SOURCE: “Coming Home: Four Feminist Utopias and Patriarchal Experience,”* in Future Females: A Critical Anthology, edited by Marleen S. Barr, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1981, pp. 63-70.

[In the following essay, Pearson observes affinities in modern feminist utopian novels and suggests that such works “seek to transcend the limitations of female experience.”]

Feminist utopian fiction implicitly or explicitly criticizes the patriarchy while it emphasizes society's habit of restricting and alienating women. Each work discussed here assumes that the patriarchy is unnatural and fails to create environments conducive to the maximization of female—or male—potential. Upon discovering a sexually equalitarian society, the narrators have a sense of coming home to a nurturing, liberating environment.¹

The creators of feminist utopias envision societies which are surprisingly similar. Mary Bradley Lane's Mizora: A Prophesy² and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland³ were originally serialized in newspapers and grew out of the nineteenth-century women's movement. The contemporary feminist movement influenced Dorothy Bryant and Mary Staton. Bryant's The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You⁴ is mystic in its primary focus, while Staton's From the Legend of Biel⁵ is a highly symbolic novel about consciousness. This essay will discuss the surprisingly numerous areas of consensus among such seemingly divergent works, agreement which can be explained by the similar conditioning and experiences women share.

Feminist utopias tend to emphasize forces which most directly oppress women. One major concern is the low status and pay for “women's work.” The narratives often emphasize the particular value of certain traditionally feminine occupations. The citizens of Mizora's classless society, for example, have particular respect for cooks, and school teaching is one of the most valued occupations in Herland. Everyone is employed and everyone's job is meaningful. This does not mean, however, that no one works at jobs the patriarchal society would judge to be “menial.” For instance, in Ata, the cultivation of the soil enriches the people's dreams.

These feminist utopias assume that individuals naturally work for love rather than for profit. Because of their experiences in the patriarchy, women may find it easier than men to imagine societies in which labor is free and people do not compete for scarce jobs which have status. Although housewives have never earned a salary, a sense of love, pride, or duty motivates them to serve their families. Women who have worked outside the home as secretaries, nurses and elementary school teachers have done their jobs efficiently and well—without the hope of becoming executives, doctors or principals. Ironically, it may be women's experiences in a sexist society which have enabled them to see truths about human motivations.

The novels challenge and correct biases about innate female “nature.” They counter stereotypes by emphasizing women's strength, courage and intelligence. These female characters desire to take risks and they seek adventure. The authors celebrate the liberation which results from an absence of rape or other assault. Lane and Gilman assert the superiority of female gentleness and challenge the assumption that women are weak and need male protection. The male explorer who discovers Herland wonders how the women survived without protective men. He soon learns that “stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of protection” (p. 128). The following statement from Mizora takes a positive view of men's absence: “I noticed with greater surprise than anything had excited in me, the absence of men. … There was not a lock or bolt on any door” (p. 28).

Violence, coupled with a desire to master others, is antithetical to a feminist utopian vision. In all cases, feminist utopias allow citizens to control their own lives. These women are free from the rape of their minds as well as their bodies. No one is owned by anyone else. In Herland, two male explorers see the evil of their ways and embrace a nonviolent, noncompetitive, equalitarian ethic. Instead of labeling men as the enemy, Bryant and Staton point out the need for different patterns of socialization and education. All four authors portray women as the creators of a new consciousness and a new vision.

Women are, after all, the victims of sexism. Since they alone know where the shoe pinches, they are more motivated than men to seek the means for alleviating the discomfort. Perhaps even more importantly, their experience is just different enough from men's practical knowledge to enable them to challenge the dominant masculine public culture.

Feminist utopias do away with the division between the inhumane marketplace and the humane hearth. This is not accomplished by moving both men and women out into a brutal public world. Instead, the entire society is patterned after the principles which (ideally) govern the home. Herland, for example, is “like a pleasant family—an old, established, perfectly-run country place” (p. 238). The metaphor “coming home” is evident throughout these feminist utopias. The protagonists typically assume that they will be alienated in a public world which demands the denial of such vital parts of the self as emotion, vulnerability and spontaneity. The nurturing utopian societies allow for the full development of each individual within a supportive, secure environment. When an outsider reaches the alternative society, he stops repressing valuable human qualities and feels rejoined to the self. In From the Legend of Biel, for example, as Howard Scott entered a building “he felt that if he could stay here, in this room, he would come together with that in himself which was not realized. … The pieces of shattered mosaic which was himself could come naturally, easily together, matching edge to edge, and click into a whole” (p. 46).

In these novels, reclaiming the self is often associated with coming home to mother. However, in contrast to the stereotype of a smothering, dependent, maternal woman, the authors take pains to define that mother as a fully human, free person. The explorer who decides to marry one of the women of Herland describes his love in terms of “coming home” to a mother of this type:

I found that loving ‘up’ was a very good sensation after all. It gave me a queer feeling, a way down deep, as of the stirring of some ancient dim pre-historic consciousness, a feeling that they were right somehow—that this was the way to feel. It was like—coming home to mother. I don’t mean the wide-flannels and doughnuts mother, the fussy person that waits on you and spoils you and doesn’t really know you. I mean the feeling that a very little child would have, who had been lost—for ever so long. It was a sense of getting home; of being clear and rested, of safety and yet freedom, of love that was always there, warm like sunshine in May, not hot like a stove or a featherbed, a love that didn’t irritate and didn’t smother (p. 323).

The turn of the century utopias sentimentalize motherhood and assert women's moral superiority.⁶Herland's narrator notes that women in that society “had no enemies; they themselves were all sisters and friends” (p. 129). They are all mothers whose “power of mother love, that maternal instinct we so highly lauded” is developed to the fullest and complemented by a “sister love” (p. 128). The success of Herland's society is attributed to mother love: “The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts. Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect on them—on the race. You see we are mothers she repeated, as if in that she had said it all” (p. 152).

These writers, however, do not naively assume that the bond between mother and child is always positive. Even though mother/daughter love forms the pattern for all other relationships in Herland, Mizora and From the Legend of Biel, this bond differs from its patriarchal equivalent. There is no illegitimacy because all children have mothers; children are not seen as the property of their parents. The idea of having two parents is ludicrous in Mizora. When asked about her father or “other parent,” a young girl laughs: “You have a queer way of jesting. I have but one mother, one adorable mother. How could I have two?” (p. 2).

In From the Legend of Biel we learn that the nuclear family must be destroyed because it is always composed of captor parents and a captured child: “The whole object of the family is to repeat itself, to create the future in the image of the past. Consequently it is a very effective brake on change because it keeps all children within the boundaries of cultural tradition. In the family learning is a process of psychological brutality at the end of which a child knows nothing but what is permissible to the tribe” (p. 219). Patriarchal parents entrap their children by expecting them to justify their own sacrifices. A mother who lives her own life does not need to live through her child.

From the Legend of Biel severs the link between parent and child, since, in this novel, women do not give birth to children in the customary natural fashion. This dissolution of the nuclear family leads to a redefinition of the parent/child relationship. The story of the love between Mikkran and Biel, her young charge, forms this culture's central myth: “The mentor/charge relationship is based on mutual sovereignty—not on imitation. The one truth in the Federation which has maintained equilibrium in the absence of prescribed morality, in the absence of unquestioned basic tenets, is this relationship which teaches that two persons of relaxed and curious mind who learn and share together, who confront the unknown, also create joy” (p. 22). Furthermore, no person assumes total responsibility for child care.

In Bryant's The Kin of Ata, childbirth is seen as a communal responsibility. The narrator, a visitor from a patriarchal culture, watches as a young girl in the preliminary stages of labor is assisted by the three men who might have conceived the child. When she is nearing delivery, the entire community gathers to help. A citizen explains, “We try to take some of the pain on ourselves, to share it. We try to give some of our strength for the hard work. We try to make the girl feel happy that, once she has done this, she need no longer carry the burden of the child alone. Then she will labor in joy” (p. 149). However, although the mother/child relationship is celebrated, child rearing is the responsibility of professionals. Even the women of Herland who emphasize the overriding power of mother love, entrust young children to trained teachers.

Just as they redefine the mother/child bond, the authors envision families of equals, families which are not claustrophobic and nuclear. Rather, they are relatively large extended groups who freely choose to live together. The members of these groups are not divided into male and female roles. In The Kin of Ata, “kin” replaces words which signify gender differences. This novel's narrator has difficulty discerning sexual distinctions. Similarly, Herland's newcomers are somewhat shocked to realize that the women “don’t seem to notice our being men. … They treat us well—just as they do one another. It’s as if our being men was a minor incident” (p. 69).

Economic and racial prejudice are absent from these families. In fact, respect for the individual is an integral aspect of the feminist utopian vision. The opinions of individual citizens are respected in Herland, where decisions are made by a community family council. These societies essentially function without strong governments and repressive laws. A citizen of Mizora explains, “in a country like ours, where civilization has reached the state of enlightenment that needs no law, we are simply guided by custom” (p. 28). Such procedures coincide with Ursula K. Le Guin's conception of the “female principle”: “To me the ‘female principle’ is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. It values order without constraint, rule by custom, not by force. It has been the male who enforces order, who constructs power-structures, who makes, enforces, and breaks laws.”⁷

The societies in these novels use persuasion, rather than force, to establish order. And, in contrast to their traditional domestic duties, mothers enforce the public law. Their controlling hand is almost free of restraint. For instance, a policy of noninterference governs the mentors in From the Legend of Biel. Mikkran desires to protect Biel without interfering with the child's journey. The mentor learns that it is possible to offer guidance without disrupting a young person's natural growth. And, she realizes that she is most effective when acting as an equal rather than as a master. The mothers of Herland also respect their children's natural inclinations. These children learn when they play; the creation of children's games is seen as one of the society's supreme achievements. In this way, the adults provide direction without limiting the next generation's natural desire to explore and experiment. Contrary to our expectations, the children who have been allowed to do exactly as they wish learn to be wise and productive adults. Time after time, the discoverers of feminist utopias marvel that they “never heard a baby cry” (Bryant, p. 20).

The children of Ata are also encouraged to experiment freely. Such lenient methods of raising children result from a belief that the interests of the individual and the group are not in conflict. Yet, although these novels assume that people prefer to act in an ethical manner, they do not romanticize human behavior. The reason for the kin of Ata's decision to have a low birthrate exemplifies this point: children “are pure desire. … They must try everything, have everything—too many would destroy our way of life faster than any invasion from outside” (p. 152). People learn from both their negative and positive experiences.

Citizens of feminist utopias tolerate rather than deny unpleasant human behavior. For example, instead of being punished for violating Herland's customs, the narrator is cared for by sympathetic women. And, after the protagonist of The Kin of Ata accidentally kills a revered old man, his action results in a surprising consequence: the kin perform a rite of purification and ask forgiveness for their violent feelings. Such resolutions are based upon the assumption that crime is bad for the perpetrator as well as for the victim. However, tolerance of this sort is more than a manipulative method of making sin lose its appeal. Instead, as Le Guin explains, it is based upon a philosophical rejection of dualistic thinking:

Our curse is alienation, the separation of Yang from Yin. Instead of a search for balance and integration, there is a struggle for dominance. Divisions are insisted upon, interdependence is denied. The dualism of value that destroys us, the dualism of superior/inferior, ruler/ruled, owner/owned, user/used, might give way to what seems to me, from here, a much healthier, sounder, more promising modality of integration and integrity (IGN, pp. 138-9).

A feminist utopia's most common plot structure emphasizes the relationship between the repression of parts of the self and the oppression of other people. The Kin of Ata is typical: although the narrator is an extremely successful man in a patriarchal society, he is an alienated, unhappy misogynist. When this man stops repressing the metaphorical woman within himself, he is free from his need to dominate and conquer people in the outside world. Staton's characters also develop an ethic based upon the full and free attainment of the self. They learn that “equilibrium is a natural state for persons, and ultimately inevitable, once the screen for systems has been removed” (p. 297). Systems, are “Basic Tenets, Constitutions, Morals, Law, Belief, Ethics—any construct which presumes to decide what is appropriate human behavior” (p. 297).

Coming home to the self, then, is based upon an organic, anarchic ethic of growth rather than a dualistic pattern of ownership, denial and repression. The mothers of Herland, who “had no theory of the essential opposition of good and evil; life to them was a growth; their pleasure was in growing and their duty also” (p. 240) exemplify this point. Similarly, in From the Legend of Biel, morality is based upon one question: “How do we manifest potential?” (p. 300). Process is more important than product. An attempt to extract “truth” from this process freezes or kills experiential reality. The kin of Ata avoid writing down their sacred myths for just this reason. They prefer an oral tradition, a tradition which allows their myths to be enriched by the dreams and interpretations of each storyteller.

Eliminating hierarchies changes the spatial metaphors which people use to understand their world. The kin of Ata arrange their circular village buildings in a spiral pattern. A vertical infinity sign is a sacred symbol in From the Legend of Biel. The enclosed space symbolizes the known; the space outside represents the unknown. The infinity sign signifies the capacity of the human brain to “embrace all concepts and all reality” (p. 174) when it forgets the patriarchal desire to “own mates, progeny, land, knowledge, or emotions” (p. 176).

Inhabitants of feminist utopias typically reject the assumptions behind terms like “abstract” and “objective.” They best understand outer phenomena when they combine analysis with empathic and intuitive understanding. Again, women's experiences in the patriarchal society undoubtedly contribute to this emphasis. Women have not been encouraged to interpret experiences in a scientific fashion. Consequently, they have often developed intuitive skills, or “women's intuition,” which are often denigrated.

Despite this stereotypical denigration, science in feminist utopias is not at a low level. Their science is not inferior; it is just different. Howard Scott, for example, enters the “cerebral cortex” of the Thoacdien dome where he becomes aware of “a large, benevolent heart which was glad he was there, and in beating, spoke to him” (p. 47). Such technology, which is designed to include natural processes, results from a consciousness which fuses thought and feeling.

Although this consciousness does not call for the worship of a “god,” a vision of an earth mother goddess often personifies the philosophical vision underlying a feminist utopia. The patriarchy has associated woman with nature to justify and perpetuate the oppression of women. Yet, for these writers, such an association forms a basis for potential strength. As opposed to the judgmental patriarchal god who reigns above nature and humankind, the mother goddess represents life in all its fluidity and contradictions. The goddess personifies a vision which is consistent with female experience. In Herland “mother love … was a Religion. … All they did related to this power” (p. 266). And, as a young girl dies in Mizora, she regrets that she cannot “go to sleep in the arms of my mother. But the great mother of us all will soon receive me in her bosom” (p. 210). In feminist utopian fiction, then, religious feeling is associated with self-affirmation and a sense of unity with all life.

The metaphors for the birth of a feminist consciousness and society are patterned after women's actual procreative experiences. However, the new woman and the new society do not spring full-blown from a deity's head. As children emerge from a woman's body, the utopian future is an outgrowth of women's actual situation. The utopian novels I have discussed seek to transcend the limitations of female experience. They suggest new institutions and new visions which are derived from women's experience in the patriarchy. They acknowledge that, like babies, societies are inevitably engaged in a process of growth which is beyond the control of the mother who gave them life.

Notes

1. Works were assumed to be feminist utopias if they portrayed complete equality between the sexes. This article does not discuss novels such as Thomas Berger's A Regiment of Women which envisions a society where men are oppressed by women. And, it considers only the work of women authors.

2. Mary Bradley Lane, Mizora: A Prophesy (Boston: Gregg Press, 1975). All further references will be cited in the text. Mizora was originally published in 1890.

3. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland, serialized in the Forerunner, 6 (1915). All further references will be cited in the text. Herland has been reprinted (New York: Pantheon, 1979).

4. Dorothy Bryant, The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You (New York: Random House, 1976). Originally published as The Comforter in 1971 by Moon Books. All further references will be cited in the text.

5. Mary Staton, From the Legend of Biel (New York: Ace Books, 1976). All further references will be cited in the text.

6. For a discussion of turn of the century female moral reform societies, see Carol Smith Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast and the Militant Woman: A Case Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,” American Quarterly, 22 (1971), 562-84.

7. Ursula K. Le Guin, “Is Gender Necessary?” in Aurora: Beyond Equality, ed. Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan Janice Anderson (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1976), p. 134. Further references will be cited in the text followed by IGN and page number.

* This article is a revised version of “Women's Fantasies and Feminist Utopias” which first appeared in Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies (Fall 1977), pp. 50-61. Many of the ideas in this essay also appear in the final chapter of The Female Hero in British and American Literature, co-author, Katherine Pope (New York: Bowker, 1979).