Women's Fantasies and Feminist Utopias

Abstract

Authors of feminist utopian fiction usually begin by showing how women are profoundly alienated and limited by patriarchal society; they then go on to acquaint the reader with an alternative society in which women could feel at home and manifest their potential.1 The works considered here are superficially quite different, yet the utopian societies they create are surprisingly similar. Mary Bradley Lane's Mizarza: A Prophecy,2 and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland,3 grow out of the nineteenth-century women's movement. Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time,4 and Joanna Russ's The Female Man,5 arise from the contemporary feminist movement. Piercy's work and Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed,6 focus on the details of utopian social organization and mores; Dorothy Bryant's The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You,7 James Tiptree, Jr.'s Houston, Do You Read? 8 and Mary Staton's From the Legend of Biel,9 are more interested in defining an alternative feminist consciousness. This essay will focus on the surprisingly numerous areas of consensus among such seemingly divergent works. To the degree that feminist utopias are critiques of patriarchal society, they tend to emphasize the forces which most directly oppress women. One major concern is the low status and pay for woman's work. In no feminist utopia is there any difference in income according to the kind of work done, although there is some difference in status. In Mizarza, a cook has the highest status; in Herland, a schoolteacher. Another recurring concern of the patriarchy is illegitimacy. In feminist utopias, children are never illegitimate, because they all have mothers. They are not, however, seen as their mother's property, and they do not carry their names. Names are characteristically indicative of individual,