Feminist Utopian Fiction

The following discussion of feminist utopian fiction took place on WMST-L
in late July/early August 2000.  It began with a request for suggested
texts; through mention of author James Tiptree's suicide, it evolved into
a discussion as well of aging and dying.  Also of interest may be a
later discussion (March 2002) entitled Women and Utopias. For more
WMST-L files available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

Hi

I am looking for contemporary feminist utopias to teach in a 1st year
Humanities course. I am aware of Gilman's _Herland_, Piercy's _Woman on
the Edge of Time_, and Starhawk's _The Fifth Sacred Thing._ Could anyone
suggest some other texts that might be appropriate?

Thanks in advance
Sherry Rowley
srowley  @  yorku.ca

When I have taught feminist utopias, I used the ones you mentioned, plus
the following:

Joanna Russ, *The Female Man*
Octavia Butler, *Parable of the Sower* and *Parable of the Talents*
Katherine Burdekin (Murray Constantine), *Swastika Night* (a dystopia
that is also a powerful satire on Nazi Germany, written in the 30s)
Ursula K. LeGuin, *The Left Hand of Darkness*; I would also recommend *The
Dispossessed* and *Always Coming Home*, both also by LeGuin.
Monique Wittig, *Les Guerillieres*

Others that I would consider using if I taught the course again:
Sally Miller Gearhart, *The Wanderground*  (It's out of print, so I would
use photocopies of a chapter or two)
Diana Rivers, *Journey to Zelindar*, *The Hadra*, or others of The Hadra
series.
Joan Slonczewski, *A Door Into Ocean*
Suzette Hadin Elgin, *Native Tongue*
Dorothy Bryant, *The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You* (may be out of print)

And there are lots of others.
Charlene

M. Charlene Ball, Administrative Coordinator
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia  30303-3083
404/651-4633
404/651-1398 fax
wsimcb  @  panther.gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/womenpower

Dear Sherry,

You might want to look at Sherri Tepper's _The Gate to Women's Country_.  As
a good counter-example, Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_  provides a
wonderful fictional account of a near-future anti-feminist dystopia.

Best,
Nancy Buchwald

Dear Prof. Ball,

    I'm familiar with Butler's _Parable_ series, but would not think to
classify either/both books as examples of feminist utopias.  Both books have
vaguely utopian elements, specifically in the protagonist's teachings that
humankind must populate the stars, but the main narrative unfolds in a
distinctly dystopian setting, a drought-ridden 21st century Los Angeles.

Best wishes,
Nancy Buchwald

When I use Butler's book, I present it as a *dystopia*.  I should have
made that clear.  The concept of the intentional community, however, has
utopian elements, although the community itself isn't utopian.
Charlene

How "contemporary" do you mean?  There's a 1905 sex-role reversal called
"Sultana's Dream," by Rokeya Hossain  (written in English; republished by
The Feminist Press).  There's also Naomi Mitchison's "Solution Three" (early
1970s) and Katharine Burdekin's "The End of This Day's Business"
(mid-1930s), both available from the Feminist Press.  In the sex-role
reversal genre, a very early one is Annie Denton Cridge's 1870 (yes, 1870)
"Man's Rights, Or How Would You Like It?", and, more recently, there's Gerd
Brantenberg's "Egalia's Daughters" (Seal Press), and Esme Dodderidge's "The
New Gulliver."  When I've taught both in the same course, my students found
them too similar and complained.  To raise key moral issues about
utopianism, I usually teach Ursula Leguin's story "The Ones Who Walk Away
from Omelas" early in the semester. It's unforgettable.
   If you write to me privately, I'll be glad to send you a copy of the
syllabus for my women's utopias course (which I haven't taught in 6 or 7
years), and my "regular" utopias course, which I still teach.  I also
invented a woman's studies  course some years ago called "Body Politics,"
utilizing science fiction and fantasy short stories (a lot of them pretty
awful as literature, I have to say)--having to do with bodily configuration,
senses, and "otherness" as metaphors and or as keys to social structures.
That course  included Octavia Butler's really upsetting story "Bloodchild."
Regards,
Daphne

---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

I'm wondering if Mary Anne Phillips' book SHELTER would be considered a
contemporary feminist utopia.  It would indeed be a very interesting novel
to teach in terms of raising questions about a post-modern utopia.

Vicki Kirsch

------------------------------------------------------
Vicki Kirsch, LCSW, Ph.D.
Coordinator, Women's Center
Quinsigamond Community College
670 W. Boylston Street
Worcester, MA  01606
Tel: 508.854.4290/Fax: 508.852.6943
-------------------------------------------------------
If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble - Sappho

Another interesting feminist utopia (of sorts) is *A Weave of Women* by E.M.
Broner.

Dara


**************************
Dara Z. Strolovitch

Yale University
Department of Political Science
PO Box 208301
New Haven, CT  06520-8301

dara.strolovitch  @  yale.edu
**************************

There is an annotated bibliography by Lynn Williams on separate spaces for
men and women in fiction, in which many contemporary feminist utopias appear,
in the spectacular new journal FEMSPEC, issue 1.2, April 2000. Available from
Dept of English, Cleveland State Unievrsity, Cleveland OH 44115, for $10.
Also a good article on the difference between men and women's sopaces in
fiction by Brian Attebery. Both are utopian scholars. Also my recent book,
Islands of Women and Amazons: Representations and Realities, U of Texas,
1999, goes into feminist rclamatin of Amazons in the contemporary feminist
movement and overviews a lot of those books if you need a critical discussion
or bibliography of sources. Batya Weinbuam, Cleveland OH batyawein  @  aol.com

Hello, Daphne,

I would like very much to see your syllabus for the women's utopias
class.  I've used "Sultana's Dream" also, and read and liked *Egalia's
Daughters*, as well as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
Charlene

M. Charlene Ball, Administrative Coordinator
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia  30303-3083
404/651-4633
404/651-1398 fax
wsimcb  @  panther.gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/womenpower

There's a science-fiction story by James Tiptree Junior (pseudonym of Alice
Sheldon, and thereby hangs a tale!). I think the title is "When it
changed." It's in collections of her short stories, all of which are great
feminist teaching material and a great read too.

"When it Changed" is a short story by Joanna Russ.  The society it depicts,
called Whileaway, is also part of Russ's novel The Female Man.  Tiptree's
two stories most relevant to a course on feminist utopias are, I believe,
"'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'" and "The Women Men Don't See."
It's interesting - and sad - that, despite these strongly feminist texts
about independent women not needing men, Tiptree (actually: Alice Sheldon)
committed suicide not long after her husband died.

DP

---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

I am not familiar with the literature on feminist utopias,
or the concept of it - is this about women-only societies,
or ideal societies with feminist values?

I'm not quite sure what Daphne was getting at, in mentioning
Tiptree's suicide, except she seems to be suggesting that
men and women are probably more dependent on one
another than they care to admit.  But is the reason Tiptree
killed herself actually known, or is a cause-effect relationship
between her death and her husband's simply being assumed?
And if her suicide was a result of her husband's death, (and
even if it weren't), what does this suggest about women's
relationships with one another?  (I am thinking here of
Durheim's theory of anomie and how people are isolated from
one another).

I have to admit I was suprised to see so much attention - and
courses - devoted to this subject, and I am wondering what it
is that makes it so valuable?

Sue McPherson

What makes utopian feminist science fiction valuable is that it presents a
"thought experiment" for what a society would be like free of a patriarchal
gender structure or inegalitarian gender relationships. Much of the science
fiction written by men tends to focus on technology and space travel. The
books written by women that have been recommended tend to focus on social
relationships and social orders, thus they make excellent teaching texts
for gender studies courses. Feminist dystopian fiction, such as the very
popular Handmaid's Tale takes elements in our own society and exaggerates
them to show their dangers. Margaret Atwood said that the HT had nothing in
it that had not happened to women somewhere. It was terribly prescient --
the horrendous confinement of women and their deprivation of books and
education is now happening to women under the Taliban. One book that
combines a utopian and dystopian vision is Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge
of Time. Like Joan K., my favorite book is He, She, and It, also by Piercy
-- it combines the golem of Prague and a future society where everyone is
literally plugged into their computers. The heroine creates a robot lover,
and therein lies the story -- I highly recommend it for personal reading
and for courses.
JL

****************************************************************
Judith Lorber, Ph.D.        Ph/Fax -- 212-689-2155
319 East 24 Street         jlorber  @  worldnet.att.net
Apt 27E
New York, NY 10010
Facts are theory laden; theories are value laden;
values are history laden.   -- Donna J. Haraway
****************************************************************

I believe you must be right.  It probably takes a leap in
the imagination to be able to visualize a better world.
I wonder, though, if science fiction isn't just one aspect
of 'feminist utopias'.  Would Starhawk's work be
considered science fiction?

You say that science fiction for men focuses on technology
and space travel, but surely that's not the same as utopia.  It
sounds more like a society devoid of feelings and meaningful
human interaction.  I wonder how men would visualize a
utopian society?

It's been a long time since I read Margaret Atwood's
Handmaid's Tale, but I felt too that there was a good deal
of realism in the book.  Especially when you look at what's
going on with surrogate motherhood nowadays.  And the
separation of women into breeders and (what's the other
category - wives?).

Is the notion of robot lovers in Piercy's He, She, and It similar
to 'toy boys' - the 'perfect relationship' where one person has
the control, and the relationship exists solely for pleasure?  I
just wonder how this kind of work contributes to a society free
from pariarchal influences?

Sue McPherson
sue  @  mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk

Judith wrote:
"Much of the science
fiction written by men tends to focus on technology and space travel. The
books written by women that have been recommended tend to focus on social
relationships and social orders."

Actually, the above is the conventional distinction made between "science
fiction" and "utopian fiction."  The latter has also been called "social
science fiction" precisely because of its emphasis on social structures.
This is not a male-female distinction.  Check out Lyman Tower Sargent's
massive bibliography of English-language utopian fiction, which includes
hundreds and hundreds of titles of non-hardware-oriented utopian fiction
written mostly by men since 1516 (when Thomas More's "Utopia" was
published--in Latin).  For the sake of accuracy, it should also be
recognized that there are quite a number of anti-feminist utopias
(dystopias) written by women--not only by men.  Imagination seems, happily,
not to be limited by gender.
DP

---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

>Is the notion of robot lovers in Piercy's He, She, and It similar
>to 'toy boys' - the 'perfect relationship' where one person has
>the control, and the relationship exists solely for pleasure?  I
>just wonder how this kind of work contributes to a society free
>from pariarchal influences?
>
>Sue McPherson
>sue  @  mcphersons.freeserve.co.uk

I was desperately hoping somebody else would answer this.  It is hard to
receive this kind of  criticism from someone who hasn't read the novel in
question.

HE, SHE AND IT is not precisely a utopian novel, but mostly a projection
from present trends plus a rather utopian village, which is under constant
seige from the rest of the society.  Yod is not a "boy toy."  He is
singular, an illegal weapon.  He is built by a man to defend the village,
but much of the software was created by a woman.  Her granddaughter is
given the task of socializing him so he can "pass." as human.  The love
affair is a small part of the novel, although women usually tell me it's
the part they like best.

After Yod has destroyed himself and his creator, Shira, who has loved him,
has the ability to recreate him and decides not to, because to create a
sentient being to fulfil a programmed function is unethical.  Why not just
read the novel instead of speculating on how patrrichal or feminist it is?

marge piercy hagolem  @  capecod.net

Sorry about that.  Comments about your book were grouped
together with comments on Atwood's (which I had read), and
I made assumptions I shouldn't have.

Sue McPherson

>I was desperately hoping somebody else would answer this.  It is hard to
>receive this kind of  criticism from someone who hasn't read the novel in
>question.

"When It Changed" is by Joanna Russ; it introduces the characters and
setting of *The Female Man*, although it differs in some important
respects from the book.

James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) has some very feminist stories and at
least one novel with the premise of an all-women's planet.  Her work is
sometimes rather disturbing but is always provocative and well-written.

I confess I can't remember the novel's title,
but one story I like is "The Women Men Don't See."  Another is "My
Sisters, Your Faces Filled With Light."

M. Charlene Ball, Administrative Coordinator
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia  30303-3083
404/651-4633
404/651-1398 fax
wsimcb  @  panther.gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/womenpower

That's right; it is "Houston, Houston, Do You Read" that is about the
all-women's planet.

As I recall reading in the news, Alice Sheldon and her husband were both
in their 70s;
he had Alzheimers, and she hastened his death and then
took her own life.  They seem to have had a strong and mutually supportive
relationship.
Charlene

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Daphne Patai wrote:

> "When it Changed" is a short story by Joanna Russ.  The society it depicts,
> called Whileaway, is also part of Russ's novel The Female Man.  Tiptree's
> two stories most relevant to a course on feminist utopias are, I believe,
> "'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'" and "The Women Men Don't See."
> It's interesting - and sad - that, despite these strongly feminist texts
> about independent women not needing men, Tiptree (actually: Alice Sheldon)
> committed suicide not long after her husband died.

M. Charlene Ball, Administrative Coordinator
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia  30303-3083
404/651-4633
404/651-1398 fax
wsimcb  @  panther.gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/womenpower

My definition of feminist utopias is that they are literary
works that describe ideal societies with feminist values (and those can
vary widely from author to author), or attempts to create ideal societies
based upon feminist or egalitarian values.  They are sometimes all-women
societies (Russ, *The Female Man*; Sally Miller Gearhart, *The
Wanderground*) and sometimes both male and female but based upon
principles of equality (Marge Piercy, *Woman on the Edge of Time;
Starhawk, *The Fifth Sacred Thing*).

When I have taught feminist utopias, I include both types, and also
students investigate real-life intentional societies, such as Twin Oaks
(contemporary and still ongoing), Oneida, or Brook Farm.

My course focuses on the literary, however.
Charlene

On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Sue McPherson wrote:

> I am not familiar with the literature on feminist utopias,
> or the concept of it - is this about women-only societies,
> or ideal societies with feminist values?

M. Charlene Ball, Administrative Coordinator
Women's Studies Institute
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia  30303-3083
404/651-4633
404/651-1398 fax
wsimcb  @  panther.gsu.edu
http://www.gsu.edu/womenpower

I am probably misremembering.  I do not have the newspaper article handy,
but I believe Tiptree killed her husband and then herself.  It was a double
suicide pact.  Whether or not this is true of Triptree, it does sometimes
happen.  Sometimes women and men love one another just as women and women
love one another.  And sometimes people love one another to the degree that
they cannot imagine life without one another.  --Temma Berg

-----------------
Temma F. Berg
Co-coordinator of Women's Studies
Associate Professor
Department of English
Gettysburg College
717-337-6753
tberg  @  gettysburg.edu

Other people on this list have confirmed what you remember.
But I think that ordinarily it is not a good approach to life to
think there is no future after a great loss.  It is loss - and
coming to terms with it - that often allows people to see things
in different ways, that they might not hve previously been able
to.  But I would argue that in the case of Tiptree, it was more
likely that her age (and maybe her feminist values) that had
something to do with her decision not to live on.   Even in a
utopian society we would all have to die sometime, and
sometimes in unpleasant circumstances, so why not do so
while one is still capable of controlling one's fate.

Sue McPherson

At 11:19 AM 7/31/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I am probably misremembering.  I do not have the newspaper article handy,
>but I believe Tiptree killed her husband and then herself.  It was a double
>suicide pact.  Whether or not this is true of Triptree, it does sometimes
>happen.  Sometimes women and men love one another just as women and women
>love one another.  And sometimes people love one another to the degree that
>they cannot imagine life without one another.  --Temma Berg

One reason for the pact is that it is extremely uncertain what prosecutors
and juries will do in these mercy killings.  When I was researching the
subject for THREE WOMEN, I found that the same act exactly would get
someone off completely in one state and subject to life imprisonment in
another state.  So if you are agreeing to off your mate, it may be that the
simplest route is to go along with her or him.

marge piercy hagolem  @  capecod.net

At 10:59 AM 26/07/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>I am looking for contemporary feminist utopias to teach in a 1st year
>Humanities course. I am aware of Gilman's _Herland_, Piercy's _Woman on
>the Edge of Time_, and Starhawk's _The Fifth Sacred Thing._ Could anyone
>suggest some other texts that might be appropriate?

Are you familiar with Frances Bartkowski's book _Feminist Utopias_
(University of Nebraska Press, 1989)? She discusses eight books:

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's _Herland_
Monique Wittig's _Les GuTrillFres_
Joanna Russ's _Female Man_
Marge Piercy's _Woman on the Edge of Time_
Suzy McKee Charnas's _Walk to the End of the World_ and _Motherlines_
Christiane Rochefort's _Archaos, ou le jardin Ttincelant_
E.M. Broner's _A Weave of Women_
Louky Bersianik's _L'EuguTlionne_
Margaret Atwood's _The Handmaid's Tale_

I have done a new translation Louky Bersianik's _L'EuguTlionne_ (Montreal:
Alter Ego Editions, 1996). For more info:

http://www.alterego.montreal.qc.ca/

I'd also like to mention _Chroniques du Pays des MFres by Quebec writer
Elisabeth Vonarburg (translated into English by Jane Brierley: _The
Maerlande Chronicles_, published in the U.S. as _In the Mothers' Land_, I
believe).  

Her 'Tyranadl' series (five volumes) also has many utopian aspects. So far
it is only available in French (http://www.alire.com/), but I have begun
translating for Tesseract Books (Edmonton).

An "unofficial" Web site for her:
http://www.euro.net/mark-space/ElisabethVonarburg.html

For collected information on see: Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Utopia
http://www.wenet.net/~lquilter/femsf/

Howard Scott
Montreal

Scott & Aronoff Translation and Editorial Services
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
mailto:alterego  @  alterego.montreal.qc.ca

You make it seem as though deciding to end one's own
life is a simple matter - a rational decision - whereas isn't
it the fear of death - of the unknown - that prevents many
people from taking their own lives?  Do works on utopias
deal with this dilemma - the meaning of life and all that?
I wouldn't like to think that someone like Tiptree, who wrote
about utopias, would take the 'simple' way out.

Sue MPherson

>One reason for the pact is that it is extremely uncertain what prosecutors
>and juries will do in these mercy killings.  When I was researching the
>subject for THREE WOMEN, I found that the same act exactly would get
>someone off completely in one state and subject to life imprisonment in
>another state.  So if you are agreeing to off your mate, it may be that the
>simplest route is to go along with her or him.

I've been watching my parents and a couple of friends, all between 75 and
81, deal with aging, and I wonder if the fear of the known doesn't
eventually balance the fear of the unknown.  My mother said, "I was always
strong, I'm not used to being too weak to open bottles and tear open
packages."  A friend said, "I'm 76, I have no desire to see 86."  There
are, of course, medical problems, and for these people, whose lives have
been spent in very good health, these are surprising and discouraging.
Ageism in our society can't help.  For the most part, these four people are
not being treated like cute silly little people, but I've certainly seen
older people who are.

Gloria Steinem has referred to her "beloved age peers," and we do grow to
know what she means -- those who know what we refer to when we speak and
smile in recognition.  It must be terrible to lose one's most beloved peer
and be left to face an increasingly hostile situation without that person.
This happens often to women, the younger and longer-living partners in most
marriages.  Poverty statistics show other ways single older women are
disadvantaged.

I notice, however, that those who kill themselves seem to be a minority,
and I imagine that the generation that led feminism will share their
insights on aging, as Carolyn Heilbrun has in "The Last Gift of Time."  I
think preparation and knowledge must be more helpful than leaving the
future to luck and fate.  I'm wondering what kinds of classes members of
the list are teaching, what materials are especially well received and
useful, what sources you recommend.  I'm assuming that some of these
classes are a little like WS 101 -- very cross-disciplinary.

Thanks,
Marilyn Grotzky

I know we try to limit what is quoted to only what we intend to respond to on
this list, but I am reposting in their entirety the following message from
Sue McPherson and Marilyn Grotsky's response because I think they represent
so well issues we are only beginning to address here and perspectives on
those issues that represent such radically different -- you should excuse the
expression -- standpoints. [NOTE: both messages can be found above]

First, about Tiptree's suicide: In my last exchange of letters with Alice
Sheldon (Tiptree's other name), I invited her to join a bunch of us at the
upcoming NWSA meeting which was quite close to where she lived and she
responded that her heart was so damaged, so weak, so fragile, that she didn't
dare have any fun because it was too much for her heart.  There was more, but
this was a number of years ago and I don't remember it all.  I know that her
husband was older than she, that he had Alzheimer's disease, and that she was
caring for him and worried about what would happen to him if she died first,
which she was quite likely to do.  Next thing I heard, she had shot him and
then herself.  Joanna Russ and I, old old friends and co-miserators, spent
quite a bit of time talking about our pen friend's decision.  Joanna and I
are both now and have been long disabled by chronic illnesses.  We understood
Alice's decisions.  It wasn't my place to approve or disapprove, to second
guess or to applaud her decision.  But I certainly understood it and thought
it was a perfectly sensible solution to an insoluble problem.

I have never understood the rush to judgment about such acts.  Not any more
than I have understood the rush to judgment by contemporary scholars,
feminist and non-feminist alike, about the "meanings" of the declarations
about illnesses and bodily/physical pains by women of earlier generations.
Why do people engage in such lofty speculations when they have so few facts,
know so little about the ontological reality of the person they are passing
judgment on, or "analyzing?"  I find the assumptions of sufficient
information to engage in this kind of analysis quite puzzling.  I wonder,
quite seriously and would appreciate some explanation from those of you who
care to respond, what an early twenty-first century person might be thinking,
for instance, when they try to "explain" what was the psychological or
sociopolitical explanation for Alice James' (sister of Henry and William)
many years of "claimed" ill health when the physicians of her day couldn't
find anything wrong.  Why the assumption that the doctors were right? The
physicians of her day had unsophisticated diagnostic technologies and a
predisposition to stereotype women in certain ways.  So what if they couldn't
figure out what her real health problem was?  Does that mean she didn't
really have one?

And how could anyone read Tiptree's fiction and then talk about the
murder/suicide as if it were -- whatever was being said, something about an
inability or unwillingness to survive the partner on whom one was overly
dependent or something like that?  And if you haven't read the fiction and
haven't checked the facts, why speculate at all?  That seems to me a sort of
posthumous besmirching of the integrity of the personality being "analyzed."
I think there is an ethical issue here and I would appreciate it if some
philosophers on this list would help me formulate the definition of this
ethical problem.

There was a wonderful session on post-retirement feminists' lives at the last
NWSA and it was wonderful.  As I hear more and more from various friends
about some of the planned lesbian retirement communities, and read the
discussion on utopian visions on this list, and ponder what Marilyn has told
us [above] --which I found both moving and confirming of my experience with my
mother and her friends -- all in their late eighties and early nineties, all
in one kind of serious pain or another, all experiencing the diminution of
various senses, all increasingly both limited and disabled.

And it reminds me of the wonderful passage in Marge Piercy's WOMAN ON THE
EDGE OF TIME in which the question of the distribution of limited community
resources is debated.  Money for research on longevity, on eternal life?  No
-- .  Why not?  Read the book.

I hope your summers are going well.  Cordially, Susan Koppelman
<<huddis  @  aol.com>>

In reply to Susan Koppleman's point about analysis of illness
narrative (now often called pathography) and the example of Alice
James, an interesting text that treats Alice's travails with the
gravity they surely warrant is Lyndall Gordon's 1998 biography
_A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art_. Alice is
not one of the two women; they are his cousin Mary (Minnie)
Temple and his good friend Constance Fenimore Woolson, but Alice's
tragedy--much of which was the result of being female in the James
household, according to Gordon--is addressed. The only negative
element in the book is that Gordon beats up on Henry James mother
rather severely, I thought. Still, a wonderful book.

I do think there is a place for critical works on pathography and
have read some good studies: Anne Hunsaker Hawkins _Reconstructing
Illness: Studies in Pathography (1993) is one.

Ruthe Thompson
Assistant Prof. of English
Acting Director of Women's Studies
Southwest State University
Marshall, Minn 56258

  The utopia reader / edited by Gregory Claeys and
Lyman Tower Sargent. New York : New York University Press, c1999

_________________________________________________________
Betty Glass, Humanities Bibliographer
Getchell Library/322
1664 N. Virginia St.
University of Nevada, Reno
Reno, NV  89557-0044

 email: glass  @  unr.edu

office: (775) 784-6500  ext. 303
   FAX: (775) 784-1751

I thought the question about why we engage in speculation when we know so
little was an interesting one in its own right:

At 03:19 AM 8/6/00 EDT, Susan Koppelman wrote:
>Why do people engage in such lofty speculations when they have so few facts,
>know so little about the ontological reality of the person they are passing
>judgment on, or "analyzing?"  I find the assumptions of sufficient
>information to engage in this kind of analysis quite puzzling.

My background is in literature, and I notice that students love to
speculate about the rightness of Hemingway's suicide after considering his
"grace under pressure" theme.  I see that as related to our fascination
with the Titanic disaster and other disasters that involve time for
decision making, as contrasted to airplane disasters, when there is no
control and no time for decision making.

I think what we are really doing is speculating in the hope of deciding
what we might do, given our own backgrounds, characters, and beliefs.  We
will all face death, this is one of the ways we try it out.  With a piece
of literature or a literary character, this is pretty much fair -- what
does the author make us feel or see?  How does that relate or contrast to
our own beliefs about what is right or about our own decisions?  Is our
basis for judgement expanded?  Do we have more understanding than we did?
With a biography, we have to be more careful, being aware that the author's
attempt at truth is not necessarily the subject's truth.  When we speculate
about the decision of an author, based only on the author's work, we have
to be very careful to be clear that we may choose to speculate as long as
we know that we are looking for information about ourselves and perhaps our
culture or our generation, but that we cannot make a judgement related to
an actual person.

Speculation in the hopes of gaining understanding is pretty human.  We
speculate about decisions of friends, movie stars, famous people,
historical people that interest us, royalty, murderers and their victims.
It's a great tool for starting to think about women in literature or
biography -- what were the influences of place or time or family or fate?
But after the speculation, we have to go look for something as close to
truth as we can find.

In my classes, we sometimes look individually at biographies of women, and
then speculate in class about how their work might have been different had
they been men or if they lived now.  This sort of speculation is fairly
safe -- we know it can't lead truth, except in an alternate universe.  I
can see, though, that I want to be clearer on any speculation that could
lead to incorrect and unfair judgement.

Marilyn Grotzky