Domesticity, Utopia, and Biopolitics: A Critical Study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Moving the Mountain

With the rise of first-wave feminism in United States, often characterized by the movement to secure women the right to vote and enact a voice in the public sphere, the early twentieth century indicated a clear ideological break from the separate sphere culture that dominated the nineteenth century. This thesis provides a historical approach to the study of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist utopian novel, Moving the Mountain (1911), to study the nuance of this time period’s radical push to reject the rigid ideological structure of separate sphere culture and to advance the position of women in the public sphere. To contextualize this study, Gilman’s work is compared to Catharine Beecher’s A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841) to reveal the underlying continuity of domestic empowerment that offers women a tool to improve their lives. While Beecher uses this empowerment to justify the position of women and the structure of gender roles, Gilman’s novel suggests that this empowerment be used to further advance women into the public sphere. Using Michel Foucault’s notion of biopower, and the way this power can be used as a tool by individuals to improve their lives, this study aims to understand Gilman’s work as a critical utopia that offers commentary on its historical moment of creation, and ultimately, advocates for female liberation