Robin Hall

The Practical Value of Utopias

Previous students have had interesting ideas about the possibility or achievability of a utopia. Both Bryon Smith (Utopias: Defining Perfection, Midterm 2005) and Yvonne Hopkins (The Elusive Concept of Utopia, Midterm 2007) were struck by the dual meaning of “utopia” as both a good place and a “no-place” and discussed how both literary utopias and real-world attempts at utopia seek to improve the lives of their populations in sometimes unrealistic ways. After reading these somewhat pessimistic assessments of the concept of utopia, I was curious to read Ruthi McDonald’s research post (Utopian Ideals in the Community, Research Post 2, 2013), in which she reviewed several examples of real world attempts at utopias or utopian concepts and was pleased to see that, when done right, some of these ideals could be both successful and useful. This vindicates Ernest Callenbach’s “Afterword” to Ecotopia, in which he meditates on the effect of his novel of “inspiring people who had been groping for better ways to live” (Callenbach, 170). He did not write Ecotopia as a template for a future world, he said, or as an illustration of perfection--he wrote it to give people options to think about. That, after all, is what a literature of ideas is all about.

Yvonne Hopkins stated that literary utopias tend to be characterized primarily by their separation from the rest of the world and by their focus on collectivism, emphasizing the welfare of the many over individual freedoms. She used examples from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, and Thomas More’s Utopia to point out that the collectivist perspective was applied to work, property, education, and even child-rearing. She used Ayn Rand’s Anthem to show the negative side of collectivism: a colorless view of oppression, thought control, endless drudgery, and suppression of individuality. However, Anthem also suggests the dangers of radical individualism, leaving Rand’s readers to question where to find the balance between the two. Hopkins further discussed two historical attempts at utopias, Twin Oaks and Oneida, in which people voluntarily separated themselves from society to try to follow more collectivist and spiritual values with limited success, suggesting that people might simply not be capable of creating a true utopia, either on paper or in the real world.

Bryon Smith similarly posited that utopias, being both a good place and a no-place, are unattainable. He pointed out that utopian authors, including More, Gilman, and Bellamy, tried to create “perfect societies” that resolved common social problems of their day, such as crime, poverty, and unemployment. He noted that many of their ideas were plausible, if not probable, such as More’s Utopian citizens being allowed several hours a day for reading, Herland’s citizens engaging in lifelong learning, and Bellamy’s vision of universal health care. Even if the entire system was unlikely to be recreated, there were desirable elements that were not outside the realm of possibility for those looking for options. With the exception of  Herland, however, even utopian societies could not prevent things like old age, sickness, or death, and he acknowledged that Gilman took some liberties with biology that made Herland somewhat less realistic than other utopias. Smith also discussed some real-world attempts at utopian societies, including the Latter-Day Saints and the Oneida communities. Both of these communities tried to impose a collectivist economy on their members, which eventually failed, although the Latter-Day Saints managed to create a successful, if not entirely separate, adapted community. On a slightly more positive note than Hopkins, Smith closes by stating that the quest for utopia may provide satisfaction even if it can never be attained.

Ruthi McDonald’s research post was substantially more positive. She discusses several attempts at creating real-world utopias and enacting real-word utopian ideals. Unlike Hopkins and Smith, McDonald found several successful examples. She researched the Magnolia Grove Sangha--a monastery--where people could go on retreat and learn about mindfulness. She reported that a group of high school students doing so returned calmer, more centered, and reacting differently to conflict than before they had learned mindfulness. A U.S. senator later wrote a book about the benefits of mindfulness and proposed a bill that would include a program on teaching mindfulness in the schools. McDonald researched several bike-share programs, similar to that mentioned in Callenbach’s Ecotopia. The most successful programs were those that included an element of personal responsibility for the bicycles, such as paid memberships or registration for a key to the bikes, rather than simply flooding the city with free bicycles. The third program was an “edible forest” in Seattle, similar to the forest described by Gilman in Herland. McDonald wrote that the goal of creating an “edible urban forest garden” was designed to reduce climate impact, improve the security of the urban food supply, and inspire the community to work together.

When McDonald wrote her post in 2013, she said the success of the “edible forest” program could not yet be determined. I was curious, so I looked it up. The Beacon Food Forest in Seattle is an ongoing enterprise. It is operated under the umbrella of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods as the P-Patch Community Gardening Program, and it is funded through donations and volunteer labor--performed at “work parties.” Phase 1 has been completed and Phase 2 is in the planning process. The “food forest” started as a final project for a “permaculture design course.” The goals for “permaculture” include such elements as “integrate rather than segregate,” “use and value diversity,” “use and value renewable resources and services,” and “creatively use and respond to change.” Those goals would surely resonate with the citizens of Ecotopia!  

McDonald’s closing statement, “[w]orking intentional communities and Utopian literature give society something to strive toward and give us ideas to bring into our own communities, even if a true utopia is unattainable,” is a much more optimistic perspective than either Smith or Hopkins provided. Perhaps the key is that the active “utopian ideals” McDonald’s examples worked towards did not encompass an entire “utopian society,” like the Oneida, Latter-Day Saints, or Twin Oaks communities tried to do. The organizations she looked at appeared to be designed to change only one element or group of elements in society for the better, rather than all of society. It was inspirational to see that people can and do actually achieve small versions of utopia. This demonstrates the ongoing importance of a literature of ideas.

Both Hopkins and Smith concluded that humanity is unlikely to ever actually achieve a utopia, even if people could agree on what a true utopia would be like. They evaluated the literary utopias in Utopia, Looking Backwards, Herland, and Anthem, and showed that the separation of those societies from the rest of the world and their overwhelming collectivism were impractical, contrary to human nature, and damaging to individuality. They also showed examples of historical utopian communities that were less than successful, especially in collectivizing their economies.  McDonald’s post, however, showed that when people attempt more singular utopian enterprises, focusing on one utopian (or idealistic) goal, collectivism does not limit success. These smaller utopian goals are both demonstrably achievable and useful to society as a whole. Each of these successful projects started with someone saying “wouldn’t it be great for everyone if we could…” The literature of ideas is there to provide that kind of inspiration across the whole spectrum of social problems, just like Thomas More set out to do in his original Utopia. We may not be able to achieve a “perfect” society, but McDonald’s examples show that we all have the ability to help form a “more perfect” society.

Utopias: A Kitchen Sink or a Laboratory Test Tube?

I first thought of “utopian literature” as kind of like science fiction, perhaps like the dystopian books in popular fiction. Beginning with the simplistic definition of utopia as “a perfect place,” a person’s ideas about perfection are formed by their likes and dislikes, the things that are important to them, and the problems they think need to be solved. Different things are important to different people. I quickly learned the truth of Dr. White’s statement that “every utopia is someone else’s dystopia.” Perfection is subjective rather than objective, and the “dictionary definition” only begs the question--what is perfection?

This subjectivity is illustrated by the diverse historical utopias we have looked at and the vastly different “utopias” in the literature we have read. Novels venture into different fields, varying with the interests or expertise of the authors. Authors have strong opinions about cultural issues affecting their particular areas of expertise, for example, Sir Thomas More and Christianity or Charlotte Perkins Gilman and sociology, including strong ideas about what needs fixing within those areas of expertise. For this reason, utopian fiction is almost by definition interdisciplinary (obj. 4), which contributes to its value as part of the literature of ideas.  It should also not surprise us that authors’ values and ideas are inspired by the political settings in which they write, for example, Ernest Callenbach and the environmental movement, and Ayn Rand and Russian communism. Although Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which we will study in the second half of the semester, represents--to me--a place that was anything but “good” or “perfect,” that society was designed to be somebody’s idea of a utopia, just like the communist culture in Ayn Rand’s Anthem was designed to be somebody’s idea of a utopia. Examining how utopias can go wrong contributes as much to the literature of ideas as examining how they can go right. Utopian literature can be best described by its end result: presenting us with fictionalized illustrations of ideas for ways to live a better life or avoid a worse one.

The genre of utopian fiction frequently overlaps with one or more different genres, including satire, Socratic dialogue, and the travel narrative. The comparisons between utopian systems and values and American systems and values frequently invoke satire, with its use of a naïve utopian person to question or comment about American values in a way that that illustrates the ridiculousness or illogicality of those values or systems in comparison. Although it was not always “funny,” Herland did this throughout the novel with questions about women in America, pointing out rampant poverty, the different treatment of rich and poor women, and the oppressive hierarchy of the nuclear family. This format also resembles a Socratic dialogue, in which the student of the utopia is led to knowledge by answering purposefully guided questions. In Ecotopia, William Weston sometimes serves as his own satirical foil, as when he wonders in his journal why the lack of streetlights in Ecotopia has not led to a widespread crime outbreak like it would have in New York, or expresses his discomfort with actually seeing hunters returning with their prey, showing an “American” dissociation with where food comes from.

The travel narrative, like that used by Sir Thomas More in his original Utopia, is also commonly used in utopian fiction. It allows the narrator to simply engage in long instructional monologues describing the utopia as “what they have seen,” in a manner reminiscent of The Travels of Marco Polo (Rusticchello da Pisa). The travel motif can be blended with other styles, as it is in Herland and Ecotopia, as travel provides a useful tool to get the “outsider narrator” into the story.

Utopian literature, like any other genre, carries a set of expectations for both style and content. Although utopian novels vary substantially in the worlds they inhabit, there is a fairly defined set of the kinds of content that go into them, both in terms of structure and substance. They generally start with some kind of cataclysmic or millennial event that leads to the isolation of a community from the rest of the world. The millennial event in Herland was a volcanic eruption that isolated the residents from the rest of the world, while in Ecotopia, it was civil war.  Even Ayn Rand’s dystopian novella, Anthem, has a millennial event, “the great rebirth,”(7) that created the society of “we,” and a new millennial event when Prometheus and The Golden One run away from “we” and establish “I.”

An interesting tool seen in both Utopia and Herland is early foreshadowing of the problems the author wants to address. Utopia begins with a prolonged discussion between More, Raphael, and others about the ills of society, including thievery, laziness, standing armies, and greedy landowners. Raphael’s subsequent narrative addresses just those issues, which the citizens of Utopia have managed to resolve. Similarly, Gilman prepares her reader for the problems she wants to cover through her caricatured characterization of the three men as a “man’s man,” a consummate “gentleman,” and a sociologist.  Their prejudices are fleshed out in the first chapters as the men discuss what they expect to find in the “Land of Women.” While this technique does not do much to build suspense or develop plot, it is highly effective in providing a roadmap to what the author wants the reader to notice.

The narrator is usually an outsider, brought in through some plot scenario that sets the stage for the novel to devote much of itself to explaining the utopian society to the outsider. In Utopia, the traveler/philosopher Raphael went to Utopia out of curiosity, then reported back on it. His tale is mostly an extended instructional monologue. Similarly in Ecotopia, journalist William Weston goes to Ecotopia and writes news stories about it that are full of explanation and description. However, he also journals about his experiences, which provides some plot and interest for the reader and allows him to discuss more “personal” discoveries about Ecotopia, like their sexual practices. In Herland, the narrator Van is simply an adventurer who writes retrospectively about what he found in the “Land of Women.” Anthem, possibly because it is dystopic rather the utopic, has a rebel from the society in question doing the describing in an extended narrative monologue. The narrator/reporter motif results in utopian novels being quite dialogue heavy, but the spoken word is an effective way to feed the reader a lot of information that doesn’t require much plot development. The best way to describe the inner workings of a society is to have someone explain it.

Utopians are usually not very well developed as characters due to their roles as “perfect people” who inhabit a “perfect place,” leaving little room for conflict or adventure. They also fill primarily informative roles, with most of their time on the page devoted to “teaching about” rather than “interacting with.” You see this in the somewhat flat characterization of the women in Herland, and the almost complete absence of characterization of the locals in Utopia. More’s Utopians do not even have names, only titles; the only named characters are those in the opening debate. Even in Ecotopia, where Marissa and Bert play a more substantial part in plot development than we see in the other books, the reader never gets to know either one the way they know Weston. Anthem is perhaps an exception; however, if you look at Prometheus as the “outsider” and contrast him with the other nameless and faceless citizens of The City, even Anthem falls back into place. While neither the question-and-answer format nor the extended monologue are the best way to entertain the reader or draw them into a plot, they are highly effective mechanisms for transmitting a lot of detailed information.

Another explanation for the limited character development of most utopians is that utopias are usually designed to be “communitarian.” The utopians value the community more than their individual needs or desires, so they would be unlikely to do anything unusual or unique that might interfere with the smooth functioning of the community. Unfortunately, that also means they rarely do anything very interesting. Even Bert and Marissa in Ecotopia conform to this model. Much of their dialogue is devoted to explaining the way things are done in Ecotopia, and they react to Weston’s actions rather than taking independent action to drive the plot.

Readers also expect a number of substantive conventions in a utopian novel. The authors frequently include spectacles or celebrations that inform about the values of the society, sometimes accompanied by explanations but sometimes leaving the reader to make inferences from the nature of the event. In feminist Herland there are annual ritual festivals made up of women of all ages, in religious Utopia there are quarterly religious festivals celebrating each season, in environmentalist Ecotopia they have quarterly “war games” that serve as a type of back-to-nature manhood ritual, and even in dystopic Anthem, there are daily “social meetings” and “social recreations” during which the citizens are lectured about The City, and annual procreation festivals at the Palace of Mating.  

Literary utopias usually emphasize the importance of the “community,” although the interests of the author dictate the form that focus on community takes. Anthem takes it to a dystopian extreme, with government-ordered work, time, and even thoughts. In all four novels, citizens generally eat together in communal dining halls. Citizens of Utopia live in large extended family groups, while the living arrangements in Ecotopia are made up of those with common trades or interests rather than relations. Residents of The City in Anthem live communally in large, impersonal barracks designated by trade. In Ecotopia, citizens focus on sustaining the environment for the good of everyone, and the Herlanders have designed their environment, even the forests, to efficiently produce enough food for everyone and have taken steps to control the birth rate to prevent overpopulation. In all four novels, there is very little privacy, or even interest in privacy. In Anthem, privacy is a punishable offense.

 Another common feature of utopias is a de-emphasis on material wealth in favor of whatever it is that the utopia is designed to value. Citizens of Utopia rotate their homes, share their goods with each other, and make gold and silver into slaves’ chains; the citizens in Anthem have nothing of their own; Herlanders live an ascetic lifestyle with simple clothes and no money; and Ecotopians have no cars, simple clothes, and cannot inherit property. Nevertheless, the “perfect” citizens of these utopias are all unceasingly industrious.

Utopias emphasize education, which operates to inculcate the utopian citizens with utopian values and create the “utopian people” necessary for the society to succeed.  Residents of Utopia and Ecotopia have time dedicated to learning every day, and even in Anthem, the citizens are “educated” to be the way the State wants them to be and to do the job the State wants them to do. The citizens of Herland go even further and state that they all engage in lifelong learning. Everywhere except dystopic Anthem, education is directed by the student’s interests as much as by the needs of the community. These utopian values and systems are also described and compared with their (less ideal) counterpoints in America. In Herland, this is done with question-and-answer sessions between women and men about how things are done in the United States, and in Utopia, Raphael does it in his narration.

These stylistic devices lead to some limitations in plot and character development, but they help build utopias as a literature of ideas because so much effort goes into explaining the ideas themselves. The authors sacrifice many of the traditional novel-writing elements such as plot, conflict, and character development in favor of sharing their ideas for improving society. Because the authors do put so much effort into describing their utopian ideas, we can be sure that their intent was to inspire thought and conversation.

Part of the fun of reading utopian literature is that it never grows stale. Because everyone’s ideas about perfection are different, utopian fiction provides ideas for improvement across the whole spectrum of society. This also makes utopian fiction especially valuable to the literature of ideas (Obj. 4b). Despite having conventions, every utopian book conveys a different message and can get us thinking about different issues. Herland led me to find out more about Charlotte Perkins Gilman and how she developed her ideas and ideals about feminism and women’s place in society. I learned about progressive-era feminism and also about the historical sociology of the family. In reading Ecotopia, I similarly find myself intrigued by the science and politics of environmentalism. Since Ecotopia is a more modern novel, I can compare Callenbach’s ideas with environmentalist ideas that have actually come to fruition and can compare the politics of Ecotopia with the current politics of environmentalism. One of the things that interested me about The Handmaid’s Tale was its feminist message, which led me to explore ecofeminist theory.[1]

The literature of ideas is described in course materials as a literature that “serves thought more than pleasure, or content more than style.” This definition could have been written for utopian fiction. Our study of the writers shows that utopian authors purposefully want to give us ideas for a better life to think about. For people who like to think about their books, this is one of the best reasons to read utopian literature. Ernest Callenbach was quite up front about his idea-spreading agenda, calling his Ecotopia “politics fiction” and stating “[t]he overall picture conveys to readers a hopeful sense that there are real alternatives to our present corporatist, militarist, ultracompetitive, oil-obsessed course.” (“Afterword,” 170). While Charlotte Perkins Gilman was not as outspoken about her intent in writing Herland, even a limited study of her work in sociology reveals that she wrote it so as to proselytize many of her sociological theories, such as the productivity of women that American society was missing out on, the value of having “experts” be responsible for child rearing and education, and the economic efficiencies of organizing to perform routine household tasks like cooking on a larger scale (Gilman, Women and Economics). Even dystopian Anthem encourages readers to think about the dangers of too much cooperation and suggests a solution in radical individualism.

I am always interested in “the rest of the story,” so one of my particular interests in this class has been finding out what led different authors to create their different utopias. Learning “why” utopian authors created their utopias the way they did is perhaps even more interesting than learning “how” they put them together (obj. 4c). A brief biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Gilman such as that found in the NOOK version of Herland, or any familiarity with two of her more widely read publications, The Yellow Wallpaper, a novella about a woman’s madness brought on by too much domesticity, or Women and Economics, a strongly feminist sociological analysis of American society, lets the reader know she has ideas to share about women’s role in society. I was interested to learn why Ayn Rand had such different ideas from other authors about what made a utopia. After discussing her history with Communist oppression, it made sense that she would villainize the “we” and worship the “I.” Knowing she was a refugee from Communist Russia suggests from the outset that, if the government has a place in Anthem, it isn’t a good one. (obj. 3). That sparked a class conversation about the dangers of taking the concept of “community” too far, either in literature or in real life, which was of course what Rand  had hoped to do. The environmental politics of the 1970s certainly contributed to Ernest Callenbach’s design of Ecotopia, and he said as much in his “Afterword.”  Simply knowing that he published Ecotopia in 1975, during the first big wave of the American environmental movement, is enough to suggest he would have big ideas about environmentalism to present.

Utopian authors frequently give their readers written roadmaps to their ideas, but if you take the time to dig even just a little bit into the lives and times of the authors, the roadmaps are almost unnecessary.  The added interest even a little bit of background knowledge brings to these literary utopias makes it well worth the effort to dig, and it also makes the authors’ intent – to provoke ideas –more effective. Learning about the authors and their inspirations makes reading the books more interesting, but it also helps the reader distinguish the ideas and ideals that the author was trying to get across and contributes to the conversation the author was trying to inspire. The conversations we have in class about these books and these ideas are always better for having insight into the authors’ backgrounds, because we can understand what problems the authors wanted to solve. After all, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem.

Many people have tried to create real world utopias, some inspired by literary ideas such as the “Herland” community in South America, and others inspired by ideals all their own, like Disney’s “Celebration.” However, as a dictionary definition of utopia, “an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect”[2] suggests, perfection is hard to achieve. Learning about historical utopias and the implementation of utopian concepts, like the Hull House movement, Disney “Celebration,” and Twin Oaks, has been a useful tool to examine how utopian ideas work – or not.

Many of the historical utopias we have looked at in class are illustrations of the difficulty of achieving a “perfect” society. Historical utopias have generally failed when they try to create a whole “utopian society,” possibly because real life does not come with “utopian people” like the novels generally do. The implementation of utopian ideas, though, like bike sharing, food forests, solar farms, and universal healthcare, has been much more successful. The Hull House movement was successful because they were able to adjust from their original communitarian “settlement houses” to running a system of social programs, which lasted until 2012 when the money ran out.[3]   The Latter Day Saints similarly evolved from being an isolated community teaching and living their unique ideals to abandoning some of their more radical practices like polygamy and joining the field of mainstream religions. Contrast these with the presentation Austin provided in class about Disney’s “Celebration,” designed to make “the happiest place on earth” a lifestyle. Problems with shoddy construction, tyrannical rules, socioeconomic prejudice, poor support services, and unkept promises led Disney to sell the property outright, turning it into just another rich white suburb with an awful HOA. Had Disney read Utopia more carefully, he would have noted that More’s perfect homes and competitively perfect gardens were also filled with Utopian people who shared the same ideas about what made a perfect home and garden. Celebration was not populated with these same ideal people. Like the Mormon church, the Oneida religious community began with a set of religious ideals and strictures, including beliefs about marriage and family that varied significantly from that of the surrounding community. Unlike the Mormons, the Oneida community did not adapt to changing times or societal expectations, resulting in internal and external conflict and the end of the community after less than 50 years.[4]

Despite its many shortcomings in the areas of plot and character development or readability, utopian fiction as a genre nevertheless benefits individual readers and society as whole by showing us that there are alternative ways of doing things and inspiring us to give some of those ideas a try. Historical utopias, like utopian authors, have had more or less success with putting these kinds of ideas into practice, seemingly related to their ability to determine which ideas could be successfully integrated into the society around them and which could not. They show us that sometimes we can take steps towards a “more perfect” world in much the same way that the original framers of the U.S. Constitution sought to form “a more perfect union,” without necessarily having to turn the whole thing on its head.  This is the beauty of the idea of “utopia.” It is ideas. It is process. To quote Bert in Ecotopia about the stable-state economy, “[w]e’re always striving to approximate it, but we never get there.” (31). Utopia is a goal, a process, not a destination.