LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias
Midterm Submission 2009
Joshua Schuetz
Utopias and History: A Call to Return
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”1 The end times envisioned in the book of Revelations and messianic prophecy contain utopian thinking. This utopia looks to a new day or a ‘New Jerusalem’ where rumors of war will be no more and peace will reign on earth. “And the lion will lay with the lamb. . .they shall not kill on all my holy mountain.”2 As in the Revelation, Isaiah’s prophecy also foretells the messiah’s reign on earth during which there will be justice, peace and harmony.
Yet further study of the link between the prophecy of a messiah and a future utopia reveals what seems to be a contradiction – that of restoration. In this utopian vision of a completely new future via radical innovation, we also find a call to return to the past. Northrop Frye argues that a vision of a better society appeals to some sort of covenant, such as the American constitution, preceding the existing society, which has been lost or violated and which the utopia is to restore (Frye 38).
This lends another dimension, a practical one, to the idea of utopia as social change. The idea is that the power of radical new ideas to effect social change are anchored in their ability to find new meanings in old values. In this line of thought values are rediscovered, not created from nothing. Man’s problem is not so much to invent utopia or a new society, but to uncover what has been forgotten (Luz 365).
Despite this idea of restoring what has been forgotten, the presence of history in utopian novels is not explicit. In Thomas More’s Utopia, the dialogue between More and Raphael Hythloday expresses an abuse of past history; men use it as an excuse not to change. They are stuck in their traditions:
“If all other things failed, then they would fly to this, that such or such things pleased our ancestors, and it were well for us if we could but match them. They would set up their rest on such an answer, as a sufficient confutation of all that could be said, as if it were a great misfortune that any should be found wiser than his ancestors. But though they willingly let go all the good things that were among those of former ages, yet, if better things are proposed, they cover themselves obstinately with this excuse of reverence to past times." (More 1.2g).
According to Amy Braselton’s essay The Utopian Evolution (2007), the poor were overlooked and dismissed from thought; most policies put through the government catered to the higher class citizens.” In More’s writing, the community of Utopia idealizes the opposite of the society in which More lived.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, the women knew of their history and of their ancestors called the great mothers. But when Ellador was asked,
"Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?"
Ellador’s answer was
"Why, no," she said. "Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them—and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us (Herland Chpt 10)."
Ellador’s response rejects history as an obsolete advisor. They survived their past and escaped from it, and introduced societal progress through education and commitment to societal goals (Liakos 14). In this context of developing their own standards for excellence and progress without the participation and contributions of men, the role of the stereotypical woman is rebutted. Ruth Pilarte in her 2007 essay The Goal of Utopia comments that “women for centuries have been looked upon as being inferior to men physically and mentally. In many past societies, the main role of women has been solely of mother and caretaker of the home.” Pilarte credits Brouke Rose-Carpenter for pointing out in her historical presentation how “the feminist utopian novel addresses present values and conditions.” But with the intrusion of the three men into their female culture, the Herland women are challenged to consider a return to their original social structure that included men. They accept the challenge and risk a change of the status quo. The novel ends without interpreting the results of the experiment.
In Ayn Rand’s dystopic novel Anthem, the past is strictly forbidden:
But we must never speak of the times before the Great Rebirth, else we are sentenced to three years in the Palace of Corrective Detention. It is only the Old Ones who whisper about it in the evenings, in the Home of the Useless. They whisper many strange things, of the towers which rose to the sky, in those Unmentionable Times, and of the wagons which moved without horses, and of the lights which burned without flame. But those times were evil. And those times passed away, when men saw the Great Truth which is this: that all men are one and that there is no will save the will of all men Together (Anthem Chpt 1).
In spite of this prohibition, Equality 7-2521 has the imagination and courage to attempt to recapture the past and to rediscover what was lacking in his existence in ‘the City’. He claims the name ‘Prometheus’ and takes ‘The Golden One’ as his partner. Their quest for the freedom for others in the City becomes the hope of a new future.
In Looking Backward: 2000–1887, the historical context of Bellamy’s novel was one of the most intense periods of economic growth, social turmoil and expectations the USA had ever experienced. Looking Backward had an enormous effect on the American labor movement and progressive political leaders. Roosevelt’s New Deal cannot be understood outside the orbit of its travelled ideas (Liakos 33). The novel projects the past onto the future and of the future onto the past. Julian West finds that Bostonians of the year 2000 considered their era as the “Post-Millennium”:
“Such is, in fact, the belief of some persons nowadays” comments Dr. Leete, “is that we have entered upon the millennium, and the theory from their point of view does not lack plausibility.” Bellamy’s novel constructs history as an inevitable evolution towards a utopia.
Objective 3g asks “What is utopia’s relation to time and history?” Karl Mannheim, in Ideology and Utopia, states “with the relinquishment of utopias, man would lose his will to shape history and therewith his ability to understand it,” because “no interpretation of history can exist except in so far as it is guided by interest and purposeful striving”. Without utopias, there can be no understanding of history (Liakos 41).
In my research posting The Role of Religious Imagination in Utopian Thinking, a central idea is that utopian ideals spring from the religious imagination grounded in the creation account in Genesis and are again expressed throughout the Old and New Testament prophecies. The scripture serves as a backdrop of Hebrew (Jewish) history as being a utopian journey; their vision of the past is a source or motivation for discovering their future (Luz 362).
Jewish historian-philosopher Ernst Bloch perceives all human history as a treasure of utopian meanings. Parallel to the social aspect of utopia as a return is the Jewish idea of teshuva. This refers to man’s return to the right path, to the authentic self and to God. Teshuva on the moral and psychological level is analogous to striving for utopia on the social level - both are processes of renewal (367). Messianism is only the final phase in the gradual process of restoring the world on the part of many individuals. In the end, this utopian renewal restores both soul and society.
Word Count – 1335
1Revelation 21:1-2
2Isaiah11:6 (Septuagint: Greek translation of the Old Testament).
Works Cited
Frye, Northrop. “Varieties of Literary Utopias” in Utopias and Utopian Thought. Ed. Frank E. Manuel. Cambridge Riverside Press, 1966.
Liakos, Antonis. Utopian and Historical Thinking: Interplays and Transferences. Historein, 7 (2007).
Luz, Ehud. Utopia and return: On the structure of utopian thinking and its relation to Jewish-Christian Tradition. Journal of Religion; Jul93, Vol. 73 Issue 3, p357, 21p.