Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women’s Utopianism

Gender Models, Alternative Communities and Women’s Utopianism explores utopianism in Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn and Mary Astell as a dynamic, open model which aims gradually to achieve a better world. Their utopian speculations examine and challenge the relationship between nature and nurture, women’s access to knowledge and power, and the possibility of imagining a politics of desire and sexuality which are not regulated by the dominant heterosexual system. The works here examined are especially significant in that they help us to understand the negotiations and contradictions which have long accompanied the process of self-determination and emancipation of women. Cavendish, Behn and Astell have been considered feminists, proto-feminists and, particularly in the historical and philosophical field, Tory feminists and this is still the case. In favour of the monarchy – the symbol par excellence of patriarchal power – Cavendish, Behn and Astell were amongst the first women to advocate an increased and improved education for women.