LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Midterm Submission 2007

Fran Baines

Survival for Existence…Survival of the Fittest:  Utopia?

Literature 5737:  Literary and Historical Utopias has been an exceptional class due to the numerous prevailing thoughts of what an ideal utopia should reflect.  From Sir Thomas More’s Utopia to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, many notions of perfectionism are addressed; however, there is yet to be a simplified quote on quote “perfect” society in which all people, regardless of nationality are identified and living harmoniously as one.  This is a concern because according to identified definitions of a utopia the one characteristic that all novels portrayed was the unified approach to only addressing one distinct race when describing the surreal environment that each writer created. 

The significance of only adhering to one side of an equation is that the problem ultimately doesn’t balance, thus allowing opportunities for dystopian qualities to manifest.  Although one can easily interject that it is not by far easy at all to create a utopian society that openly embraces all mankind and still exist in such a fashion that all needs are met, minus crime, and strives to continually better the existence of those said inhabitants; why not? Why not dream the unthinkable dream; since, keeping in mind, this is a “utopian” society. 

Was not America founded on the notion that excluded individuals due to religious beliefs would one day mold this untamed land into a civilization that each individual regardless of background would be allowed to openly display his or her uniqueness; yet still be held to the highest notion that he or she regardless of differences still had much to receive and give to create this harmonious land of milk and honey.  I find myself running off on a tangent here because of the books discussed so far in class, not one, in my opinion, truly embraces this richly diverse society and more or less, “throws in the face” of its reader the idea that yes it is easy to create a “harmonious” society of a limited few, but time and time again we find ourselves revisiting the mishaps of these quote on quote “perfect philosophies” with ulterior motives and agendas.  Perfectly stated, Devon Kitch speaks volumes when he simply states that “Utopia, is essentially an idealistic fantasy that can neither be wholly achieved in practice nor will it reach the state of perfection that lies within the mind or our literary texts.  However pure its intentions, an entirely Utopian community involves extensive cooperation that people have not been trained or accustomed to giving.”

Obj. 2a

What kinds of stories rise from or fit with the attempt to describe an ideal or dystopian community? Many, in fact, all of the texts, thus far have personified the notion that mankind simply can not be trusted to develop a civilized, unified, agenda-less utopian society that is free from any form of imperfections.  As hard as Charlotte Perkins Gilman advocated for social justice for women, many parts of Herland fell short of truly addressing the social norms of her time.  In particular although “the mission of” her “utopia is to provide a speculative vision of the desired goal of human existence…Gilman’s concern, however, is primarily with human consciousness—what the people will look like and do, how and why they are different and better.” Thus, “the physical world is a natural creation of these new people” (Herland xxi).  Simply put, etching out a perfect utopian society becomes entirely impossible because of the flaws of the “human” creator.  As I have argued before, man is not free of sin, making it impossible for human existence to even begin to draw the frameworks of a perfect society.  Furthermore, within this utopian framework, dystopian ideologies surface to the forefront, in her introduction to Herland, Ann Lane points out that Gilman slips badly when she gave voice to Ellador on the subject of immigrants.  “Genuine democracy will not be achieved in the United States, Ellador comments, on the basis of an ‘ill-assorted and unassimilable mass of human material,’ not immigrants, ‘but victims, poor ignorant people scraped up by paid agents, deceived by lying advertisements, brought over here by greedy American ship owners and employers of labor”(xviii).  To add insult to injury, Ellador further asserts that “only some races—or some individuals in a given race—have reached the democratic stage” (xviii).

The point to be made is that although Gilman addresses the issue of equality for women and her roles at the time of writing Herland, other societal dystopias were easily brushed aside verses being dealt with openly in the perplexed community of the novel.  Yes women could easily do, if not better, many of the jobs previously only designated manly, but as a reader, I, like I hope many others, felt a need to question why she did not take a more prominent stance on equality for all when giving voice to many of the  female characters.

In addition, although many believed that I was reading too much into the Aryan stock comment (there is no doubt in my mind that these people were of Aryan stock, and were in contact with the best civilization of the old world; they were white but somewhat darker..), again I agree whole-heartedly with Ann Lane’s comments about Gilman’s xenophobicness.   By half-heartedly addressing a very serious issue at that time, Gilman allowed her preconceived notion of survival of the fittest to outshine with such a comment.