| This project offers an unsettling of utopia that draws upon utopian situations and texts themselves. By looking at the place of sexuality, relationships, and motherhood in Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, Joanna Russ' The Female Man, and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, I contend that while each author presents a distinct interpretation of the meanings of utopia and dystopia, all three texts point to the problems that underpin any utopian vision from the outset. Drawing from my analysis of these works, I then examine A Woman's Place, a commune in existence from 1974--1982 in Athol, New York. By looking at the history of the commune in conjunction with both the conflicts that eventually tore it apart and the problems within the Women's Liberation Movement of the time, I argue that, like the feminist utopian fiction, the commune exposes the shifting nature of utopia and dystopia. |
