Parthenogenesis, Eugenic Motherhood, and the Erasure of Men in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and Mary E. Bradley Lane’s Mizora A Comparative Study in Feminist Utopian Fiction

الملخص

This article interprets two classic utopian novels written entirely by women, Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mizora (1890) by Mary E. Bradley Lane, as biopolitical imaginings, instead of merely feminist fantasies of liberation. This study claims that both novels uphold an idealized picture of societies where women have replaced men in reproductive, educational, and social control functions, but the utopian images rely on the ability to transform reproduction into a political system that can be controlled. Through extensive samples from the novels themselves, comparative close textual analysis, and the incorporation of feminist utopian theory, the account of the history of eugenics, Michel Foucault's notions of biopower and the politics of reproduction, this article demonstrates how parthenogenesis, scientific reproduction, idealized motherhood, and the absence of men serve as tools for the production of ideal citizens. Herland's idea of reproduction is sacralized, disciplined in a collective manner and exclusionary to the races considered less desirable, whereas Mizora's is a truly eugenic and racially exclusive perfection of the female body. The comparison highlights the dual nature of the reproductive utopia, one that frees women from the control of the patriarchy, and another that creates new regimes of bodily management. The article ends with a discussion of the moral boundaries of women-only reproductive utopias and why such concepts remain relevant when discussing reproduction, race and politics of life