COMING HOME TO MOTHER: FEMINIST UTOPIAN VISIONS, 1880-1980

Historically, defining utopia has been a difficult and challenging prospect for scholars interested in the genre. Defining feminist utopia and establishing criteria to distinguish it from patriarchal utopia (i.e. one which assumes male standards) is subject to similar problems. Examining a few nineteenth century utopias which were influenced by feminist theory, surveying the current critical interest in feminist utopias, and discovering the recent resurgence of feminist utopian vision, one finds it necessary not only to attempt a genre definition but also to explain the significance of utopian vision in contemporary feminist theory. Feminist utopia can be defined as a narrative portrayal of a society embodying feminist theory. Since feminist theory is diverse so are the utopias which reflect it; however, the basic division between reform and radical feminism is also reflected in the basic division between those feminist utopias seeking androgyny and those seeking gynergy. The feminist world view as developed in contemporary feminist utopias stresses the importance of connectedness, the necessity to transcend either/or thinking, and the basic wholeness and oneness of reality