In Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Edward Bellamy proposes some radical changes to society to promote equity among the citizens of the United States. Bellamy realized the radicalism of his ideas and attempted to soften his tone by appealing to some aspects of nineteenth-century elite society. One group of people largely missing from the novel, except for a brief description towards the end, is women. While Bellamy credits his utopian society with creating economic equality between men and women, his nineteenth-century ideas of gender taint his view of the role of women in the “advanced” nation.
Dr. Leete, who represents the voice of Bellamy, explains to Julian everyone is assigned a task based on what occupation best applies to them. Dr. Leete states, “Women being inferior in strength to men, and further disqualified industrially in special ways, the kinds of occupation reserved for them, and the conditions under which they pursue them, have reference to these facts” (151). This statement from Dr. Leete reflects a nineteenth-century belief in the fragility of womanhood, where women could not perform the same laborious tasks as men. In the year 2000, an assumed inequality between the sexes still exists.
In the utopian society, the highest respected women are wives and not mothers, not single women who excel at their jobs. “For the rest, so far is marriage from being an interference with a woman’s career,” Dr. Leete informs Julian, “that the higher positions in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex” (153). The society still values motherhood and domesticity as the most important function for women. While the women achieved economic equality, it appears there societal equality is still lacking. This problem may stem from Bellamy’s firm belief that the driving force of inequality is economic in nature.
I totally agree that Bellamy included the inequality of the sexes as a way of making his views easier to accept as legitimate. His target audience was certainly the wealthier, art appreciating aristocracy of his day as shown by the aspects of his utopian society. It is unclear if Bellamy shares these beliefs, or if he is simply taking advantage of them in his peers.
I also found the lack of female mention to be an intriguing aspect of the book. It reminds me of the last book we read, Red Badge of Courage, which also neglects female acknowledgement. In both stories, they only include one brief description of women. I agree that Bellamy vaguely represents the role of woman at the time and that motherhood and domesticity are key characteristics.
A debate question I am interested in raising regarding this subject is whether you believe that this is simply just Bellamy’s beliefs, or if he watered down how radical the book was by not completely changed the gender dynamics or just any other reason as women remain depicted inferior. Did he attempt to appeal more to the aristocrats of his time or were these simply his views that even in a Utopian future women would remain as the keepers of the Domestic Sphere? I think its a slight mixture of both, and a tad bit of disbelief that it ever could change, even in a perfect nature. Dr. Leete describes the gender situation by explaining a natural weakness women have that men do not, showing that (at least as how I see it) that Bellamy truly believed this to be the natural order.