Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism

Gilberta Golinelli's book is set within an important area of utopian studies that, from the 1990s, also via archival studies (Kate Lilley, Marina Leslie, Nicole Pohl, Oddwar Holmesland, Christine Rees, and Alessa Jones), started to focus on the numerous utopias penned by women in the early modern English period. The book, significantly titled Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism, analyzes some of the utopian writings by Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), Aphra Behn (1640–1689), and Mary Astell (1666–1731). Golinelli did not choose to use the term utopianism on a whim, since the utopias of these authors are hybrids, mixing other genres in their makeup: travel reports, theater, romance, letters. They are complex texts, then, which are to be read at different levels and must be approached utilizing diverse methodologies: historical, sociological, and philosophical as well as aesthetic and literary ones. This is the reason, as emerges from her analysis, Golinelli uses the most recent utopian studies, gender and women's studies, and early modern studies, carrying out a transdisciplinary methodology. One of her volume's working hypotheses is that these three writers, due to their themes, fall within the genealogy of women's writing and constitute an important link in the development of feminism. They can be considered a sort of “protofeminist,” although, as Golinelli rightly notes in her introduction, the terms feminism and protofeminism must be used with caution in the case of seventeenth-century works. All three writers, despite belonging to different social and political environments, vigorously state the importance of education for the true emancipation of women, allowing them to find a space of their own within public life. They have a full, mature awareness of the fact that writing constitutes a form of empowerment of their identity and their agency. This is because writing not only ensured economic independence—most important in Behn's case—but also offered more visibility at a public level and consequently the possibility of influencing different mentalities and persuading not just their readers in general but their female readers in particular.Another strong point of the book is that it examines, in the wake of Nicole Pohl's studies (Women, Space, and Utopia 1600–1800 [Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2006]), alternative spaces envisaged by these writers' utopian imaginations: “The battlefield, the new world, the theatre and convents represented another ‘ideal’ place where women could investigate how their gender and social identity, together with their participation in and/or exclusion from the public sphere were constructed and regulated” (119). In the 1980s a seminal study by Ann K. Mellor (“On Feminist Utopias,” Women's Studies 9 [1982]: 241–62) highlighted the existence of a very strong link between feminism and utopianism, between the utopias of the past and those of the present, and, moreover, how utopia became, for women, a powerful tool to criticize the reality surrounding them and to imagine alternative spaces.In her analyses of these utopian texts Golinelli gives ample space to the historical and political context, because it is only in this way that contemporary readers can comprehend their complexity and the contradictions of the writers and their “feminism.” Cavendish, Behn, and Astell are writers with very different biographies, but what unites them is a strong awareness of the importance of their writings. For instance, on one side, Margaret Cavendish, an extraordinary woman who possessed a remarkably vast knowledge of culture, capable of talking on an equal footing with the male scientists and philosophers of her time, presents extremely innovative ideas on women in her writings. But on the other, from a political point of view she was a royalist who exalted the values of the former monarchy, an institution founding its unassailability via the divine right of royal succession, and she saw in the heterosexual, patriarchal family a microcosm of the nation and an indisputable model of the good governance of the state.The first chapter, “Female Agency in Margaret Cavendish's Utopian Space,” examines two works by Cavendish, the closet drama Bell in Campo (1662) and The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666). In Bell in Campo Cavendish postulates a battlefield where women, led by Lady Victoria, show their men that they are capable, once adequately trained, of fighting on a par with them. The battlefield becomes an interesting experimenting space to break the rigid barriers that patriarchal society created in defining the roles of women and to enact new models of behavior and agency. Thus the battlefield and war, a place and an action always kept within the purview of men, are occupied by women, who have left the domestic space to fight. Cavendish, fully conversant with the culture of the court of Charles I and influenced moreover by the imposing personality of Queen Henrietta Maria, as well as by the figure of the Cavalier Woman, skillfully rereads the Amazon myth in order to challenge the patriarchal division between public and private spaces. The warrior women represented in the text thus also become emblematic of the reading Cavendish proposes of a myth that in actual fact has represented, and still represents, an important point of reflection for women.The strategy used by Cavendish, as the most recent critics have highlighted and as Golinelli also claims, is not so much that of overturning the “status quo,” that is, the monarchy and the royalist political stance, as that of “negotiating,” so to speak, the possibility of women acquiring new spaces within the public and private spheres, with men. Indeed, in her writings Cavendish hopes for a higher level of education for women, because only if they learn to use wit and rhetoric intelligently in conversation will they be able to enter academies and universities. In this sense, compared with the ones written before and during her time, Cavendish's utopias present a new “metadiscourse” on the roles that women may assume in these communities, not by proposing a radical upheaval of the patriarchal regime but, rather, a strategy for the gradual improvement of women's condition.The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World is a composition with a complex structure, and Golinelli examines it following the features that Cavendish herself lists in her introduction: romancical, philosophical, and fantastical. It is a text rich in strong intertextuality, not just to the imaginary voyages of the past, from Lucian to Godwin, but also with references and allusions to coeval scientific discoveries. Cavendish enters her work not merely as the authoress but also as the empress of the world created by her fantastical imagination. The Description of a New World, Called the Blazed World, as remarked by Lyman Sargent, one of the first scholars to underscore the importance of this utopia, may be read as both a eu-topia and a political allegory, in defense of the indisputable values of absolute monarchy, which Cavendish defends in her texts.Golinelli's second chapter, “Utopian Speculations on Women's Pleasure, Education and Self-Determination: The Enclosed Space of the ‘Convent’ in Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell,” focuses on a theme that has long been studied in feminism: the importance, for women, of having a secluded space wherein to study and reinforce their subjectivity and identity. In their writings, both Cavendish and Astell explore two communities of women who voluntarily choose to distance themselves from society and their families, retreating to an isolated space to devote themselves to a series of activities enriching and honing their culture. If this is the common trait of the two works, there is, however, a difference: the women in Cavendish's text decide not to marry and choose chastity, while those in Astell's may, after a period spent in the community, leave and, if so inclined, marry. Moreover, in Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure (1668) women enjoy all the pleasures nature and their senses offer, while in Astell's A Serious proposal to the Ladies Part I and Part II (1694, 1697) the rules governing day-to-day life are stricter. Indeed, as a theologian, Astell offers women a deepening of their spiritual life through reading sacred texts, in particular the Bible. Knowledge and critical study of Descartes's philosophical theories drive her to claim that reason is a faculty present in both men and women and should thus be stimulated and cultivated through an adequate course of study. In this sense Astell, as Golinelli demonstrates, is an interesting figure because, like other women during the decades before the English Civil War, she proposes, within her religious faith, a parity of the sexes and thus the right to the same education.In both writers, the education and activities reserved to women are not exclusively devoted to the preparation of good mothers or good wives but, rather, become vital and indispensable conditions for the development of female subjectivity; for adequate spiritual, intellectual, and cultural enrichment; and, moreover, for the fulfillment of passions and desires in their most diverse forms and manifestations. These two texts have recently been studied in lesbian studies, too, because, especially in Cavendish's closet drama, homoerotic desire and pleasure are displayed via performance and disguise strategies.The third chapter, “‘New’ World Settings and Utopian/Dystopian Discourses in Aphra Behn,” analyzes in two of Behn's works, Oroonoko or The Royal Slave. A True History (1688) and The Widow Ranter, or the History of Bacon in Virginia (1690), the new geographic spaces of Surinam and Virginia: places that, due to the magnificence of their lush nature, appear as Eden-like worlds but whose harsh reality—the difficult relationships between colonists and the indigenous inhabitants, slavery, and corruption in the burgeoning mercantile class—would render dystopian. The most innovative part of this chapter is doubtless the analysis of the play The Widow Ranter, since this work is less known and studied compared with Oroonoko. Behn, through the adventures of an eccentric widow capable of cleverly and ably managing the inheritance her husband left her, shows how, in the new worlds, women could carry out their lives much more freely than in England: “Indeed, by radically subverting the gender roles, the wealthy widow represents a threat to the traditional structure of the patriarchal family. She also represents the new possibilities now growingly available to women who, like men, seem to have greater chances to create a new life for themselves in the New World” (270).Gilberta Golinelli's work bears witness to the increase in specialized utopian research on women's utopias, especially those written in the second half of the seventeenth century, also thanks to the useful dialogue between gender studies, utopian studies, and early modern studies. Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism presents a vast bibliography, not just from the English-speaking world but from Europe as a whole: proof that the work of these writers has been translated into many languages and consequently, compared with the past, is now more widely accessible. It is a pity that the volume does not possess a thematic index and that the referenced texts are only to be found in the footnotes and not in an annotated bibliography at the end. The presence of these materials would be significantly useful to scholars

Aesthetics · Art · Sociology · Early Modern Women Writers · Gender Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Psychology · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction