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Utopian Desire and the Women's Movement In ALWAYS PAINTING THE FUTURE: UTOPIAN DESIRE AND THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN SELECTED WORKS BY UNITED STATES FEMALE WRITERS AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Iva Balic, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS Aug ust 2009 APPROVED: Jacqueline Foertsch, Major Professor Deborah Needleman Armintor, Committee Member James Duban, Committee Member David Holdeman, Chair of the Department of English Michael Monticino, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Balic, Iva. Always Painting the Future: Utopian Desire and the Women’s Movement in Selected Works by United States Female Writers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August 2009, 143 pp., references, 95 titles. This study explores six utopias by female authors written at the turn of the twentieth century: Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora (1881), Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant’s Unveiling Parallel (1893), Eloise O. Richberg’s Reinstern (1900), Lena J. Fry’s Other Worlds (1905), Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), and Martha Bensley Bruère’s Mildred Carver, USA (1919). While the right to vote had become the central, most important point of the movement, women were concerned with many other issues affecting their lives. Positioned within the context of the late nineteenth century women’s rights movement, this study examines these “sideline” concerns of the movement such as home and gender-determined spheres, motherhood, work, marriage, independence, and self-sufficiency and relates them to the transforming character of female identity at the time. The study focuses primarily on analyzing the expression of female historical desire through utopian genre and on explicating the contradictory nature of utopian production. Copyright 2009 by Iva Balic ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapters 1. INTRODUCTION: UTOPIAN FICTION AS GENDERED GENRE AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ............................................................1 2. AT HOME IN UTOPIA: NON-SEXIST SPACES AND REDEMPTIVE PLACES IN MARY BRADLEY LANE’S MIZORA AND CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S HERLAND ......................................................................20 3. LABORING WOMEN: CLASS AND WORK IDEOLOGIES IN MARTHA BENSLEY BRUÈRE’S MILDRED CARVER, USA, AND LENA JANE FRY’S OTHER WORLDS ................................................................................................52 4. BACK TO REALITY: THE QUESTION OF EQUALITY IN ALICE ILGENFRITZ JONES AND ELLA MERCHANT’S UNVEILING A PARALLEL AND ELOISE O. RICHBERG’S REINSTERN ..............................84 5. CONCLUSION: WHAT TO DO WITH UTOPIA TODAY? THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF THE GENRE ..............................................................116 APPENDIX: SELECTED UTOPIAN NOVELS IN A CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER .............129 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................133 iii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: UTOPIAN FICTION AS GENDERED GENRE AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ...the extension of women’s privilege is the general principle for all social progress Charles Fourier The interest in utopianism has been traditionally strong in the United States, but the idea was particularly prominent in the nineteenth century, whose first half witnessed the establishment of approximately one hundred utopian communities1 devoted to political, class, gender, and religious concerns (Fischer 10). The ideological notion of America as a space conquered, tamed, and shaped by the chosen people in an effort to create an ideal society was reflected in the communal attempts, which stressed equal pay, women’s involvement in policy making, their property rights, their right to vote in community affairs, and their right to refuse to have intercourse with husbands (Huckle 119). Having been founded to challenge mainstream society, these communities nevertheless failed to bring about the fundamental changes. Ultimately, women were still largely responsible for domestic work and men retained the traditional male tasks such as management and decision-making (121). Still, as the utopian communities started to disintegrate, the utopian impulse remained compelling and the need for the dissemination of new ideas as crucial as ever. Jean Pfaelzer refers to this period in American 1 Among the most famous communities are the Harmonist Society, the Shaker villages, the Owenites at New Harmony, and the Fourierist Phalanx. While there was only one community developed by and for women, several strong female leaders played crucial roles in mixed communities: Ann Lee from a Shaker Village, Jemima Wilkinson from Jerusalem in western New York, Frances Wright from Nashoba Community in Memphis, Tennessee, and Katherine Tingley from a Theosophist community Loma-Land in Point Loma, California (Huckle 119-20). 1 history as “one long depression” (“The Impact” 117); the so-called Gilded Age was in fact a time of “inequality, poverty, and alienation” (118), during which the unskilled labor force was losing jobs to machines in increasing numbers, city life grew dangerous because of crime, pollution, and unsafe living conditions, and the exploitation of the worker was made easier by the growing number of rural Americans and immigrants coming to cities in hopes of better lives. While the Industrial Revolution brought efficiency, comfort, and ease for some, it brought hardship, sickness, and extreme poverty to many more. During this time, Jay Martin explains, change was the only certainty (203). With its imaginative power and its capacity to promote change through the expression of discontent, hope, and desire, utopian fiction became a logical outlet for those committed to radical changes in society. The utopian novel has always served the propagation of political and social ideas and was largely approached as such a tool at the turn of the twentieth century; its literary conventions and fictional story line helped popularize these ideas and ponder wider, seemingly fantastic possibilities outside the everyday realm. Consequently, enhanced by the strong belief of the period in literature’s ability to elevate and enlighten, the utopian novel reached the height of its popularity2 in the last two decades of the nineteenth century (Bartkowski 24). Many of these works, which Pfaelzer calls retrogressive utopias3 (“The Impact” 128), stress the authors’ anxiety about technology and urbanization by calling for a return to the pre-industrial America. 2 Just between the years 1888 and 1900 more than 150 utopian works were published (Roemer 8) and, as Lyman Tower Sargent points out, the nineteenth century produced almost three times as many utopias as all previous centuries put together (“Themes” 2). 3 Jean Pfaelzer describes progressive utopias as technological, industrial, and urban, lacking any dialectic between the character and the environment. She views retrogressive utopias as escapist but optimistic, for they present nature as a corrective for bad effects of industrialization. Defining the present as evil and the future as dangerous and uncertain, they seek a return to a lost age of simple agrarian arcadia. They refuse science as a necessary condition of material security and equality. The farm and family are the ultimate units of social life. 2 They usually romanticize the past and view it with nostalgia. Other utopias highlight the positive aspects of the Gilded Age, such as railroad expansion, the growth of industries, and the development of technology, which they see as a solution to America’s problems. Thrilled about industrial development and excited about the possible social progress of the country, writers of such progressive utopias reflected in their works faith in the future. In either case, the authors shed light on the appalling conditions of contemporary society through contrast with their utopian worlds. Their utopian visions “maximize the contrast between the real world and the utopian world for political purposes” (Pfaelzer, “The Impact” 119); they are designed to raise the consciousness of middle class readers, to alter their perspective of current problems in society, and to call them to action. Historically, the genre of utopian literature has been male dominated, focusing on social conventions and economic and political issues but neglecting the problems of sexism, racism, patriarchy, and gender inequality. When one thinks of popular utopias by male authors,4 one must agree with Tatiana Teslenko’s claim that “most mainstream utopias…[have] failed to expose the sexist discrimination within the patriarchal status quo and to envision true gender equality” (3). Similarly, Carol Farley Kessler comments: “Much has been said and written about men’s visions of utopias; we know far less about women’s” (Introduction 7). Yet, the utopian genre has proven to be an excellent means of expression for women’s political and social agenda. Numerous female writers and reformers recognized not only the genre’s popularity but also its subversive potential and began to utilize it in addressing their concerns by filling the gaps male 4 Consider, for example, Plato’s Republic, Thomas Moore’s Utopia, Samuel Butler’s Erehwon, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines, William Morris’s News from Nowhere, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, or H. G. Wells’s Modern Utopia. 3 authors neglected or purposely ignored. In her utopian novel, Mildred Carver, USA (1919), Martha Bensley Bruère describes the changing
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