Dystopian narratives often take place in a future society that is devoid of hope and possibility. Popular media portrayals may take a social issue and push its negative potential to the limit. These representations often suggest some catastrophic event has occurred, resulting in a gloomy future. In contrast, some feminist works may establish today as a dystopia. These pieces recognize the undesirable elements of the present, and instead maximize hope for the future. This future is one of female empowerment, often removed completely from masculine spaces. Today’s patriarchy is rejected and the dream of matriarchy for tomorrow is embraced. This depiction is explored in “Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and “Founding the Feminist Utopia” by Léone Drapeaud. Despite being written some hundred years apart, the works complement each other. While the pieces are powerful on their own merit, Drapeaud’s analytical perspective on feminist literature provides a salient expansion on Hossain’s fictional society.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” tackles gender through narrative. Hossain lived from 1880 to 1932 in Bangladesh, a British colony at the time. Her experiences as a Muslim woman under British colonial rule significantly influenced her work. In addition to writing, Hossain organized and pushed for expanding womens’ education and civil rights (Shahzad et al.).

Sultana, Hossain’s main character, casually ponders “the condition of Indian womanhood” and later wonders if she had fallen asleep while doing so. This line between sleeping dreams and aspirational dreams is not clearly defined, allowing the reader to dwell on its meaning. A woman, Sister Sara, suddenly appears before Sultana and whisks her away to the apparent feminist utopia of Ladyland. This society is entirely run by women, with men taking on traditionally female gender roles. Misogynistic stereotypes are redirected towards men, characterizing them as weaker or small minded. Men are “in their rightful place,” serving as homemakers. Only women are considered deserving of an education.

Hossain’s storytelling provides an emotional context to the reader. The extremity to which social roles are reversed identifies the ridiculousness with which modern society exists. While the story provides a hopeful vision of women’s empowerment, Ladyland fails to create a more inclusive society by alternatively oppressing men. This unfamiliar role reversal highlights the unfairness of the situation and necessity for change. It exposes gender inequality in modern society, rather than illustrate the ideal world. It deliberately uses humor and lightheartedness to balance the seriousness of the subject matter. Emotion provides the reader a personal stake and investment in the story, a literary device that often makes ideas stick with people longer than if they had been purely academically explained.

In contrast, Léone Drapeaud’s “Founding the Feminist Utopia” is analytical rather than narrative. Drapeaud approaches the topic from her interactions with feminist literature and background as an architect and urban planner. Her career extends from Brussels to Paris to emerging Chinese architecture. Her efforts focus on using space to challenge traditional ideas around gender. More specifically, her work utilizes “architecture and fiction as analytical, critical and subversive tools to emphasize contemporary issues and dissect their resolutions” (Traumnovelle).

Traditionally, social change is thought to be enacted through public policy, community organizing, or education. Accordingly, architecture may not be immediately associated with these more common means. Drapeaud approaches changemaking by dismantling oppressive spaces and reimagining them in a more just way. In describing the methodology behind this, Drapeaud writes:

reclaiming is an important method for redefining the values embedded in space. Although space can reflect outdated values, it can also be occupied, transformed, and overlaid with new ambitions…Reclaiming means that humankind can accept its mistakes and make them right. Perhaps paradoxically, it seems that the only possible utopia is based on the real.

Drapeaud argues how spaces inherently represent a society’s values and beliefs, creating an association between physical space and a society’s dominant ideology. While some dominant ideologies may be morally unacceptable, she argues the necessity to acknowledge it. Without doing so, optimism may be less grounded in truth and change may be more difficult to achieve.

In connecting “Founding the Feminist Utopia” to “Sultana’s Dream,” Drapeaud may argue the spatial significance of Sultana’s dream. While there is little room in society for Sultana to experience equality and gender liberation, the dreamspace serves as an alternative. The dream serves as an element of space, though nonphysical, for a feminist ideology to sit and thrive. As previously noted, Drapeaud emphasizes the importance of subverting oppressive spaces into liberating ones. As feminism takes a stronger hold on people, particularly those against feminism, it fills their minds and takes up more space.

Besides discussion on architecture, “Founding the Feminist Utopia” provides a range of additional analysis. Drapeaud discusses how feminist utopian literature can be broken down into three distinct categories: the overlay, the city as a machine, and the fortress.

The fortress…approach is as close to the blank slate as fiction dares to be, without erasing the merits of comparison with an elapsed social structure. The city as a machine adopts the standpoint that work is both the backbone of society and of women’s oppression…For lack of a better term, the last archetype is called the overlay, presenting a feminist coup that subverts existing spatial structures.

Drapeaud expands on each archetype, defining them in a precise and sharp way. While works may differ in their content, at their core they usually expand on one category. The fortress tends to focus on feminist isolation, a society where women exist in isolation from men. The city as a machine focuses on financial and social independence in a pre-existing society. The overlay expands existing societal structures, building upon them with a feminist vision.

The distinction between three unique categories of feminist utopia helps the reader digest the information. These archetypes help to outline the author’s vision, and assists the reader in understanding related feminist works. Similarly, they ground individual pieces in a larger societal context, allowing the reader to understand how the text may fit into feminism as a whole. This academic analysis provides for more intellectual thought and consideration of the issue.

Such archetypes and ultimately utopian literature itself is essential, argues Drapeaud, because it makes utopia achievable. She argues that without dreaming of an optimistic future, society will not act. If society does not act, then nothing will change. Society’s great achievements have not been made by thinking of only the present, but by envisioning an end goal and working towards it. Drapeaud succinctly summarizes this, stating that, “Utopia allows dreams of social changes and, in doing so, contributes to their construction.”

In continuing to synthesize the messages of the texts, it can be seen that Drapeaud’s view of feminism complements Hossain’s. As “Sultana’s Dream” describes a specific instance of feminist isolation, Drapeaud may argue how such a concept may fit the fortress archetype. Both touch on these themes of feminist isolation and inversion of social roles. Drapeaud notes how such societies, like Hossain’s Ladyland, exist less as an actual utopia to be realized but as rhetorical devices against patriarchal exclusivity. Utopia would instead focus on dismantling these patriarchal structures, rather than the oppression of men as individuals.

In review, Léone Drapeaud’s “Founding the Feminist Utopia” and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” provide an integrated critique of society despite being written some hundred years apart. The authors’ respective decisions to write a narrative or an academic analysis are intentional strategies to make the most impact. The academic analysis found in Drapeaud’s work provides a lens with which to understand and expand upon that of Hossain. Further, Drapeaud’s analysis and archetypes present a vision to understanding feminist works in general. These empowering social discussions can only occur when space is provided in stories and the physical world to do so. These spaces provide the reader encouragement, both in the form of a comforting vision of feminist empowerment and the road map to achieve it.

Works Cited

“Founding the Feminist Utopia.” THE SITE MAGAZINE, THE SITE MAGAZINE, 06 Nov. 2018, https://www.thesitemagazine.com/read/founding-the-feminist-utopia.

Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat. “Sultana’s Dream.” A Celebration of Women Writers, University of Pennsylvania, https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html.

Shahzad, Fatima, and Kalyani Dutta. “Fatima Shahzad.” Postcolonial Studies, 16 Feb. 2020, https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/10/hossain-rokeya-sakhawat/.

Traumnovelle, https://traumnovelle.eu/.