Utopian Separatism : Feminism and Science Fiction

This thesis deals with three works of feminist science fiction. The three novels I will examine are Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975) and Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North (2007). My central question in this thesis will be: To what extent are these novels representing contemporary feminisms? My thesis will therefore set out to examine the political and social context in which these novels were written, and also the impact of the genre in itself. By using their different feminisms as a point of departure, I will also examine how they approach gender as a social construction in science fiction through using utopian and dystopian strategies. Starting from the assumption that one can approach “literary narrative as a place where theory takes place” (182), as Judith Butler argues in Bodies that Matter, I will examine the importance of feminism in the narratives and also approach the context in which these novels are written