| This study examines utopian narratives written by American and British nineteenth-century women. These works include Mary Griffith's Three Hundred Years Hence (1836, American), Jane Sophia Appleton's "Sequel to the Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century" (1848, American), Annie Denton Cridge's Man's Rights; Or, How Would You Like It? (1870), American), Mary E. Bradley Lane's Mizora: A Prophecy (1880-1881, American), Jane Hume Clapperton's Margaret Dunmore: Or, A Socialist Home (1888, British), Mrs. George Corbett's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889, British), and Lady Florence Caroline Douglas Dixie's Gloriana; Or, The Revolution of 1900 (1890, British). Placed in the socio-historical context of the nineteenth-century women's movements in both the United States and England, these works employ "utopia," a male-created genre, to undermine patriarchal stereotypes of women and present alternative women's roles in their authors' visions of a new society.;Based on Ernst Bloch's conception of utopia as the Not-Yet-Conscious, this study argues that "utopia" is a dynamic part of the socio-political process, constantly moving forward toward an unknown and undetermined, hence open, future. Its anticipatory nature kindles our hope and optimism, and its positive outlook on the future appeals to women, one of the oppressed groups.;This study demonstrates that American women utopian writers played a pioneering role in their awareness of women's social and economic condition. By contrast, British women utopian writers defended women's rights to participate in political activities by depicting utopian women capable of assuming leading roles. The impact of these American narratives is evident in the twentieth-century tradition of separatist feminist utopias begun by Mary Lane's Mizora: A Prophecy, and continued in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) and later works by such authors as Joanna Russ, Suzy McKee Charnas, and Sally Gearhart. Whereas thus far twentieth-century British women writers seem to have tended toward dystopias, the feminist utopian tradition established by Lane continues to prosper in America. |
