An Analysis of Formal Education in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward

Abstract

In protest against the ruthless capitalism of the late nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward, a novel of social reform. In his book, Bellamy transported a wealthy, young, nineteenth-century Bostonian, Julian West, on a fictional journey to the Year 2000. West, Bellamy's fictional citizen of 1887, witnessed the wonders of the new social order, an industrialized utopia. The citizens of this new world had abolished profit, greed, competition, and poverty under the leadership of a national industrial army. This familiar theme has been recounted in numerous social and literary histories. Despite the literary imperfections and unsophisticated style of this work, many readers have looked beyond it as a mere period piece and viewed it as an influential document of American utopianism.