"John Quill"
The Women's Millennium
Introduced by David Ketterer
Introduction. Charles Heber Clark, the American
journalist and humorist, can lay claim to perhaps two significant footnotes in the history
of SF. I have made the case elsewhere that, in all likelihood, "Professor Baffin's
Adventures" (subsequently entitled "The Fortunate Island"), which Clark published in
1881 under his usual "Max Adeler" pseudonym, provided the essential inspiration for Mark
Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Clark's other claim has to do with
the piece that originally appeared under his earlier "John Quill" pseudonym (his first
Quill column in fact) in the Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin for Friday, 26 April
1867.
Unlike such Adeler fantasies as "Mr.
Skinner's Night in the Underworld," "An Old Fogy," and "Professor Baffin's Adventures," in
"The Women's Millennium" all is not revealed to be most probably a dream. "The Women's
Millennium," which describes a future society ruled by women, is indisputably SF.
Furthermore, not only does its opening sentence, "It was a feminine millennium," place
the reader directly in a future environment but that sentence also provides a historical
perspective on that future, a strategy that Thomas Hanzo argues is characteristic of SF.
The narrator is positioned at some farther point in the future when a utopian state of
sexual equality has been achieved, a state which provides a standard of judgment:
"In the
light of our present civilization," the unfair treatment of men "was contrary to the law
of common sense and honesty; but social science had not then reached its present
perfection, and women were governed by prejudice rather than reason." Quill's
sex-role-reversal society, a mirror image of our own, is dystopian in tendency, but
Quill's motive is clearly positive. His satire is aimed at improving the condition of
women, not ridiculing their demands. There is, for example, no irony in the reference to
the "most injust and iniquitous condition of things" whereby men (and by inference,
women in Clark's time) are paid "just one-half price for their labor." No less than
Joanna Russ in The Female Man (1975), Quill is using SF to write a feminist polemic.
But what makes "The Women's Millennium" of
historical significance is the date of its publication. Until someone discovers an earlier
example, "The Women's Millennium" stands as the first SF utopia to focus on sex-role
reversal. I use the word "utopia" here to mean "the verbal creation, through the medium
of fiction, of imaginary or not-yet-existing societies," a creation "that is impelled by
the author's moral vision" ("British and American Utopias by Women," p. 185). It is in
the context of what a reader takes to be the author's moral vision that a utopia will
tend, to a greater or lesser degree, towards the eutopian or dystopian. The
sex-role-reversal society, like the all-woman society, is a distinct variant of the Woman
Dominant theme that, as Sam Moskowitz indicates, goes back to classical accounts of the
Amazons. Whether or not SF, stories about the Amazons do not, however, generally qualify
as utopian fictions: they are usually impelled by an author's sense of wonder or
adventure, not her moral vision.
Daphne Patai, who has made a study of the
sex-role-reversal utopia, writes, "The earliest sex-role-reversal utopia I personally
know of is Annie Denton Cridge's "Man's Rights: Or, How Would You Like It?" , published in
1870" (letter to me, 12 May 1986). Not only is Cridge's satiric point identical to
Quill's, but the ironic picture she paints of a reversed-sex-role society on Mars is so
similar to that described on Quill's future Earth that the possibility of influence should
at least be noted. Just as "Man's sphere," in "The Women's Millennium," "is by the
domestic hearth," so in Cridge's utopia, "The sphere of man is home" (p. 30). Quill's
reference to how, if a man "dared stand on the platform, and launch out eloquent and
burning words against national and social sins, he was the subject of scurrilous abuse and
petty malice from the womanly editors of opposition" anticipates Cridge's account of a
Man's Rights meeting where the men on the platform are ridiculed by the women in the
audience. And like "The Women's Millennium," Man's Rights is more essay than work of
fiction. It should be emphasized, then, that "The Women's Millennium" precedes by three
years what Patai takes to be the first of the "[d]ozens of such" sex-role-reversal
utopias "published in England and America, by women and men" ("When Women Rule," p.
56). However, even if the chronology here were reversed, Quill's piece would still retain
the distinction of being the first SF work of this type. Since Cridge's female narrator
experiences life on Mars in a series of five dreams, Man's Rights should be classified as
a fantasy.
It was a feminine millennium! Women had obtained
all of their coveted "rights," after a long and arduous struggle; but not content
therewith, and being far more numerous than the males, they had completely subverted the
ancient order of things, placed themselves in the positions formerly occupied by the other
sex, and practically reduced the men to the social, political and legal status which women
formerly occupied. The effect was decidedly odd, and was productive of some very singular
results, many of which, to a believer in the doctrine of ultimate and certain retribution,
had the appearance of a desire on the part of the righted ladies to avenge some of the
wrongs inflicted upon their sex by the men, while they were in power. "Man's sphere,"
the women were accustomed to say, "is by the domestic hearth. He is a weak, delicate and
fragile creature, fitted by nature to attend only to the duties of the household, and by
virtue of his illogical mind, and his pliability, wholly incapable of understanding or
participating in the intricacies and subtleties of politics. If he goes to the polls, he
will there meet with rude crowds of boisterous viragoes, who will insult him, and
contaminate him by their ruffianly bearing. Give men the right to vote, and you rob them
of their delicacy and refinement, by bringing them into contact with that rude world with
which the coarser natures of women are better fitted to battle. Besides, men do not care
to vote nor is there any necessity for it. They would in most cases be governed by their
wives, and the vote would be a mere duplication." Some of the men contended against this
doctrine, and declared that women wished to make mere puppets and ornaments of them, that
they were taxed as citizens and had a right to a citizen's suffrage, and that the talk
about the "domestic hear[t]h" and the "rude world" was all sentimental nonsense, when
so many of them, having no wives to support them, had to go out into the "rude world" to
earn money enough to have a "domestic hearth." But these were decried on all sides as
strong minded men who had no sweet, manly delicacy, and were not content with man's
legitimate "sphere." But still there was a very large class of men who were forced to
earn their daily bread, and strange to say, in the paradoxical condition of society which
then existed, it was considered mean and degrading for men to have to work even while
women were honored for doing it. A man who stood in a store was not considered
respectable, while a woman who did not, or else had no other occupation, was regarded in
the same light. And there were very many things that men were not permitted to do under
any circumstances. Out of the thousand and one occupations and trades there were only a
few that society countenanced as at all fitted for men, and it was the universal rule, in
this most unjust and iniquitous condition of things, to pay men just one-half price for
their labor. A woman and a man might stand beside each other in a store, or in a factory,
and the man might do his work as well or better than the woman, and he might do more of
it, yet it was the custom to pay the woman twice or three times as much wages. There was
no good reason for it, and none could be manufactured. To be sure there were some
wooden-headed philosophers who prated about a system of political economy, one of the
fixed rules of which was that a man's labor was never as valuable as a woman's, under any
circumstances, but some of the "strong-minded" men used to insist that the system was
invented by the women, that it was totally and radically false, and that the same amount
of labor, done equally well, was worth the same price, no matter by whom performed. But
these were scoffed at as dreamers, although in this enlightened age we will, of course,
admit their view to be the correct one.
And men were wholly debarred from the learned
professions. If they wished to study law, society said man had an illogical mind; if he
desired to study medicine, his delicate nature could not bear the suffering he must
witness; if he wished to preach the gospel, it was indecent for him to speak in the
church; if he felt a God inspired gift to speak from the platform, he was rude and wanting
in true delicacy; if he sought to become an editor, his mind was too narrow to cope with
the great questions of the day, and this apart from any impulse or taste or mighty
aspirations which he might have in either of these directions. Thus debarred from the
press, the pulpit, the forum and the ballot-box, the women declared that man was
contented--he did not want anything, while all the time he was unable to make himself
heard or to demand his rights. Men were quiet, but they were chained, gagged, and
smothered so that they could not make their wants known. If any man dared to break through
the narrow conventionalities of this disgraceful state of society and study medicine, he
was laughed at and despised, and even the members of his own sex refused to employ him. If
he preached the Gospel, he was a butt for the ridicule of small souled and despicable
creatures, who could never perceive the hidden impulse in his heart which fairly compelled
him to do it. If he dared stand on the platform, and launch out eloquent and burning words
against national and social sins, he was the target for scurrilous abuse and slander and
petty malice from the womanly editors of opposition, old-fogy journals, who clogged the
wheels of progress with their prejudices and tied their wretched faith to old forms and
narrow superstitions.
In addition to all this, men were socially
oppressed. To be sure, there was a great deal of gallantry displayed on the part of the
women, and a professedly chivalrous devotion to the sex was displayed; but it was
evidently hypocritical, for the very women who were ardent and obsequious admirers of men
of their own station, were the tyrants and oppressors of the poorer classes in their
employ. So devotion to the sex was merely a pretty principle, that did very well to talk
about and to put in partial practice; but universal application was not a fact, and the
whole thing was of a consequence, but a miserable, lying pretence and a sham. This was
further evidenced in this: a woman could indulge to an unlimited extent in debauchery,
drunkenness, licentiousness and a dissolute life, and yet she would be received into
society with a smiling cordiality, that apparently increased in warmth in a corresponding
ratio with the wickedness and vileness of her known habits. Indeed, a woman could do
everything short of committing a felony, and no matter how many souls she ruined, how many
other women she led into intemperate habit, or how often she sinned against the laws of
God and nature, she was forgiven by that very generous society which recognized no wrong
in anything but poverty and an infraction of its laws; with this exception, however, that
the offender should not be a man! [I]f a man made a slip, and in the least degree lost any
of his purity, farewell social position, happiness and hope. Society launched its most
terrible anathemas at him, he was despised, cast out, spit upon. He became a pariah, a
leper, a disease, to be avoided, and kept out of sight; and this, too, although the crime
may have been the same as those constantly committed by women, and even though a woman may
have been the instigator and the temptor. It made no difference. Society could forgive
everything in a woman--in a man, nothing. Why this distinction was made none knew. Some
said it was necessary in order to preserve man's purity, but they failed to show why the
purity of woman was not equally important; others blamed it on political economy, but they
could not tell why that most paradoxical and absurd science was constructed with such
partiality for the female sex. In the light of our present civilization we can see that
this was a cruel and unjust distinction, and was contrary to the law of common sense and
honesty; but social science had not then reached its present perfection, and women were
governed by prejudice rather than reason. And this distinction was not confined entirely
to social matters. It was recognized, supported and defended by law; the women did all the
voting, and, of course, all the law-making, so that they held the reins entirely in their
own hands, and legislated for and to their own advantage. A married man had very few
rights. The law said that he was absorbed into his wife --that his personality was lost,
his property became hers on marriage, and unless it was specially secured to him, she
could squander it at her pleasure. He could not will it as he wished, he could not sign a
contract, execute a deed, or do any independent, individual thing in the eye of the law.
He was a nonentity, an irresponsible, incapable creature, whose separate individuality had
no recognized existence. Of course, such laws were manifestly absurd, and although there
were persons who dared assert that such a system was but a relic of certain dark ages,
amid the gloom and darkness of which man was regarded as little better than a chattel and
a slave, and that it was altogether unworthy of an advanced stage of civilization, doughty
defenders of the code were not wanting, who insisted that it was absolutely necessary that
the wife should be the head of the house, that she was the mainstay and support of the
family, and should have unbounded authority, and this, despite the fact that very many
households, wives and all, were supported and maintained by the hard labor of the men
whose wives were lazy, idle vagabonds; and that even in the best families the husbands did
their full share of the work in attending to domestic matters and rearing the children. On
the whole, it was an absurd, cruel, paradoxical and unreasonable condition of things, and
proved very conclusively that the women were just as much incapacitated for the government
of themselves and others as they declared the men to be. Indeed it is an open question
whether the matter would not have been greatly improved by giving the men entire control
of public affairs, and sending the women back to that "domestic hearth" and that
"sphere" of which they were accustomed to prate so much. Certainly the men could not
have been more utterly incompetent to fill high places of public trust and honor than many
of the women who actually did hold them; and there is great reason to believe that with
the superior purity and integrity of the men, there would have been less corruption, fewer
frauds perpetrated upon tax payers, and more justice to all classes, with less lying and
trickery than when the power was exclusively in the hands of the women.
WORKS CITED
Cridge, Annie Denton. "Man's Rights: Or, How Would
You Like It?" Comprising Dreams.Wellesley, MA: Mrs E.M.F. Denton, 1870.
Hanzo, Thomas A. "The Past of Science Fiction,"
in Bridges to Science Fiction, ed. George E. Slusser, George R. Guffey & Mark Rose
(Carbondale, IL: 1980), pp. 131-46.
Ketterer, David. "'Professor Baffin's
Adventures' by Max Adeler: The Inspiration for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court?" Mark Twain Journal, 24 (Spring 1986):24-34.
Moskowitz, Sam. "Women's Liberation: When Women
Rule," in his Strange Horizons: The Spectrum of Science Fiction (NY, 1976), pp. 70-91.
Patai, Daphne. "British and American Utopias by
Women (1836-1979): An Annotated Bibliography, Part I," Alternative Futures, 4
(Spring/Summer 1981):184-206.
________. "When Women Rule: Defamiliarization in
the Sex-Role-Reversal Utopia," Extrapolation, 23 (1982):56-69.
"Quill, John" [pseud. Charles Heber Clark].
"The Women's Millennium," Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin, 21:15 (26 April 1867):8.
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