Bonnie mentioned Tepper's _Gate_ compared to Brin's _Glory Season_: I agree
with the idea that Tepper is showing a society in transition, not yet a
utopia but with utopian aspirations which are based, basically, on genetic
changes which (given the basis for the novel) will remove the propensity for
violence from men. This is NOT one of my favorite works by Tepper because
there are some things that she doesn't quite work out, but I do not believe
the novel presents the city cultures uncritically. The fact that there is
an annual ritual mourning performance based on (good grief I've forgotten
the Greek play--_The Trojan Women_) I think, with some changes made (the
changes in that play itself, wow), and only those few women in the know
participating in it are a fascinating indication of the complexity of the
novel. And there is genetic and ideological control of women too. Yet
things could be worse, as the religious zealots exist to prove.
Brin's novel is critically examining some of the assumptions of the
seventies feminist utopias (Tepper's novel was published in the eighties),
especially the issue of pastoralism, anti-technology, cloning, but his novel
intersects in an interesting way with Tepper's on the issue of male
violence, or propensity to violence: in his novel, events/characters argue
that there is a need for that male trait. Both novels seem to assign it to
genetics rather than socialization. That is the "essentialist" approach
that causes some to critizie the novel or novels. But his novel is showing
a society that is declining in some ways, at risk for some sort of possibly
revoluntionary change in other ways (and the women characters in his novels
are not all pacifistic by 'nature').
Both are fascinating examinations of culture, though I wouldn't consider
either to be a utopian novel. (Now that I think of the novels out there,
maybe whether or not you consider a work to be a utopia or a dystopia
depends on where you'd be--after all, Plato's original _Utopia_ included
legal slavery as a prerequisite for all the upper caste dudes to sit around
Thinking Great Thoughts! Many of the American utopian experiments such as
Brooks farm seemed to require a good deal more work by women related to the
male intellectuals than by the male intellectuals themselves. Charlotte
Perkins Gilman wrote works questioning whether or not any society based on
the nuclear family could ever achieve equality for all--she advocated
communal living, and that same sort of communal living is achieved by the
linguists women in Elgin's trilogy. In Brin's novel, if you're a clone
daughter, you have a better shot at the education and family suport than if
you're a variable. Class/caste issues are a part of that novel--some of the
seventies feminist utopias don't pay much attention to race or class as
systems of oppression in their focus on gender, but no single book can cover
everything.)
Robin
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