Many of the included texts comment on the status of nations or global conflicts in some respect. Naturally, the utopian genre itself lends to such commentary, and, furthermore, as discussed in the general introduction, New Women were interested in more than just singular women’s issues and wanted to connect their plight to that of a more general, radical social change.

How is this attitude reflected in New Woman utopian texts? Or, more specifically, what does the New Woman vision for a nation look like? Unlike issues regarding sexuality or other more straightforward concepts, the answer here, to borrow Ledger’s term once more, is fluid. There is no singular concept of what a New Woman nation should look like. New Amazonia and Mercia provide a strong example; both portray the rise of women’s liberation as a result of global conflict coming to an end, correlating peacetime with female leadership while also suggesting that a radical, male-driven global shift must happen to allow this change. In turn, both novels portray their central nations as having a sort of moral superiority: more peaceful and perhaps more productive than their neighbors.

Catherine Helen Spence’s Handfasted (an excerpt is included in this chapter) varies slightly on this established theme to introduce issues of colonialism to the New Woman scope. Perhaps it is unsurprising that Spence was the writer to do so. Born in Scotland, she emigrated to Australia as a teenager, and, for most of her life, the country remained a British colony. Columba, the fictional nation in Handfasted, is located in North America, near the United States. It contrasts with most New Woman utopian fiction, which generally takes place in futuristic Great Britain. The novel presents a rather mixed message regarding the status of colonialism and whether or not it is implicated in feminism. Recall that the nation’s social system emerged due to a desire to expand the settler population through white men marrying Native American women. The ‘handfasting’ system was created ostensibly to give Native American women in particular rights, but, of course, doing so was to expand the colonial scope of Columba. At the same time, residents of Columba live in deep fear of colonization and how it would threaten their unique, egalitarian lifestyle. Terra Walston Joseph explains this concept, writing that “the Columbans clearly have the advantage over the United States, Australia, and Great Britain with respect to the state’s protective treatment of children and social norms that produce gender and sexual equality” (212). She goes on, however, to explain that
 

Because its social changes are so stark and distinct from other evolutions across the British Empire, the Columbans rightly fear that if either Britain or the United States should claim Columba, they would forcibly end the practice of handfasting or...put       economic and legal pressures on Columba until the Columbans themselves were forced to dissolve their own progressive social arrangements (213).

Thus, the relationship between feminism (or New Womanhood) and colonialism in Handfasted is rather murky. Only colonialism in the first place allows for the feminist reform, but, at the same time, the residents remain tense about colonialism threatening such reform. Joseph suggests that the text is radically feminist, but “is compromised by a more mainstream commitment to a racist politics of settler colonialism” (207). This tension in the text is, perhaps, evocative of the tension within New Woman regarding colonialism. New Women demanded radical social change transcendent of gender politics, but, at the same time, they were largely white and living in England. Perhaps anticolonialist efforts were not in the scope of most New Woman; the vast majority of the novels, of course, portray white women who do not address racial or colonial issues. Handfasted, in a sense, may be critiquing such an idea--the “feminism” is rooted in colonialist, racist ideology, but the characters realize the dangers of colonialism when their non-Western, feminist way of life may be in danger.

In the brief excerpt I have included in this chapter, the narrator explains current happenings regarding the scope of colonialism and other global conflict to Hugh and Liliard. He explains to them that many believe the United States (near Columba) will soon take over Canada and Mexico and then “number fifty millions of inhabitants”. Hugh and Liliard express their fears over the changes; they do not explicitly mention their way of life being threatened, but it seems to permeate their opinions. Hugh cannot comprehend millions of people living in one nation, and Liliard states that, based on this knowledge, she feels like “less than nothing”. The protagonist also explains that empires can fall apart through a “lack of wisdom and lack of care for her subjects”, as happened with Spain, further suggesting fears about the future of Columba.

A few texts included in this anthology approach the subject of nation and colonialism slightly differently than what New Amazonia, Mercia, or even Handfasted model. Unsurprisingly, Sultana’s Dream, the only text from India and the only text dealing explicitly with the concerns of women of color, is one of them. As discussed in the men and masculinity section, Sultana’s Dream presents a much more explicitly anti-male model than that of her white, English counterparts, suggesting that writers outside of England and/or writers of color had different concerns. Interestingly, one of the catalysts of social reform in Sultana’s Dream is the war that the king declares against the nation after the queen permits refugees from an enemy nation to enter. First, this origin story suggests that Sultana’s Dream is concerned with the issue of nation, particularly that of borders. It is the queen who succeeds in the end, suggesting that borders and national purity are not necessary to maintain so strongly. In addition, the queen’s orders and the queen’s strategy in winning the war includes help from the educated women of the country, and, of course, ultimately leads to the nation’s radical liberation of women. Thus, Sultana’s Dream, more so than other included texts, suggests an intrinsic link between demolishing striden national borders and gender equality. It, like many New Woman texts, advocates for radical social change beyond gender equality, but it more explicitly implicates policies regarding national borders and immigration as something that must change.

Olive Schreiner’s “Three Dreams in a Desert” operates similarly, though perhaps slightly more subtly. I have excerpted the entire short story in this chapter. Schreiner spent her entire life living in South Africa, and she worked on behalf of those impacted by colonialism. In the story, the unnamed narrator, who is travelling throughout Africa, comes across “Woman”, a being lying in the ground; she is depleted from years of producing man and serving, with nothing in return. The narrator then has another dream, where Woman is now sentient and looking for an unidentified place called “The Land of Freedom”. The only way to get there is “down the banks of Labour, through the water of suffering.” (A footnote explains that African river banks are often hundreds of feet high). In his next dream, the narrator envisions what one can presume to be the deeply vague “Land of Freedom”. Here, “brave” men and women walk together, holding hands; women also hold hands with other women. A man standing next to the narrator informs him that the place is “heaven” on earth, and that these circumstances will be achieved “in the future”.

Notably, of course, the egalitarian land is a concrete place, but it is not necessarily its own country. Perhaps then, somewhat like Sultana’s Dream, “Three Dreams” takes a more anti-nation, anti-borders perspective. It operates mores subtly, but, again, the egalitarian world exists somewhere that cannot be defined as a nation, but, instead, is more of a vague idea. The reader only knows that it exists in the future and that it is heavenly; they do not know any of the national ideals or where the Land is. Ultimately, unlike most of the other narrative included, “Three Dreams” seems to be suggesting that gender equality perhaps cannot be provided through a nation, and, furthermore, national borders may impede that equality. Such a perspective aligns with values to be expected of Schreiner, who often combined women’s advocacy with that on behalf of native South Africans. Schreiner broke ties with the South African Women’s Enfranchisement League over over “its internal division as to whether to wage the campaign for enfranchisement on behalf of white women only”, and frequently wrote about issues of women and colonialism in tandem, including in Women and Labour (Jay XIV).

Thus, both Schreiner and Hossain model a different approach to New Women, nationality, and colonialism, in contrast with the somewhat vapid, contradictory approaches to nation in more typical white, English New Woman fiction, including that of Corbett, Mears, and Spence. I want to introduce another model in this chapter, which, unlike the manner in which nations are modelled, is more consistent across varying New Woman texts. In several included texts, it is the city, not the nation, that is central to the formation of the utopia and gender equality and is the society at the center of the novel. The first of this nature is Henrietta Dugdale’s A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age. The narrator notes that the buildings are large and grandiose, all the structures are in “clusters” (not streets), and the city itself is absolutely clean, with no pollution, smoke, or other dirt to be seen. Subsequently, the city itself is the location of ultimate gender equality. This seems to align with Ledger’s assertion that the New Woman was an “urban phenomenon”, and the city provided opportunity for New Woman praxis. Interestingly, Ledger writes that “The middle class New Woman who increasingly occupied the public spaces of the city towards the end of the nineteenth century had to share the streets with prostitutes...Very often the feminist New Women were as keen as religious reformers to exclude prostitutes from the city landscape” (153). Perhaps this purely clean, crime-free city is a manifestation of New Woman’s desire to exclude prostitutes as undesirables. At the same time, the fact that the city itself is a center of gender equality further affirms New Women’s status as a pinnacle of modernity.

 

The city in Spence’s A Week in the Future, which is named as a futuristic London, contrasts sharply. It has become strongly diminished, with no ports remaining, traffic gone, and, instead of expanding outward, taking over rural life. Gender equality exists both within the city and the nation itself, though. Large, national shifts have also occured: England and Ireland no longer have animosity, the nation is at the forefront of global peace, and “racial-mixing” is allowed and encouraged. In contrast with A Few Hours, the novel seems to be suggesting that cities are not a paradigm of progress, but, instead, diminish as equality is furthered. Such an idea recalls the New Woman anxiety about cities as a center of prostitution and grime; perhaps Spence is suggesting that national change is more important and even more radical, as it accompanies peace and antiracism.

Ultimately, again, New Woman writers did not demonstrate one particular idea regarding nation or even city. Corbett and Mears perhaps provided the most typical example of national change that, while radical, does not strongly address colonialism, while Spence varies upon this theme to express more anxieties regarding colonialism. A Few Hours and A Week in the Future present two sides of a similar idea regarding cities. Both seem to address how New Woman thrived in cities while simultaneously fearing them; A Few Hours presents a more idealized city, while A Week in the Future moves away from the city model.