This thesis highlights starting points underlying the notions of two feminist utopians, Christine de Pizan and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In approaching their texts, it focuses on the notions central to understand their writings. These would be historical, social, and cultural contexts. Defining concepts as utopian in its varying forms and feminism has been of significance. A feministic approach grounded in Simone de Beauvoirs philosophical phenomenology in the study of feministic utopia's visibility, has contributed to the understanding of the power structures to which women are tethered. In order to understand the way women are presented, it has become obvious that The Book of the City of Ladies and Herland are literary works that are related not only by their authors’ background and personality but by the society in which they lived. Through their engagement in the contemporary intellectual debate on all social planes, both authors contributed to shifting the focus of their own contemporary notions of a woman to the notion of a woman equal to men. Woman, in Christine de Pizans utopia, is given specific properties and through themes of issues given meaning. She is not free in the sense that Simone de Beauvoir says. She has a broader repertoire than was historically assigned, but her freedom is not arbitrary, contingent, and temporary and judged by her actions. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's woman is in her novel subordinated by biology in contrast to her real society where she is a result of economic and social oppression in history and society. By being united, women can drive social change and thereby change their living conditions. In Herland, the author shows what this superior human togetherness can lead to in a socialist society. By focusing on issues related to motherhood, community and work, she challenges the reader to question the universal starting point for their understanding of masculinity and femininity
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-7135 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Karlsson, Micael |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Estetisk-filosofiska fakulteten |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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