Lorena Harfold

From “Angels in the House” to Sheroes of Evolution: Reimagining Womanhood in 19th-century Feminist Utopias in the Aftermath of Darwin

Fachgebiet: Englische Literaturwissenschaft

Betreuer: Prof. Dr. Richard Nate

Letzter Vortrag: https://www.ku.de/slf/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/konferenz-der-norden-als-symbolische-landschaft-the-north-as-symbolic-landscape

Abstract:

In the nineteenth century, female authors were confronted with systemic marginalization in the literary profession. Writing was widely considered a male domain, and women were often denied the right to publish or not taken seriously as authors. This exclusion is particularly visible in the genre of utopian fiction: most nineteenth-century female utopists have been forgotten and remain absent from the literary canon. Their voices have been silenced—both by the dominant social structures of their time and by ongoing academic neglect. As a result, their contributions to the utopian discourse and their calls for social transformation have not received sufficient scholarly attention.

These literary works voiced the need for social reform, access to education and gender equality and paved the way for the first wave of feminism in anglophone spaces. When examining the genre of utopia, previous research has primarily relied on analyzing prototypical and canonical utopias by male authors such as News from Nowhere by William Morris, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy and Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells who focused on portraying technological inventions and progress stimulated by Darwin’s The Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man. In these respective plots, said advancements contribute to the abolition of capitalism and a turn towards a more communal, egalitarian way of living. However, scholars have neglected that the fin-de-siècle atmosphere alongside Social Darwinism and discourses of eugenics created the spark of the suffragette movement that experienced increased literary reception from the 1880s until the early years of the 20^th century. That is why this study will conduct a comparative approach by illustrating similarities and differences between female and male utopian authorship in the 19^th century and contrasting the above-mentioned utopias with works like Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, New Amazonia or a Foretaste of the Future by Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett, Gloriana or the Revolution of 1900 by Florence Dixie and Mizora – A Prophecy by Mary Bradley Lane. Findings of this project indicate that female authors became a mouthpiece for the feminist cause to create an equilibrium between the sexes and make the consequences of a reform more palpable with the help of utopian discourses and feminist rhetoric which questioned traditional gender roles in the late-Victorian period. They show that male and female plots align in utopian discourses, but also exhibit gender and ideological differences as well as the distribution of power, knowledge and discourses on societal procreation in these imaginary communities in the aftermath of Malthus and Darwin.