E. Lec. (26): Women/ Unwomen/ Super Women: Utopia and Dystopia

The Department of English organized the twenty-sixth in the series of virtual Enrichment Lectures on April 30, 2022, with Prof. Elizabeth Russell from the University of Rovira I Virgili, Tarrragona (Spain), on “Women /Unwomen/Superwomen: Utopia and Dystopia”. 

The session began with Prof. Russell giving the audience a generic, broad insight into her research work and the necessity of the concept of utopia, and how its aspiration propels society towards improvement. By explaining the etymology of the word ‘paradise’ - it literally means ‘the garden of the world’- via a beautiful painting by DG Rosetti, she explained how the meaning carries connotations of bifurcating people into ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. She dovetailed this idea with an understanding of why such a division occurs. ‘Utopia’ needs to be protected from the outside but as some people are not admitted in there, it ultimately leads to the rise of dystopia. 

Prof. Russell then went about a Freudian dissection of ‘paradise/ utopia’, wherein  she juxtaposed the idea of the consciousness - represented like an iceberg - with that of the utopia. Just as a portion of the consciousness remains latent, there is an invisibility of the internal in utopia as well. She re-asserted her point of dystopia emerging from a utopia because of the suppression of violence, much like the suppression of the ‘id’ in the consciousness. 

She acquainted the audience with the origin of the word ‘dystopia’ by the English philosopher, JS Mill, who coined it in 1868 in the Parliament as he was denouncing the government's Irish land policy (after being inspired by Sir Thomas More's writing on utopia). The Speaker then briefly emphasized the importance of dystopian literature as it helps us in identifying the subtleties of transition at a time when the world is actually turning into a dystopia. It is becoming more and more significant because of its relevance at a global level, identifiable by such markers as economic distress, debilitating industrialization, and the fearful

 reality of climate change. 

Moving on, she talked about Mary Wollstonecraft who was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. Following her path, her daughter, Mary Shelley created Frankenstein’s monster and showing how he was not born of a woman and thus reflecting major destructive, dystopian tendencies. The Speaker also cited how Shelley personified ‘plague’ as a woman in her (dystopian) book entitled The Last Man.

Referring to a painting (The Night’Mare’, 1791) by the Swiss painter, Henry Fusel, Prof. Russell introduced the audience to several pro-suffragette and anti-suffragette cartoons that were used to further propaganda. A significant section of the lecture leaned towards exploring a neatly-dissected phenomenon of the ‘Surplus Women’ problem of Britain in the 1850s when women were shipped off to countries the English had colonized to find suitors. This was hugely representative of their place in society. 

After introducing the readers to the inherent sexism in Nietzschean philosophy and the remarkable dystopian writings of Charlotte Haldane, the lecture then moved on to a discussion of the writings that provided insight into a humanized representation of women. Towards the end, Prof. Russell gave an account of her admiration of Manjula Padmanabhan’s work, specifically Escape.

The session concluded by an extensive Q&A that further explored such aspects as the erasure of women from history, role-reversals in society, and the eventual rise of dystopia.