Unveiling a Parallel

Written in 1893 by two women from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Unveiling a Parallel is a remarkable precursor of twentieth-century feminist utopian novels like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Couched as sentimental romance and utopian fantasy, Jones and Merchant's work satirizes nineteenth-century gender roles and discrimination against women, humorously unveiling the absurdities of socially constructed "femaleness" and "maleness." Journeying to Mars, the novel's nameless male narrator discovers a society where women enjoy equality with men. He meets Elodia, a community leader, who drinks excessively, has lovers, and uses drugs. Her behavior confounds his expectations about women's supposedly pious and pure "natures" and reveals that equality, if rooted in a patriarchal culture, is not necessarily a utopian virtue. In contrast, a more perfect state of development has been reached in a second country on Mars, where the narrator learns how unselfishness, nurture, and mutual support can offer viable alternatives to passive, chaste femininity or to greedy, lustful masculinity. By imagining a better world in women's terms and in women's language, Jones and Merchant still speak with vital insight to both women and men today.