LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Midterm Submission 2007

Cindy L. Goodson

June 17, 2007

Utopianism: Where the Real Meets the Ideal

The best way to define Utopia is in a three-fold analysis made up of an ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects, secondly, as a literary work of fiction describing this ideally perfect place, and lastly, as an impractical, idealistic scheme for social and political reform.  The genre takes its name from Thomas More’s Utopia and means “no where” in Greek.  In a utopian work, an imaginary country, usually one discovered or described by the narrator, serves as an “ideal” political and social state and is contrasted with an actual earthly society.  These constructs are demonstrated in our major class texts as we have seen in Utopia, Looking Backward, Herland, and Anthem, and they provide a broad range of ideas, both literary and historical, on which we can begin our quest for Utopia.

More’s Utopia is his depiction of a semi-ideal society and all of the criticism of European society that ideal represents and it is a commentary on itself and its themes.  Staged in the time of the European Renaissance, a time when Europe and England were still founded on the economic models of feudalism, in which virtually all power resided with rich nobles while the peasants endured a backbreaking existence that supported the lavish lifestyles of their rulers but provided little more than a subsistence level of existence for themselves.  The monestary is where More’s perspective was shaped and he being a devout Catholic and Anti-Reformists seems to be caught in a paradox of religious tolerance and extreme persecution of Protestants.  I believe this may have also been heavily influenced by the Spanish Inquisition which was established in the late 15^th century. Through Raphael Hythloday, 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). 

With regard to social structure, Hythloday believes Utopia to be the greatest social order in the world.  As he says, “Everywhere else people talk about the public good but pay attention to their own private interests.  In Utopia, where there is no private property, everyone is seriously concerned with pursuing the public welfare.”  In Utopia, no man worries about food or impoverishment for themselves or any of their descendants.  Hythloday believes societies other than Utopia are merely conspiracies of the rich, “whose objective is to increase their own wealth while the government they control claims to be a commonwealth concerned with the common welfare.”  These societies are realms of greed and pride.  And pride causes men to measure their welfare not by their well-being, but by having things that others lack, which is irrational and un-Christian.  Only in Utopia has pride and all its assistant vices been gutted from society.  And as Hythloday stated, “So the whole island is as it were one family or household.” (84).

            From a historical perspective when we refer to the “Gilded Age” the easiest way for me to look at it is to imagine going from wood to steel or to industrialization.  Bellamy positioned Looking Backward during this “Gilded Age” in such a way that concerns itself to the remaking of earlier religious hopes into social millennia whose narrative was said to be metaphorically similar to the millennial writings of Isaiah of the ending of wars and a time when every man will sit under his own fig tree, lions and lambs will lie down together etc. which speaks to objective 2b which asks the essentiality of millennialism.  Bellamy portends his society not as a wish, but as already accomplished and in it we see its futuristic as well as fictive impact.  This is different from other utopias in that society is working toward a desired end. In this particular texts though he dreams it – it is already a successful utopia.  After over a hundred years of being in a state of suspended animation, after hypnosis, Julian finds himself in the twentieth-century.  The economy is based on publicly owned capital rather than private, as was the case in Julian’s eighteenth-century society.  The government controls the means of production and divides the national product equally between all citizens.  Every citizen receives a college-level education.  Individuals are given a great deal of freedom in choosing a career, and everyone retires at the age of forty-five.  Society is based on an ideal of the brotherhood of man, and it is unthinkable that any individual should suffer the evils of poverty or hunger. 

In Looking Backward, the main purpose is for Julian to educate his nineteenth-century audience about the evils of its social and economic systems.  And for Bellamy it serves as a vehicle for him to communicate his personal ideas about social and economic reform.  Though the people are free to live as they choose, purchase what they want, and choose their vocations; they must however, choose to live within certain boundaries, shop in stores that sell identical merchandise, and hope that their desired vocation needs additional employees.  Seemingly acceptable to the people, these things are tolerated in exchange for guaranteed wages and a comfortable way of life but they ultimately discourage individuality.  As a result, the individual becomes the sole property of the government, “When the nation became the sole employer, all citizens, by virtue of their citizenship, became employees, to be distributed according to the needs of industry” (57).  Julian expounds upon the unfair distribution of wealth in the nine-teenth century.  The capitalist, industrial economy is a far more efficient way to produce wealth than a feudal agricultural economy was before it.  It allows mass production of cheap, standardized goods, so it raises the average standard of living.  Nonetheless, the gap between the rich and the poor, the wage earner and his employer, was a vast and ugly example of how this economy concentrated wealth in the hands of the powerful and privileged few in Bellamy’s day.  Through this Utopian world the individual is lost, trading their freedom of choice for stability.

Bellamy’s ideas address some of the obstacles common to the Utopian society, but is reluctant to directly address the roles of women.  He delicately addresses the narrow roles allotted to women during that time because the women’s rights movement was an extremely controversial issue when he wrote his novel.  He sort of ignores the matter of women’s rights in favor of pushing for economic reform.  This method was a pragmatic move, but it is problematic in the sense of affording so little attention to half of humanity in his portrait of the perfect society.  His evasiveness revealed traces of his own biases against women.  He maintains a strict separation between the sexes in his imagined utopia: women are not ranked under the same system as men.  Women have their own general-in-chief, so it seems that a woman can never become President in Bellamy’s ideal society.  Therefore, there is no pretense to complete social equality between men and women.  He also seems to believe that women only become full adults when they marry and bear children.  Single, childless women would not be allowed to hold positions of power in the government of Bellamy’s ideal society.  Nevertheless, Bellamy does support the notion that women can have lives and careers outside their marriages, an unorthodox attitude for the nineteenth century.  Women are also equal with respect to pay in his imagined utopia.  He therefore, pushes for reforms that increase economic opportunities for women.  But he’s careful not to suggest that there is full equality – the sexes will still be distinct and separate, and men will have greater responsibilities and privileges.  Unlike Bellamy’s ideal separation of genders nation, Charlotte Perkins Gilman does an extraordinary colorful job at illustrating the power of woman as an idealistic structure in Herland.

A fascinating and picture perfect world of feminine prowess, Gilman’s Herland examines the adventure of three audacious friends Vandyck Jennings, Terry Nicholson, and Jeff Margrave and how they join a scientific expedition to one of the few remaining uncharted areas of the world.  Tales of a land full of women without men intrigue these three and as they are driven by a genuine desire for knowledge, a love of adventure, they venture off to find this land of Amazon women. 

As the Roman poet Horace says about literary utopia “that it is intended to teach and entertain” Gilman does just that.  I thought was pretty brilliant how she narrated from one of her male characters perspectives and in doing so is able to easily reveal an enormous number of the characteristic traits of sexism.  In referring to my notes from Brouke’s presentation, I’m reminded of objective 3a in an attempt to create a way to continue discussions on intentional communities and how to properly address the perceived failures of and establish some system of getting beyond “They don’t work” as a discussion-stopper.  Though a fictional piece, Herland does a real good job of establishing a specialized utopia and is considered to be a revival of utopian literature.   Gilman’s skillful use of the utopian genre, as well as its humor and sharp feminist analysis, has revealed evidence of this advanced, isolated culture located in the mountains where gender and class are not an issue.  And as compared to the previously mentioned utopian novels, and as Brouke pointed out, “this all is equal concept changes our perception of the social dynamics of a utopian community.  Through the scheme of coordinating education and evolution issues such as divisions of sexes and divisions of labor are of no concern.”  To me this aids in the continuing of talks of the subject.

Herland has been without men for 2,000 years, ever since a sequence of wars, natural disasters, and internal strife combined to leave a small population of women alone and through the miraculous pregnancy of a young girl, who gave birth to the system of solo reproduction her descendants, each one female and only giving birth to females are the present inhabitants of the land.  “One family all descended from one mother!” (59). With the development of a peaceful, orderly, highly efficient society of mothers, childbearing is the greatest honor of the women’s lives, as well as their highest duty.  In fact, Herland is essentially a giant family, an organic community pursuing the common good.  As such, property is held in wellbeing and the education of children is of the highest priorities.  With regard to child-rearing Matt Mayo in his 2005 midterm adequately addresses the issue when he stated that “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).”

Ironically, Herland is already a specialized utopia but is in a very progressive millennial mode in that as Brouke illustrated they were recently coming out of millennial events and going into another apocalyptic experience with the arrival and new enterprise of engaging into relationships with men they begin to the end or at least modify the system of parthenogenesis that they’ve known for over 2,000 years and enter into a “New Motherhood” which supports the fact that millennialism is essential to the utopian narrative.  Ultimately, this process will take time as the women currently are communal mothers and have no prior concept of a nuclear family structure. However, they are able to perceive the true nature of the society the men describe, despite their reticence they understand that the women of the states are particularly exploited in the competitive, money-driven modern world, as their maternal function is used to keep them in a subordinate position.

Similarly, Anthem tends toward an eliminated nuclear familial structure and suggests a system of collectivism.  Ayn Rand, reflecting on the economic trend of her time of a socialist-oriented government identifies these collective groups where all aspects of daily life are dictated by councils—the Council Vocations, the Council of Scholars, etc.  She also suggests a completely impersonal mating ritual at The House of Mating which is 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 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” (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 evidence in Anthem addresses both objectives 2d and 3f in that essentially millennialism plays a large role in the revelation of individualism.  Moreover, as we examine the dynamics of this social structure pre-individual awareness we find an eternal frustration of the former Equality 7-2521, even the assignment of identification numbers next to the name suggests a socialistic style of government.  I guess another way to look at it would be like our systems of identification: SS#’s, DL#’s, Student/Employee ID #’s, etc.  However, I appreciate the way Rand creatively gives prophetic names to the protagonists. Equality wants nothing more than to live in a society of equality and Liberty is defined as the condition of being free from restriction or control possessing the right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one’s own choosing so her name was well fitted for the role.

In conclusion, we have discussed in class how utopian narratives allow their authors to reflect on personal feelings that might have been too dangerous to express in person but can be strategically expressed through the literature.  We have examined the many elements that drive home the different ideal community life among a very diverse group with unique perspectives in accordance to the timeframes in which their respective projects were released.   The patterns that I can readily note here are those of millennial persuasion as well as in-depth social structures which, like the definition of utopia are really “nowhere.”  But the discussions have found a way to continue in spite of that fact.