Katie Parnian 

Sexual Ecology in Ecotopia

               Prior to reading Ecotopia, I expected the novel’s primary focus to support the concept of an eco-friendly fantasy land, successfully freeing itself from the modern day’s dependence upon fossil fuel-burning automobiles, plastic water bottles, and cosmetics. During the actual reading of the novel, however, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Why does so much of the story’s plot, which of course is concerned with saving the planet, so preoccupied with the sexual attitudes and relationships of its characters?" It appears almost as if the author, Ernest Callenbach, was trying to make a connection between the nature of the intimate relationships between humans and man’s (or woman’s) relationship with the environment. In an effort to investigate this question further, I would need to determine how essential the betrayal of sexual relations and female sexual liberation were to the framework of Ecotopia as a utopian novel. Does it inform the utopian ecology, or is it only a casual preoccupation of the author? To extend my research further, I also intended to investigate how the nature of female sexuality and sexual attitudes in general in other utopian works, such as Herland and The Book of the City of Ladies addressed the needs and social ills of the times in which they were written.

               Fortunately, I found some direct evidence to answer the first part of this question as soon as my research was underway. In a lecture given by Callenbach at Muskingum College in 2008, Callenbach was asked about the importance of the sexual emphasis in the novel. Callenbach simply replied, “Sex is a very important part of human life…relationships are important to society” (Mull, 1). According to the same article, he also added that he was inspired by the Free Love Movement and issues concerning trust in relationships(1). Since the connection between sexuality and utopian society had been established by the author, I would next need to determine in which ways this connection was revealed in Ecotopia and how its message was connected to the underlying theme of environmentalism.

               William Weston, the bewildered, yet willing journalist in the novel devotes a substantial amount of his adventures in the story’s plot in discussing his new relationship with his independent and bold Ecotopian lover, Marissa, and comparing their relationship with to that of his two more obligatory relationships with his former wife, Pat and his mistress, Francine. Weston’s preference for Marissa’s more natural appearance and bold, animal-like approach to sexuality are demonstrative of his desire to “return to nature”. His preference for the natural, more animal-like sexuality is confirmed when he makes the ultimate decision to remain with Marissa in Ecotopia. Naomi Jacobs isolates this idea that Marissa’s character and nature are intertwined in the following comment: “…Marissa is the cliché of woman-as-wild-animal; sometimes, when she looks at me, writes Weston, “my hair stands up as if I’m  confronting a creature who’s wild and incomprehensible , animal and human at once” (Jacobs, 320). Jacobs further distinguishes additional descriptions of Marissa as descriptive of her symbolic naturalism, such as having the “startled look of a wild bird” and “the feral gaze like that of an untamed animal” (Jacobs 320).

               Marissa’s bold, sexual assertiveness is characteristic of the underlying feminist themes in the novel, as well. For instance, Snodgrass elaborates on the attitudes of Ecotopian women when she says, “…Ecotopian women expect a give-and-take in courtship, intercourse, and free expression. Female-controlled contraceptives and abortions stabilize the growth of population, and women dominate the family” (Snodgrass, 183). Besides the idea of sexual liberation present, the idea of women taking control of their bodies through the use of birth control was a revolutionary idea during the time the novel was written.

               An awareness of sexuality and contraception and the value of these love relationships is overt in this environmental novel in ways that might transcend the needs of some other novel of social problems. If Callenbach has characters who struggle with nature for an ecological utopia, they may also need to bring that struggle to their sexual awareness.

Having read Herland and The Book of the City of Ladies, it’s hard not to see how gender and sexual issues go hand in hand with other utopian issues. Women’s abstinence in sex, for instance, is a response is to distinguish women from their image as sexual devices and mothers.

Works Cited

Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia. New York: Bantam Books, 1975.

Jacobs, Naomi. “Failures of the Imagination in Ecotopia”. Extrapolation: 38.4(Winter 1997): p318.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. “Ecotopia”. The Encyclopedia of Utopian Literature. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. 1995.