LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Midterm Submission 2005

Daniel Robison

16 June 2005

The Evolution and Survival of Utopias

            The word “utopia” calls to mind two very different ideas.  The cynic will lean to the view that a utopia is “no place,” that it is an impossibility and that those who believe in utopias are naïve and simplistic, if not simple-minded.  But the more optimistic thinker will see the “good place” of utopia.  Utopian literature, therefore, is the literature of the idealist, whereas dystopian literature is the literature of the realist.  Sir Thomas More, Edward Bellamy, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman represent those writers and thinkers who believe that a better world than the one we live in is possible, and they strive to show us the way.  Their writings also act as lights unto the paths of those who attempt to create real world utopias.  Even though these creations are problematic, both the literary and real world versions evolve and change in order to succeed.

            In discussing utopias, one must first separate the term into its three parts.  One is the literary genre, the second it the thought or philosophy, and the third is the communities that attempt to create the utopian ideal in real life.  All three of these are interwoven into each other but must be separated in order to properly discuss them and their qualities.

            More can be seen as the father of the modern utopian novel.  Utopia lays the foundation for all other to follow and build upon.  In creating the literature of utopia he creates the basic pattern:  a narrator has somehow encountered a seemingly perfect civilization, he learns all he can, and then reports it back to his own people.  This narrator learns about this utopia through Socratic discussions he was with a guide(s) in which they compare and contrast the two places.  At the end of his travels, the narrator always comes to the conclusion that this brave new world is superior to his own and so must return and spread the gospel of the utopia.

            In his Utopia, More creates the character of Raphael Hythloday who has traveled to Utopia, a perfect society created by Utopus on the other side of the world.  Instead of conducting the Socratic discussion with a member of that society, Raphael takes on the role of a Utopian and holds the conversation with More, a fictional version of the author himself.  The book becomes, after a brief set up with dialogue and minimal characterization, a pamphlet describing the virtues of Utopia.  Raphael is able to tell the story because he has made the necessary return from the netherworld.  More is the one who actually reports the story to the reader, believing that the people of his time have much to learn from the Utopians.

            Bellamy follows this basic pattern in Looking Backward.  Julian West, his narrator will represent us as he travels through twentieth-century Boston.   The setting for the novel demonstrates one of the evolutions that writers began to take with the literary form.  Instead of traveling to some distant place, Bellamy’s narrator travels to some distant time, almost making it a type of science fiction in the vein of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine.  A second progression that Bellamy creates is the more structured novel form.  He introduces conflict—the romantic love affair between West and Edith Bartlett, first, and Edith Leete, second.  The introduction deals more with characterization rather than the didactic conversation seen between Raphael and the Cardinal at the beginning of Utopia.  Once in Boston in the year 2000, we begin to see the more typical utopian literary set-up.  Our narrator holds Socratic discussions with his host, Doctor Leete.  These scenes get interspersed with dialogue that further develops the relationship between West and Edith Leete, as part of the changes that Bellamy brings to the form.  The book, though, holds to the purpose of the utopian novel—to create a world that has found a way to be better than the one that currently exists.  As in Utopia, our narrator does make a return to his own world to spread the news of what he has learned, albeit in the form of a dream.

            One can also find this basic pattern in Gilman’s Herland.  One very noticeable difference, though, appears right away—the use of three travelers instead of one.  She still maintains the construct of one narrator, but the narrator no longer sits there and mulls things over himself or willingly swallows everything that is fed to him.  With this evolution, we find three very different personalities and how these personalities react to the utopia.  Doing this replies to two detractions of the genre.  One, it creates conflict, furthering the development of the form as a novel rather than a tract or treatise.  Two, it provides dissent.  In both Utopia and Looking Backward, the reader only hears how wonderful the new societies are with no real argument to the contrary.  But here, we are given true dissent in the person of Terry Nicholson.  However, Gilman does use this dissent to demonstrate how reprobate he and the society he represents are.  In accordance with the structure of the utopian novel, Gilman does eventually fall into the basic pattern—the Socratic discussion soon begins.  It is through this that the readers learn about Herland, how it developed, and how it runs.  But again, more novel-like development can be seen.  She continues to use the three travelers to bounce ideas off of each other in an almost Freudian id-ego-superego style.  She also pulls away from having the single teacher.  Here we meet many inhabitants of Herland and gain their insights as well.  These changes create more interest for the reader, making this particular book less a social tract and more of a spirited adventure and romance story.  As in the other two, the narrator comes to the realization that Herland is superior to his own patriarchal community, returns to his own world (with a wife from Herland), and sets about teaching those who are “interested in these amazing women and their history” through his writing about this social evolution (51).

            After reading these utopian novels, several problems can be seen with the genre.  One, bluntly, is that the books can be boring.  At their heart, these books are didactic sermons on the dangers that assail our society.  More’s text is basically a primer on the development of a utopia.  It appears as if he would like for someone to take the book, go somewhere secluded, and begin an experiment in utopianism.  He has laid out the basic plan for how the society would be run in almost all areas so that almost all questions have already been answered.  With this as a purpose, he does not give room over to characterization and plot.  Conversely, realizing that his contemporary readers would have difficulty with a tract, Bellamy “sought to alleviate the instructive quality of the book by casting it in the form of a romantic narrative” (35).  This, however, does not preclude the author from including long stretches of exposition by Doctor Leete nor the painfully protracted and moralizing sermon by Mr. Barton.   Though Gilman by necessity of the genre includes the prototypical exposition, she entertainingly mixes it with conflict, suspense, and character.  But all three of these texts contain a further quandary—believability. 

            While having one of his heated debates with Van and Jeff, Terry rants:

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it?” he argued.  “The whole thing’s deuced unnatural—I’d say impossible if we weren’t in it.  And an unnatural condition’s sure to have unnatural results.  You’ll find some awful characteristics—see if you don’t!  For instance—we don’t know yet what they do with their criminals—their defectives—their aged.  You notice we haven’t seen any!  There’s got to be something!” (Gilman 82)

Van finds himself agreeing with Terry, and asks to see “’some flaw in all this perfection,’” and he does learn that they have had criminals but not in nearly six hundred years.  This same condition is seen in all three of the books.  It’s not just that the government is perfect or that the education system is perfect or that the economy is perfect, but it’s that the people are perfect.  Yes, they do have their “atavistic” members, but for the most part, human nature has itself been cleansed of vice, and this in itself lends a great deal of skepticism to the books.  If there had been a glimmer of doubt underneath the façade of perfection, then these would have been more accessible and acceptable.

            When reading these three books, one must look beyond the literary ideals of the writers to the political beliefs that they proffer.  These beliefs are inherently tied into the purposes for writing their books, which is to make the world a better place in which to live.  More looked around his world and saw autocracy, both secular and religious, and the problems that this causes—wars, poverty, corruption, and inefficiency.  Bellamy looked around his world and saw capitalism and the problems that this causes—wars, poverty, corruption, and inefficiency.  Gilman looked around her world and saw sexism and the problems that this causes—wars, poverty, corruption, and inefficiency.  These people stepped back and looked at the wretched lives that the vast majority of people were experiencing and decided that life did not have to be like this, that life could be better, and so all three set out to show a way for that to be.  However they decided to set up their systems of government, religion, education, aesthetics, science, economics, and society, they all have one thing in common—cooperation over competition, the whole over the part, the community over the individual. 

Through Raphael, More teaches “’not to make any laws for such as would not submit to a community of all things’” and that “’as long as [property] is maintained, the greatest and the far best part of mankind will be still oppressed with a load of cares and anxieties’” (24-25).  More makes it clear that for a better society to exist all people must be equal, that they must all support the community rather than themselves, and that the way to do this is by abolition of private property.  He further explores this concept by stating that the Utopians, “according to their plenty or scarcity, … supply, or are supplied from one another; so that indeed the whole island is, as it were, one family” (42).  In his concept of the one family, More asserts that these people will do what must be done in order to take care of each other, make sure that each of them has what he or she needs rather than provide for oneself, much like many ideal nuclear families behave.

Bellamy continues this argument in Looking Backward.  When discussing the misery that women of the nineteenth century faced, Doctor Leete explains to West that the misery of the people:

“came, with all your other miseries, from that incapacity for cooperation which followed from the individualism on which your social system was founded, from your inability to perceive that you could make ten times more profit out of your fellow men by uniting with them than by contending against them.” (103)

Like More, Bellamy believes that for society to prosper society must work together rather than fight against each other, that this fighting only causes the problems discussed earlier, such as war and poverty.  He further asserts that the old Bostonians’ ways of life were but a perception and not fully realized till the “’last, greatest, and most bloodless of revolutions’” (202).  Similar to More’s belief in the “one family,” Bellamy holds that seeing “’the solidarity of the race and the brotherhood of man . . . as real and as vital as physical fraternity’” will allow people to give to each other and serve each other, not as a form of ‘”charity,’” but as one brother would another, without “’indignation’” (111).  He sees this beautiful world as the fulfillment of the family of God that Christians believe in and sees Christians attempting to become all that God expects of them, not just being “’nominal followers of Christ’” (200).

            On a metaphorical level, Gilman takes this concept even further.  Using pathogenesis as a deus ex machina, Gilman is able to populate her Amazonian paradise island.  Through the pathogenesis, these women have become “[o]ne family, all descended from one mother!” (59).  Terry understands that “[t]he power of mother-love, that maternal instinct we so highly lauded, was theirs of course, raised to its highest power; and a sister-love which, even while recognizing the actual relationship, we found it hard to credit.”  Gilman understands that the idea of the one family cooperative is the ideal for these utopians and creates an actual one family.  Because of this closeness in their relationships they “[grow] together—not by competition, but by united action” (61).  This concept continues to be the beating heart for all of these utopians.  The writers all believe that getting people to work together, to be a part of something larger than themselves, will solve all of societies’ ills whether caused by a ruthless dictator or money or false ideas about women, but as discussed above, the idea is difficult to accept due to the power of human nature.

            The literary works of these writers and others like them helped foment utopian thought and had great effects on society in general, resulting in the creation of utopian communities.  An enduring quality of these communities is this one family / cooperative concept.  The Oneida community did this by the use of complex marriage.  The Mormons allowed polygamy.  The kibbutzim housed people in one great building.  These communities exist together in one place and strive to create a spirit of communalism that will transcend them.  Most of these kinds of communities, however, fail and do not have a lasting impact on society.  But these three communities, similar to the three books, evolved in order to survive.  Even though the Oneida community itself does not exist, their efforts to create business ventures keeps the name alive and the ideas knowable through the Oneida house.  The Mormons gave up polygamy in order to join the United States and have become one of the most influential groups in the nation.  The kibbutzim have transformed themselves from Zionist organizations into resort-style communes that still express their ideals of cooperation.

            In conclusion, I want to briefly address the impact of these books on our society today.  No we do not have the utopias these writers envisioned but neither do we have the horrific world in which they lived.  Even though we still have corrupt officials, the whims of dictator kings and priest no longer govern us.  Even though we still have rich and poor, the stagecoach has become much lighter to pull and easier to mount.  Even though we still have inequalities among the sexes, we now see “women not as females but as people; people of all sorts, doing every kind of work” (Gilman 137).  Perhaps because our world has changed so much, has become so much better and closer to what they envisioned, we no longer look to utopian literature to warn us of how bad we are.  Mr. Barton states that in Boston’s past people asked, “’What shall I eat and drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed?’”, but now they ask, “’What shall we eat and drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?’” (Bellamy 202).  We have now gone full circle from this progressive idea to fear and reaction when Ms. Rand warns us that “we” could become  “the root of all evils on earth, the root of man’s torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie” (96-7).