. And each of the men has one of the women assigned to them by the Council of Eugenics. Children are born each winter, but women never see their children and children never know their parents” (41). As well as articulating his disquietude over this prospect, this passage re-illuminates the obvious trauma Prometheus felt as a subject to the states mandatory nursing and subsequent entry into its prison-like educational system.

In the instance of Herland and Anthem, more perfect societies are formed after an apocalyptic destruction of the old order. But, Anthem also presents a new apocalypse, a rebirth of the individual who will bring about a reinstitution of capitalistic ‘ownership’ society. After escaping the utopia, as a result of the didactic group of Scholars rejection of his remarkable re-discovery of electricity, Prometheus is soon fortunately reunited with the Golden One, who followed his flight. Together at last, the two gaze into each other’s eyes, reveling in mutual affectation. Prometheus feels “frightened that we [I] had lived for twenty-one years and had never known what joy is possible to men” (83). Eventually, the two establish a stronghold in their new world, proclaiming their individual propriety over this new land: “This is your house, Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men” (91). Prometheus and Golden One are soon to have a son, who the two will raise to “as a man” (100). By claiming ownership of his family and land, Prometheus rejects the utopian norm of commonality, and reaffirms the propriety of the individual over his pride, possessions and family.

            In summary, utopian literature, through its ideas, can have some positive impact on contemporary culture. However, the elimination of the traditional nuclear family unit is its most contentious difference from American culture. The across the board system of child rearing, evidenced in the dystopia Anthem, reveals the most sensitive flaw in utopian thought. As evidenced by Prometheus, people will always have dreams, hopes and desires that are unique to their own individuality. More importantly, they desire control over their genetic propagation, and in most cases, the subsequent rearing of their offspring. A state controlled system of child rearing would seem to be geared towards producing legions of productive workers, no much different than the most communal of animals, the ant.