By Women, For Women: Feminist Visions of Utopia in North American Literature (1848-1920)

Traballo Fin de Grao en Lingua e Literatura Inglesas. Curso 2019-2020The aim of this dissertation is to examine the literary and ideological repercussions present in North American feminist novels which depict matriarchal or single-sex societies such Annie Denton Cridge’s Man’s Rights; or, How Would You Like It (1871) and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915), by comparing them with the historical context in which these narratives were produced. Feminist utopias are typically written as a way of giving voice to the problems and demands of women at a particular historical time: in so doing, these narratives fictionalize women’s aspiration to live in a freer and more egalitarian world, as Anne Mellor observes in her essay “On Feminist Utopias” (1982): “feminist theory is essentially utopian”. In fact, women authors of utopian fiction from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, often considered as the first feminist science fiction writers, reflected in their narratives the crucial social changes which we may now refer to as first-wave feminism, such as the right to vote, freedom from marriage and the household and claims for visibility in the traditionally male public sphere. The chronological framework of first-wave feminism in North America dates from 1848 to 1920, corresponding with key events on women’s suffrage: the Seneca Falls Convention and the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, respectively. Therefore, this dissertation will examine first-wave feminist demands and their context in order to critically discuss how their claims are fictionalised in the utopian narratives they produced. In this sense, special attention will be given to the nature of said utopias in terms of their depiction either as plausible societies or separatist, only-female worlds, examining the extent to which issues such as technology, reproduction and economy are touched upon in these narrative