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New Woman Utopian Fiction Anthology

Catherine Helen Spence_Author Portrait

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Social Systems
In contrast with the selected, similar origin stories in the previous chapter, the societies depicted in each text vary greatly. As addressed in the general introduction, all make the contemporary, lowered status of women a focal point, either through explicitly futuristic, matriarchal societies (New Amazonia, A Few Hours in A Far-Off Age, “The White Women”), depictions of feminist revolutions (the Dixie works, Margaret Dunmore, “Women Free”), or more subtle castigations of particular, misogynistic institutions (marriage in Handfasted, medicine in The Age of Science). So, although texts tend to have a similar agenda, few commonalities, aside from major facets of political and educational equality, exist between them.

The first text in this chapter, New Amazonia, like many contemporary, male utopian texts, provides a traditional overview of a new, speculative society. Most societal qualities are not organically discovered by the nameless narrator, but, instead, are essentially listed in this section of the text. Men may live and work in New Amazonia, but they do not hold any governmental/leadership positions. Only healthy people may marry, poor and sick individuals are forbidden from joining the society, and sick infants are killed. They also heavily emphasize physical fitness and comfortable clothing--a museum displays a Victorian-era corset as a sort of torture device. Although utopian, Corbett tends to portray New Amazonia as rather extreme and repressive; citizens are required to pledge allegiance to the nation and its rather strict code of mores.

In contrast, La Maison, the central home of Margaret Dunmore, seems posited as much more positive. All participants helped form and run the home, and, thus, all appear willing to be there. The selection included here features a visit from Mr. Hunter, a misogynistic caricature, who meets with Walter Cairns, a house member, as he considers placing his daughters in the La Maison school. Clapperton portrays Hunter completely unsympathetically, but Cairns still speaks to him calmly and politely, suggesting the ethos of kindness that permeate the household. The latter explains the focus on gentle, egalitarian education: no competition, no “cramming or straining of a child’s natural powers”, and teaching the same subjects (which are both academic and domestic) to both boys and girls. Later in the chapter, the reader learns that La Maison residents eschew religion and teach their pupils the same. Cairns works to convince Cairns that his daughters would benefit from receiving such an education, even using a somewhat Wollstoncraftian defense, arguing that they will be better wives and mothers for doing so. Although the society of La Maison remains contained to the home (something, as discussed in the origin stories intro, may have been of some comfort to New Woman readers), Cairns and others clearly desire to spread the message. Ultimately, though, Cairns and others decide that the Hunter children are not promising enough to live in the household, determining that they possess too much ignorance and “vulgar thought” to succeed in their household. Although Dunmore and New Amazonia approach the feminist utopia drastically differently, they do seem to possess this commonality: not everyone is sufficient enough to live in their respective societies. Contrasting with, perhaps, Gloriana, which attends more to the quantity of women working for the revolution than the quality, both Dunmore and New Amazonia present societies that are carefully cultivated, with individuals who are not intellectually or physically sufficient not permitted.

In spite of their greater differences, this commonality is not the only one that exists between the two texts. First, it is notable that both texts depict rather socialist societies, though, as expected, each text executes such formation differently. As discussed previously, New Women writers tended to support socialism and related revolutions, connecting them intrinsically with women's rights, so it is unsurprising that two New Woman utopian novels, in spite of their surface level differences, both represented socialism positively. New Amazonia possesses a rather typical socialist government: “The State was to be the only importer, no private competition being permitted”. La Maison, in contrast, perpetuates socialism through a collectively owned and operated home existing as a sanctuary within larger, capitalist society. Interestingly enough, it is capitalism itself that allows La Maison to form--the titular character funds the home with her inherited fortune. Sally Ledger addresses the ‘domestic socialism’ of La Maison. She compares it with Morris’ News from Nowhere--both novels intrinsically link socialist and feminist progress, although the former, perhaps as a true “New Woman” novel, does offer the female characters more power and influence. Ledger writes, “Margaret Dunmore and her close friend, Therese Jose, are the centers of political consciousness in the novel, and have considerable power in the ‘Socialist Home’” (Ledger 51). Ledger also addresses how, though liberal feminism remained more prominent at the time, socialist feminism--focusing mainly on supporting the welfare state--gained traction around the publication date of Dunmore. New Amazonia seems to posit a similar correlation between socialist progress, but it, perhaps, reverses the formation of La Maison. The latter is an explicitly socialist society formed by a feminist group, but New Amazonia begins as just a matriarchal society, who then decide to embrace socialism. Perhaps the divergence here originates in the two texts’ diverging origin stories. Women make the conscious decision to start La Maison, and they opt for a socialist utopia. New Amazonia is matriarchal by circumstance, not through a rebellion of women, so the socialist system comes later, after the society organizes. The circumstantial origins of New Amazonia also suggest why and how an entire nation and society can become such a socialist utopia--significant shifts in global powers and war likely had more impact than a small group of women seeking reforms.

Similarly, Margaret Dunmore and New Amazonia possess another similar social facet, although, again, each texts approaches it somewhat differently: ‘state’ ownership of motherhood. In New Amazonia, “all children were considered the property of the state”. Mothers have the right to publicly nurse, but they are punished for “recklessness” for having more than four children. Though more subtly and, perhaps, more gently, motherhood is similarly “state” regulated in La Maison--all female members of the household mother all children. The ‘mothers’ seem happy to do so though, as, unlike New Amazonia, nothing about the tone of this section suggests it as a punitive measure, as one to prevent irresponsible custody arrangements or parenting. Instead, the women of La Maison (although still stuck in a feminine gender role regarding motherhood) take a lot of pride in and associate high emotions with their work. In the included excerpt, Clapperton’s narrator describes a household infant in extremely positive, idealized terms, and Lucy, a household resident, describes how happy they are to all feel like “his mother”. Perhaps the only uncomfortable facet of the La Maison approach to mothering is that infants who misbehave are put into a “prison” to help “train them to obedience”, although they are never scolded. Like the rejection of the Hunter children, such a concept further suggests a sinister underpinning to the otherwise positive tone surrounding La Maison. That said, the collective mothering still seems generally more positive in tone than the state custody of children in New Amazonia. New Women's opinions on motherhood diverged greatly; Lorna Sage argued that the crux of New Womanhood was having “ambitions beyond motherhood” (465). In contrast, Jean Pfaelzer suggests that 19th century feminist texts in particular celebrated motherhood--20th century texts depict the institution negatively, while 18th century texts, using the “absent mother figure” trope, tend to circumvent it entirely. New Amazonia and Margaret Dunmore offer evidence for either interpretation. Obviously, state custody of children and collective mothering allows for lower pressure on individual women and more time for other pursuits. Thus, New Amazonia seems more in the first camp, suggesting that motherhood was hardly a woman’s most important job--after this mention, its role is rather minimized the text’s depictions of society. At the same time, the celebratory nature of the motherhood and the perpetuation of traditional gender roles (though while taking pride in them, like News from Nowhere) in Margaret Dunmore suggests a New Womanhood open to progressive, socialist reforms in mothering, but still heavily celebrating it as an institution. Furthermore, since the motherhood in the text is so collective, Clapperton seems to be suggesting a connection between potential socialist reforms and motherhood, specifically, not just femininity. Clearly, New Women strongly diverged in the importance of motherhood in their reformed, utopian societies, and the included texts in this chapter seem to represent both sides--New Amazonia nearly suggests eliminating the institution through true state-sponsored parenting, while the women of La Maison celebrate and advocate it as an important facet of their socialist society.

Thus, New Amazonia and Margaret Dunmore, both texts that address several aspects of the formation of society, reveal a few specific issues raised by New Woman fiction: the ethics of pledging “allegiance” to a society, socialist governing, and the position of mothering. In contrast, the society in Catherine Helen Spence’s Handfasted revolves around a singular feminist issue: marriage. In the included excerpt. Lilliard, the text’s female protagonist, explains to the narrator, Hugh, (who, diverting from all other included texts, is male) that marriage in Coumba only takes place through the “handfasting” ritual (a reference to a similar device in Sir Walter Scott’s The Monastery). “Handfasting” is a form of trial marriage that all couples must go through before being permanently wed in Columba, the novel’s society. It is, more or less, cohabiting--couples live together and essentially act “married”, with the caveat that one or the other partner, regardless of gender, is free to leave at any point in time. Lilliard is very level-headed about the possibility that she may leave her handfasting partner or that he may leave her--emotions seem relatively uninvolved. The included chapter, “The Peculiar Institution of Columba”, reveals other, elements of the utopian society. Religion ended many years ago, when the only remaining minister among the settlers died at sea. Citizens heavily value ‘great books’, but have little access directly to them--teachers learn from them in the capital, then coming back to individual towns to teach students what they learn. In addition, both boys and girls learn crafts and needlework at school (though each gender learns slightly different forms--boys crochet, and girls knit, for example), which, through unexplained means, helps expand their memory and capacity for great books.

Despite these other revelations, the narrator remains the most perplexed by the handfasting ritual, and most of the chapter focuses on it. Clearly, the novel intends to take a more feminist, even sex-positive perspective to traditional marriage. Men and women select their own partners, cohabit, and have the freedom to leave at any point before settling into a real commitment. Naturally, the so-called liberty of this concept is problematized by the fact that the state requires such an action, but, still, the text seems primarily like a feminist rewriting of typical marriage rituals. Terra Walston Joseph argues that the new marriage ritual, more so than other aspects of Columba, is the novel’s central, feminist tenant. It eliminates the “double standard” regarding women with multiple partners, decreases spousal abuse through creating more satisfying, healthy relationships, and eradicates the need for prostitution. Thus, unlike most other included texts, Columbans have not made many feminist reforms, but, instead, one central change with far-reaching impacts. The novel suggests that perhaps just one major reform, instead of several, could make a large change, making the novel seem more specific in its political agenda. Notably, many other included texts do not comment on marriage at all, and they certainly do not to the extent that Handfasted does. New Women were certainly concerned with marriage and marriage rituals--Ann Ardis addresses many non-speculative/utopian texts where women escaping its confines and having premarital relations is a focal point. Some other texts do comment on the issue (marriage and divorce are allowed in New Amazonia, for example), but, otherwise, writers of New Woman speculative fiction tended to comment on it less frequently. Perhaps Spence is unique in that she believed it to be the source of female oppression, while other writers saw it as more of a side-effect of lack of female suffrage, capitalist economies, general patriarchy, etc. Spence lived in Australia, away from most other New Woman writers--perhaps her geographical isolation impacted her unique point of view. Regardless, her focus on solving the "marriage problem", to borrow Sarah Grand's term, appears to be one of the most explicit New Woman castigations of women's inequality in sexuality.

Finally, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford is, similarly, deeply unique, diverging completely from the aforementioned texts. It is the earliest text in this anthology (as discussed in the general introduction), and is not speculative or futuristic. Instead, Cranford is a small village located in contemporary, Victorian England, which women essentially run--they own property, enforce a strict social code (everyone lives in poverty, but nobody is permitted to discuss this or other uncomfortable topics, like death), and run single men who are not willing to conform out of town. Captain Brown, a single man, comes to town and openly discusses poverty, but, in a twist, the ladies find him kind enough to allow him to continue living there. The novel is hardly a classic utopian text; Rae Rosenthal collects and discusses the small amount of criticism that posits it as such. Rosenthal argues that the text is a clear feminist utopia, as it meets the definition she establishes: “emphasis on feminine values and issues, commitment to communialsim, and an ability to overcome male intruders through either expulsion or conversion” (74). The text is at least 30 years older than other included texts in this anthology, and, at the time of its publication, the New Woman phenomenon had not taken off in the manner that it had by the 1880s and 1890s. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that the text operates more subtly--women do not vote, go to school, or have major careers, and the national governmental and economic systems remain the same, but they are able to dictate the social mores of a small, otherwise typical Victorian village. Such a depiction may have been more appealing to earlier Victorian feminists and other female readers. It, like many of the origin stories, recalls Beaumont’s “latent content”, perhaps more so than even Margaret Dunmore. The change is not particularly radical; in fact, the Cranford women live in abject poverty, and their life of gossip and social regulation seems hardly pleasant or empowering. Arguably, Cranford is more "Independent Woman" (a term from Anne Ardis, as discussed in the introduction ) fiction than New Woman fiction. In some senses, it operates as a contrasting example for the purposes of this anthology, demonstrating the "Independent Woman" ideal of women maintaining most hegemonic values while challenging one aspect of sexist society. That said, if there is a commonality amongst the texts included in this section, it is, perhaps, matriarchal authority being the root of some kind of social change; in Cranford, it may be maintenance of rather niche conservative social values instead of a New Woman-style socialist revolution, but, like the New Woman texts, the utopian aspects of society are still intrinsically linked to female authority. Although it, again, also serves as a contrasting text, I would argue that Cranford also functions as a predecessor to New Woman fiction in this sense (further justifying its inclusion in this anthology).

Aside from this, though, the texts radically diverge; each can be read as a different example of writings regarding feminist, utopian social systems. Both New Amazonia and Margaret Dunmore demonstrate radical changes across many aspects of society (particularly regarding economic and family systems), but the former seems to suggest a sense of fear and state overbearance, while Dunmore takes on a generally more optimistic tone, though with some more subtle, sinister ideas about who may live in the society. Handfasted attacks only one antifeminist institution, demonstrating how one change can lead to a great fallout. Finally, Cranford, like many origins, suggests that many women, even as they dream for greater utopias, may desire authority and respect within dominant society is more important than massive social changes.
Introduction
I do not intend to present “New Woman Fiction” and feminist utopian fiction of the Victorian period as universally one and the same; the naming of this anthology is intentional in that sense (New Woman and Feminist Utopian Fiction). First, and most simply, many included texts date from prior to 1894 when Sarah Grand coined the term New Woman. That said, most texts come from the latter third of the 19th century, when mass publications began to raise what Sally Ledger calls “the woman question”, referring to increased interest in the women’s rights movement and individual women’s independence (Ledger 3). (A few included texts--notably Cranford (1853)--date from slightly earlier. I have included these texts as they present similar themes as women’s utopian fiction from the more traditional New Woman period).

Secondly, much of New Woman fiction, particularly that which receives much critical attention, is not necessarily utopian or speculative fiction. Certainly many of the critical texts I am using examine Corbett, Dixie, Schreiner, and Clapperton in particular, and even lesser known writers like Mears, Spence, and Dugdale are situated as New Woman fiction by some critics. Still, general critical works addressing the New Woman and associated fiction tend to minimize the utopian subgenre. Ledger, for example, writing in The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle, only addresses “the uses of Utopia” in a chapter regarding The New Woman and Socialism, using Clapperton and others to suggest that New Woman writers were interested in participating in the more masculine Victorian socialist utopia genre, dominated by male writers like Morris (50-58). Likewise, Ann Ardis, in New Women, New Novels, does not truly address New Women’s use of utopia; she discusses Dixie and Clapperton, but, much like Ledger, frames them as part of a larger discussion about socialism and New Woman, not addressing the significance of New Woman writers developing idealized, speculative worlds in their own fiction. Similarly, writers who focus more on late 19th century Victorian feminist utopias do not always examine their context of such works within the New Woman movement (which does differ from more general feminist movements; I will discuss the contrast shortly). Nan Albinski, writing in Women’s Utopias In British and American Fiction, addresses the context and social ramifications of the works of Corbett, Dixie, and others, but tends to associate them exclusively with the umbrella “feminist movement” or “women’s right” in general--not the specific “New Woman” movement. Angelique Richardson does present a sinister undercurrent supporting eugenics within the New Woman movement in Love and Eugenics In The Late Nineteenth Century, but does not examine how such an idea functions in utopian literature. Again, while late 19th century utopian fiction has been associated with the New Woman ideal in some ways, major writers regarding either topic do not always clearly connect them.

Thus, one of the primary goals of this anthology is to better situate the utopian novel as a subgenre of New Woman writings. To do so, I would like to first define and examine the New Woman concept for my purposes. As stated previously, Sarah Grand coined the term in 1894, after, in the words of Ledger, Ouida “extrapolated” it from Grand’s “The New Aspect of the Woman Question” (9). In this essay, Grand states that the New Woman is a “little above the comprehension of” men she calls the “Bawling Brotherhood,” “who have hitherto tried to howl down every attempt on the part of our sex to make the world a pleasanter place to live in” (Grand 270-271). So, per Grand’s definition, New Women are feminists of sorts; she goes on to explain that New Women “perceived the sudden and violent upheaval of the suffering sex in all parts of the world” (emphasis added), suggesting an alliance with earlier and perhaps more ‘mainstream’ feminists, without being the initial “upheaval” participants themselves. (271) In fact, Grand seems to be proposing the New Woman ideal as a response to the “women question” that early feminism posed. Using a sarcastic imagining of the “Bawling Brotherhood’s” words, Grand poses this question as, "If women don't want to be men, what do they want?" (270). Despite her satirical tone, this idea of women’s wants, particularly on an individual basis, seems central in defining the New Woman.

In her analysis of the Grand article, Ledger suggests the central desire and impetus of the article is what Grand calls the “marriage problem”, which Ledger defines as “the double standard in bourgeois Victorian marriage whereby sexual virtue was expected of the wife but not of the husband” (20). Immediately, New Women are situated as concerned with a private sector, non-governmental issue; here, the “marriage problem” is not, for example, laws related to married women’s property and inheritance. I do not mean to create an oversimplified dichotomy between New Women and more ‘traditional’ or ‘liberal’ feminists; the latter were certainly concerned with issues outside of policy. That said, this desire for individual freedoms, particularly and, perhaps most significantly, sexuality, seems to define the ethos of New Women more so than other contemporary women’s interest groups. Ardis explains such an idea in her attempt in “Naming the New Woman”. She writes that “the New Woman is always distinguished from the ‘old’ woman, the Victorian ‘angel in the house’...she has sex outside of marriage, and for pleasure, not for purposes of procreation” (Ardis 13-14). Ardis goes on to differentiate New Women from “Independent Women” (a term coined by Martha Vicinus), who were women concerned with feminist issues who did not attempt to shift their private lives away from traditional notions of femininity, particularly sexuality (16). Essentially, the New Woman is strongly defined by a focus on sexual equality and private concerns; adapting this personal attitude of a liberated sexuality seems to be a central facet to New Woman identity, as opposed to simply advocated for such an idea theoretically or for other women.

After this personal sexual freedom, perhaps the most defining characteristic of New Womanhood is an intrinsic link with contemporary socialist and other radical movements. Ledger devotes an entire chapter to the connection between both movements, beginning with Olive Schreiner (“arguably the first New Woman novelist”), who authored Woman and Labor, and describes fin-de-siècle feminism’s roots in Owenite socialism (37). Ardis again draws a distinction between the “New Woman” and the “Independent Woman” in this regard, arguing that the former “refused to assume that distinctions of class were more fundamental than sex or gender distinctions” (17). Ardis presents the “Independent Woman” as bourgeois feminists, who “used their middle-class status to establish themselves professionally” (16). The New Woman embrasure of such socialist movements (including equating the woman’s struggle with the male worker’s struggle, a phenomenon I will discuss briefly in the “Violence” chapter introduction), particularly when considered in tandem with their sexual openness, suggests a new sort of radical woman, unseen in earlier, more “Independent Woman” oriented feminist movements. This New Woman seems invested in a more drastic, total social change regarding women and other oppressed people, unlike earlier feminists and activists, who, the words of Ardis, “presented only local challenges to Victorian social conventions” (15).

Considering this radicalism, it is perhaps unsurprising that a third quality of the New Woman important to this anthology’s purposes is how mainstream commentators looked upon them with a particular disdain. Some of the critiques resembled more broad anti-feminist sentiments, like Eliza Lynn Linton’s “Wild Woman” articles, which depicted “a creature who opposed marriage, who vociferously demanded political rights, and who sought ‘absolute personal independence coupled with supreme power over men’” (Ledger 12). More specifically to New Women, criticism frequently addressed solely their desire for personal sexual liberation; Ledger describes the 1895 novel The Woman Who Did by Grant Allen, which portrays a sexually liberated New Woman as, ultimately, a fallen woman. Ledger suggests that the novel specifically criticizes Herminia for believing she can “strike a blow for feminism by living in a ‘free union’ with a man rather than marrying” (14-15). Oftentimes, sentiments against the New Women did specifically address their progress in forging a new path of womanhood, doubting not only the validity of that path, but of New Women’s ability to make any progress through their radicalism and sexually liberated lifestyles. An article in a 1900 periodical called Fun, for example, asserts that the New Woman “is only a revised edition of the Old Woman”: “The New Woman, like the Old Woman, shrieks at the sight of a mouse, hammers her thumbnail with misdirected skill...she falls in love the same sweet old way, and displays her jealously in the same sour old way” (Fun). Another article, in an 1894 edition of The Review of Reviews, suggests that the New Woman should learn from “the French ‘insurrection of women’ a century ago”, suggesting that like earlier female revolutionaries, New Women will effectively fail (The Review of Reviews). Again, New Women did face more traditional feminist critiques focusing on their threat to traditional gender roles, but more specific to New Woman critiques is the sense that New Women, regardless of their specific goals, will fail.

I do not mean to suggest that these three aspects (focus on personal sexual liberties, socialist and radical tendencies, and specific sorts of criticism) are all that make up New Woman identity. To borrow a term from Ledger, New Woman identity is fluid, with women using new and varying definitions of what the ideal “New Woman” looks like. I have yet to address, for example, connections between New Womanhood and modernism or the tensions regarding whether or not New Women should become mothers. That said, I have opted to emphasize these three characteristics because they most strongly help situate most of the included texts as specifically New Woman utopian fiction, not just feminist utopian fiction. These three qualities feature heavily in the included utopian texts, positing them as embodiments of, again, New Woman hopes, concerns, and tensions, not merely those of feminists or women in general.

The clearest connection here, of course, is the prominence of socialism and other radical social reforms in the Victorian utopian genre. As I discussed earlier, writers like Florence Dixie attempted to equate women’s struggles with the worker’s struggle, though Gloriana and Isola portray a more idealized version of solidarity between the two groups than what actually occurred in Victorian times, suggesting more of a desire for unity than a reflection of reality. Nearly every included text that portrays a society in detail depicts elements of socialism: New Amazonia, Margaret Dunmore, the works of Dixie and Spence, Mercia, etc. Similarly, nearly every society is depicted in a world with now total global peace, further suggesting the New Woman ethic of radical social change in general. Within these novels, women’s rights and radical social change are frequently depicted as having some sort of causal relationship. In Gloriana, Handfasted, and New Amazonia, for example, women earn or are given more dominance, rights, and political efficacy, and, subsequently, the radical social changes unrelated to gender occur, suggesting that women’s leadership led to them. Mercia depicts the reverse: global peace is achieved; socialist revolution takes place; and, subsequently, women are inspired to demand their rights. Either way, the included utopian novels tend to depict women’s rights and other radical social changes (particularly socialism and pacifism) as equally important, along with conveying that they influence each other. Such a construction particularly reflects the values of New Women, who, unlike “Independent Women”, did not only concern themselves with a singular issue and rejected bourgeois values. I will discuss this idea (and a few subsequent variations) more in the “Social Systems” chapter. Also, I will briefly address the focus on revolutions reminiscent of victorian socialist uprisings in the “Violence” chapter, and, in “Nation and Empire”, I will discuss similarly radical ideas of the New Woman (ignored by the “Independent Woman”) regarding pacifism and colonialism.

Subsequently, it is perhaps unsurprising that New Woman utopian fiction heavily emphasizes revolutions and other origin stories, more so than other Victorian fiction, which tended to spend more time on the glorified societies themselves. I will discuss this phenomenon in more detail in the “Origin Stories” chapter. Aside from the connection between socialist leanings and affinity for revolution, the tendency towards a heavy ‘origin story’ focus in the selected texts suggests tensions in the New Woman movement regarding the sort of criticism that they often received. Again, New Women, more so than other feminists and activists, faced intense criticism regarding their ability to achieve anything. In the “Origin Stories” chapter, I will discuss Matthew Beaumont’s (one of the few scholars who does make a more concrete connection between the utopian novel and New Woman ideals) concept of “latent content”; i.e., the idea that New Women placed more value on writings that suggested change and revolution were possible than writings regarding what the actual changes looked like. Anxious New Woman readers perhaps regarded an affirmation of their ability to make change in higher regard than anything else.

Furthermore, this anxiety about critiques of New Womanhood, along with more general anti-feminist critiques regarding gender roles and promiscuity, is likely reflected in New Woman writers’ treatment of men in their novels. British, Victorian New Women were generally more sympathetic to men than their American counterparts (with a few notable exceptions--most were not the traditional white or English New Women). They portrayed women as taking over masculine roles and power, but men typically remain in the societies, and, in most cases, have not become the oppressed sex. I will discuss such an idea more in the men and masculinity chapter.

The desire for sexual freedom and personal liberties in general is, perhaps, slightly more difficult to place in the included texts than the other two factors. After all, New Woman utopian fiction certainly did not ignore more conventional, ‘public’ feminist issues like suffrage and workplace equality; indeed, these issues are central in most of the included texts. Per Sally Ledger, desire for sexual freedom often manifested in New Women as organized opposition to the Contagious Disease Acts of the 1860s; in the “Reproduction and Medicine” chapter, I will examine several texts that support more bodily and reproductive freedom for women, often seemingly attacking these laws and others regulating the female body. (Along these lines, I will also address the prominence of eugenics in many texts in this chapter, which suggests what may be an underlying tension about sexual liberation for all.) I will also use this chapter and “Social Systems” to address motherhood, a particularly contentious issue regarding New Women and sexuality.

In fact, opinions on motherhood diverged so greatly across New Women that there really is no New Woman ideal regarding motherhood; to use a term from Sally Ledger again, it is a particularly ‘fluid’ issue. Although drastically varied, many included texts do address motherhood in some respect, so I have included a brief supplemental section regarding motherhood. I have done the same regarding race and technology, two other recurring themes in the included texts. Lastly, I have also included a brief supplement regarding contemporary American feminist utopian novels to help provide a point of reference.

Ultimately, the utopian genre clearly provides a strong platform for new women ideals; the speculative, futuristic fiction allows for New Woman writers to espouse their hopes for changes in both women’s rights (particularly sexuality) and more radical, large-scale changes regarding socialism and global conflict. At the same time, these writers can use the genre to express their anxieties and frustrations about their perceived or actual inability to make real change for women. Again, I do not mean to reduce New Women, a deeply complex, fluid category, to these three categories. Instead, these three categories show the clearest connection between New Woman ideals and 19th century, feminist utopian literature, a connection that, as I previously discussed, has been traditionally minimized by scholars. Situating these texts as New Woman utopian fiction, not merely feminist utopian fiction, helps to illuminate themes that go beyond mere general feminism and help to further the currently rather limited scope of New Woman scholarship.

This “limited scope” brings me to my second, more minor goal for the anthology. Aside from situating the utopian novel as a significant New Woman subgenre, I would like to simply raise more awareness of many of the included texts and encourage subsequent scholarship. The only included texts which are widely available in print, edited editions are Cranford, Sultana’s Dream, Handfasted, and New Amazonia. All others are only available in unedited, obscure reprints of earlier editions and online texts. Many of the included texts have received essentially no critical attention; others, including the works of Spence, Dugdale, Mears, Clapperton and (beyond Gloriana) Dixie, have received so little critical attention that I have included virtually all of it in this anthology. The New Woman speculative, utopian novel is very quickly becoming a lost genre, which, most likely, contributes much to the fact that scholars tend to not situate it as a genre at all. In gathering all the texts here, I hope to, again, help with their preservation, encourage further scholarship regarding them, and, again, situate the New Woman utopian novel as a genre in its own right.