Mothers and masters in twentieth century utopian and dystopian literature

188 Pages·2009·2.853 MB·English

by  Theis, Mary Elizabeth

Mothers and Masters
in Contemporary
Utopian and
Dystopian Literature
Currents in Comparative Romance
Languages and Literatures

Tamara Alvarez-Detrell and Michael G. Paulson
General Editors

Vol. 33

PETER LANG
New York (cid:121) Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:121) Bern
Frankfurt am Main (cid:121) Berlin (cid:121) Brussels (cid:121) Vienna (cid:121) Oxford
Mary E. Theis

Mothers and Masters
in Contemporary
Utopian and
Dystopian Literature

PETER LANG
New York (cid:121) Washington, D.C./Baltimore (cid:121) Bern
Frankfurt am Main (cid:121) Berlin (cid:121) Brussels (cid:121) Vienna (cid:121) Oxford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Theis, Mary E.
Mothers and masters in contemporary utopian and
dystopian literature / Mary E. Theis
p. cm. — (Currents in comparative romance languages and literatures; v. 33)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Literature, modern—20th century—history and
criticism. 2. Mothers in literature. 3. Utopias in literature. I. Title.
PN771.T44 809.3’93520431—dc20 95017100
ISBN 978-0-8204-2818-5
ISSN 0893-5963

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data is available
on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de/.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity
of the Council of Library Resources.

© 2009 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
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www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

Printed in the United States of America
For my parents and my family
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward;
but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
Ursula Le Guin
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Mothers as First Teachers 9
2 Mothers as the Archetypal Representatives of Nature 39
3 Mothers as Creators 61
4 Mothers as Eugenicists and Controllers of Demography 79
5 Male Mothering 103
6 Faiths of Our Fathers: Contested Zones of Culture 121
Conclusion 157
Notes 161
Bibliography 169
Index 175
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my mentor, Dr. Maurice Friedberg, for his inspiring
example of thoroughness in research; Dr. Marianna Tax Choldin and all the
Slavic librarians at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for their
assistance in the initial stages of my research; Annika Blomberg, a recent grad-
uate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, who illustrated this book for her
mother; and my entire family for their constant support of my work.
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INTRODUCTION
With daily reports about sectarian violence, ethnic cleansing, environmental
accidents, natural disasters, AIDS, worldwide economic crises, and global
warming, the concerns of literary specialists about the disappearance of utopi-
an dreams and exhaustion of dystopian warnings might well seem outrageous
or at best irrelevant. The short supply of potable water and a myriad of other
issues surrounding the carrying capacity of our planet for its growing number of
human residents might make even hopes for survival appear utopian. Certainly
the growing gap between the rich and the poor alone is a source of increasing
instability.
Deceived by the promises of a worker’s paradise, the working class, which
was formerly the agent of choice for utopian transformation, competes with a
very worried middle class for its share of the leftovers on the “flat” table set by
market forces. Unopposed in the best flat-land scenario, the liberty to consume
and real need to feed the world’s hungry masses may not be limited by the ener-
gy to deliver the resources, but as Hans Jonas has pointed out in Das Prinzip
Verantwortung (The Responsibility Principle), by its impact on the thermal equi-
librium of the world (352). Even though the universality of the utopian impulse
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