Imagining Women’s Worlds: Feminist Utopianism and the Reconstruction of Gendered Power in Mizora and New Amazonia

Abstract Book of the 10th International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences

Year: 2026

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Imagining Women’s Worlds: Feminist Utopianism and the Reconstruction of Gendered Power in Mizora and New Amazonia

Dr. Farzana Naz Swarna Prova

ABSTRACT:

Feminist utopian literature envisions alternative social systems in which conventional gender relations, social institutions, and power structures can be reorganized. Mary E. Bradley Lane’s Mizora and Mrs. George Corbett’s New Amazonia are two important feminist utopian works of the nineteenth century, presenting different forms of women-centered social organization and gender-based power restructuring. Both works explore alternative possibilities for political authority, knowledge, education, labor, family, and individual freedom through women-centered societies. However, these alternative societies represent not only the ideal of emancipation; they also have their own structures of control, exclusion, and social restraint. The purpose of this study is to analyze women’s empowerment and gender-based power restructuring in the two novels through comparative reading. The study will apply qualitative comparative literature analysis, intensive reading, and thematic analysis. The main areas of analysis will be political institutions, education and science, labor and economic roles, marriage and motherhood, and women’s self-representation. The study will explore how female-centered utopias create alternatives to traditional patriarchal power, while at the same time defining the limits of freedom through new social norms and institutional authority. This comparative study will contribute to the formation of a more nuanced understanding of the correlation between women’s empowerment and institutional control in feminist utopian literature. At the same time, it will show how women-centered utopian societies challenge patriarchal structures as well as expose the complexities and limitations of gender-based power reconstruction.

Keywords: Bodily Autonomy; Comparative Literary Analysis; Gender Ideology; Patriarchy; Social Reorganisation