I've just remembered that there's a feminist utopia set on Mars:
_Unveiling a Parallel: A Romance_, by Ella Merchant & Alice Ilgenfritz
Jones, 1893. A nameless male narrator journeys to Mars & "discovers a
society where women enjoy equality with men." (I'm quoting from the
back cover of the recent Syracuse Unviersity Press edition.) He meets
Elodia, a community leader, who drinks excessively, has lovers, and uses
drugs. Her behavior confounds his expectations about women's supposedly
pious and pure `natures' and reveals that equality, if rooted in a
patriarchal culture, is not necessarily a utopian virtue. In contrast,
a more perfect state of development has been reached in a second country
on Mars, where the narrator learns how unselfishness, nurture, and
mutual support can offer visible alternatives to passive, chaste,
femininity or to greedy, lustful, masculinity." Also on the back cover
is a blurb from +The Saturday Evening Post_, 1893: "The strength of two
unusually brilliant minds has gone into the making of this unique
book."
Obviously, these two women from Cedar Rapids had quite different
imaginative tendencies than did Wells, & the others who imagined Mars as
a source of rapacious hostility...
Timmi
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:25 PDT