|
Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her political treatise Women and Economics (1898) points out that women’s inferior social status is caused by the inappropriate distribution of the female labor force to the domestic field. Since women are tied to household drudgery, they are unable to participate in the public workforce to gain their economic independence. Only when the deep-rooted binary division of human labor—men are attributed to public sphere and women, the private—is discarded, can the unequal relation between the sexes be improved, and the human society elevate and progress.
In her utopian trilogy—Moving the Mountain, Herland and With Her in Ourland, by the use of contrast and comparison, Gilman blueprints her utopias in which female labor force is effectively utilized. That is, by the conversation between the protagonists of different sexes and opposite viewpoints, Gilman restates her reformative ideas on sexuo-economic relation as addressed in Women and Economics.
This thesis, by analyzing Gilman’s utopian trilogy in the perspectives of “sex distinction” and “labor division,” attempts to explore how Gilman helps her audience, especially women, to free themselves from the patriarchal social conventions and then realize their potential and capability of accomplishing themselves in the economic world.
|