Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More's Utopia

445 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Mehtap SARIARSLAN For citation / Atıf için: SARIARSLAN, M. (2025). Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia. Uluslararası Sosyal Bilimler ve Eğitim Dergisi – USBED 7(13), 445. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17062781, https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/usbed Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia Mehtap SARIARSLAN Ph.D, İstanbul Beykent University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of English Language and Literature, 34500, İstanbul, Türkiye E-mail: mehtap[email protected]om ORCID: 0000-0001-9880-1321 Makale Türü / Article Type: Araştırma Makalesi / Research Article Gönderilme Tarihi / Submission Date: 05/08/2025 Revizyon Tarihleri / Revision Dates: 06/08/2025 (Editor c.), 11/08/2025 (Minor), 28/08/2025 (Minor) Kabul Tarihi / Accepted Date: 05/09/2025 Etik Beyan / Ethics Statement ✓ The author declares that the study is not subject to ethics committee approval. Araştırmacıların çalışmaya katkısı / Researchers' contribution to the study 1. Author contribution: Wrote the article, collected the data, and analyzed/reported the results (100%). Çıkar çatışması / Conflict of interest The author declares that this study has no potential conflict of interest. Benzerlik / Similarity This study was scanned using the intihal.net program. The final similarity rate is 5%. 446 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia Abstract Although Thomas More wrote Utopia to depict his ideal, utopic world, his portrayal of women in the book was quite controversial regarding gender and equality. It has received quite a reaction from the critics since it was published. With the rise of gender and women's studies, the reaction peaked, especially in the 21st century. More limited the power of the ruling class and made remarkable changes in the public sphere of his ideal society, living in Utopia, to create a better country; however, he kept some institutions in Utopia as they were in 14th-century England. He did not abolish slavery, and he did not change the status of women in society in Utopia. Women were still expected to be submissive and subordinated compared to men. They were still responsible for cooking, serving food, and child-rearing. More's utopic land, Utopia, was and is a dystopia for women, as all chores, tasks, responsibilities, or rights were not distributed equally, and as women were still seen as objects and properties of men. Keywords: Utopia, Dystopia, Utopic world, Gender discrimination, Women's rights EXTENDED ABSTRACT Introduction Although Thomas More wrote Utopia to depict his ideal, utopic world, his portrayal of women in the book was quite controversial regarding gender and equality. It has received quite a reaction from the critics since it was published. With the rise of gender and women's studies, the reaction peaked, especially in the 21st century. More limited the power of the ruling class and made remarkable changes in the public sphere of his ideal society, living in Utopia, to create a better country; however, he kept some institutions in Utopia as they were in 14th-century England. He did not abolish slavery, and he did not change the status of women in society in Utopia. Women were still expected to be submissive and subordinated compared to men. They were still responsible for cooking, serving food, and child-rearing. More's utopic land, Utopia, was and is a dystopia for women, as all chores, tasks, responsibilities, or rights were not distributed equally, and as women were still seen as objects and properties of men. Conceptual and Theoretical Framework Utopias and dystopias are usually regarded as authors' positive or negative reflections or portrayals of the future. In utopias, authors depict their ideal country or state where citizens are assigned specific roles and given much more freedom regarding human rights, wealth, property, speech, living standards, and even working life. However, the astounding issue related with Thomas More’s Utopia is that although men were given so many positively elevating opportunities and roles, women had slightly different opportunities and roles compared to the real life conditions of the women in England in the 16th century, which makes it evident for the reader that More, in his utopic land, still created a patriarchy where women were still seen as secondary to men. Concepts Utopia means a good place and no place; that is to say, a non-existing imaginary good land where comparatively good things happen. On the other hand, dystopia is an imagined country or a deeply flawed or frightening society characterized by oppressive regimes, loss or restriction of freedom or human rights, injustice, and even sometimes suffering. When the reader reads the parts on the position and role of women in Utopia, which must have been a better world, and then contemplates the book's title, he/she can clearly see the paradoxes created by the author. Literature Review Although Utopia is a book written at the beginning of the 16th century, and it has been taught at universities in English departments for centuries, finding academic sources written on the representation of women in Utopia has been quite challenging. There are only a few articles. It has been even harder to find articles about the gender discrimination in More’s Utopia. Some general articles and book parts partly cover the above-mentioned issues; authors like Sargent, Miller, Fokkema, Serras, and Jimenez write some of these works included in this research. 447 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Mehtap SARIARSLAN Method In order to complete my article, I primarily benefited from a close reading of Utopia, where I found the conflicts and paradoxical issues created by the author and analyzed them with the help of current academic studies. Findings It has been clarified that although Utopia is more than five hundred years old, the conflictual issues about women in the book have not attracted many researchers of Utopian Literature. Most scholars working in Utopian or Dystopian Literature or English Literature preferred to work on recently published books, which illustrates the situation that different perspectives and research are needed on works like Utopia that, in fact, named and inspired the Utopian Literature genre. Conclusion, Discussion, and Recommendations Even though it was designed as a utopic land in the first place, Thomas More’s Utopia sounded like a dystopic land for women when the book was published at the beginning of the 16th century. It still sounds like a dystopia for most women. More criticized the English state, the authorities of the monarchs, and suggested some alterations and created an alternative imaginary country as a solution; nonetheless, the position of the women in his ideal land was problematic in that the society was still patriarchal and women were still regarded as secondary to men. INTRODUCTION Utopia was written by the English writer, Thomas More, at the beginning of the 16th century and depicts More's portrayal of an ideal, utopic state in great detail. More worked in the king's court as a diplomat and an advisor for Henry VIII. In order to euphemize his criticism of the English state at that time and blur the lines between fiction and reality, he created such a narration with a fictional narrator called Thomas More. Through the character of Thomas More, the writer gives his insights about how an ideal state should be ruled and how its citizens should act. In fact, "utopia" refers to an imaginary good place where all citizens usually have the same chances of being equally happy. Although Thomas More intended to create a good place for all, not each one of the citizens was equal in his utopic land: “Skipping many centuries because there is no obvious utopia available, we can turn to the originator of the term, Sir Thomas More, and his Utopia of 1516. Here we find a totally different concept of the role and status of women- " no equality" (Sargent, p. 303). Women do not have equal opportunities to men in this country. Although they are educated and trained in similar ways to men, they are kept in the domestic sphere, as it used to be back in the late 15th and early 16th centuries: The women of Utopia had an increased role within society compared to early modern England, a status that More presented as quite beneficial. All women of that island being involved in work proved highly beneficial to the whole society, in the eyes of Hythloday (the fictional explorer recounting the tale) and likely More. As Hythloday explained, all men and women would work in agriculture without exception, and women would learn a second trade to contribute further. While women in the poorer communities of England did help contribute to keep themselves and their families fed, it would have 448 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia been unheard of for all of the women to either work or know a trade, let alone both. Hythloday was quite impressed by this… (Miller, p. 195) When the book was in the process of being written, there were conflicts and much controversy about some laws regarding theft, aggravated assault, and murder. In the opening of Book I, the reader sees the character, Thomas More, discussing these issues with Peter Giles and some other friends. In fact, Book I serves as a theoretical and contextual basis for Book II. After the characters brainstorm the current problems of England in Book I, the character Raphael Hythloday comes up with an antidote, a solution, and an ideal utopic state called Utopia. He shares his experiences from his travel to Utopia. Thomas More created this layered fictional story and shared his opinions about a utopic country through the character of Hythloday. Complaining about the religious conflicts and social and economic class distinctions in England during the reign of Henry VIII, More wanted to design a land in which every citizen would be happy to live: More’s Utopia (1516) set an example for later writers who criticized the social conventions of their times by designing an ideal society. The remarkable thing about More's fiction is that it combined an abstract discussion of a utopian society with hardly veiled political criticism of autocratic rulers, such as the English and French kings in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. (Fokkema, p. 31) More wanted every citizen to have equal rights and opportunities without considering their religion, class, or gender. However, his utopic country had some problems, like they still had slavery, they still had the death penalty, and clergypersons were still privileged. His utopic land did not only have problems like these, but also had more serious problems, especially for women. Women in his Utopia were still secondary to men. Although he abolished classes, he did not change much about the position of women. They still needed the men’s consent or approval; they still gave birth and looked after the children; they were shown naked to a candidate before marriage; they cooked; they were defined as weak; they could not become priests if they were young or married; they could not repent without confessing their sins to their husbands. Therefore, it is possible to claim that Thomas More's utopic land, Utopia, is a dystopia for women as all chores, tasks, responsibilities, or rights were not distributed equally, and as women were still seen as objects and properties of men: The dream to convert England into a more productive society using the current knowledge and manufacturing processes, and in so doing, to construct a more egalitarian commonwealth, highlights tangible objectives for More's progressive projects. However, in terms of gender, Utopia's harmonic world vision is denied, the humanist view that prevails in his dream world being a patriarchal one. There, men are granted better chances of living according to their own merits and efforts, both as 449 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Mehtap SARIARSLAN individuals and citizens, and their role in the public sphere no longer depends on chancy birth rights and privilege. Notwithstanding this political structure, women seem to linger in men's shadow, deprived of an autonomous contribution in public affairs. They remain male subordinates, and their traditional functions and duties keep them from growing into adult and complete human beings, some women were about to claim. (Serras, p. 323) The new world order created by More had been his attempt at picturing a better England in which all citizens were happier; nonetheless, he could not escape the influence of the patriarchy, and he ended up designing a patriarchal world where women were seen as secondary to men. More was Catholic. He was against the Protestant Reformation. As it is known, he was executed by Henry VIII when he refused to recognize him as the head of the Anglican Church, that is to say, the English Protestant Church. His background tainted more's idea of a utopic world. REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN UTOPIA At the beginning of Book II, Thomas More introduces several different occupations available for both men and women. While he is defining the jobs, the differences between genders become much more visible. All citizens are taught how to become farmers and learn everything about agriculture starting from their early childhood. They all learn about others' jobs as well, such as masonry, wool working, or linen making; so far, the distribution of jobs looks equal and fair; however, after a few sentences, More adds information about the jobs, and the difference between men and women becomes visible. He says that women are weaker: However, regarding other crafts, each person learns one of them, and not only the men, but also the women, although the latter, being weaker, practice lighter tasks, primarily working with wool and flax. The men are entrusted to the other, more laborious crafts; for the most part, everyone is trained in his father's crafts since most are naturally inclined that way. (More, p. 54) Another example of gender discrimination in this part related to jobs shows itself in his usage of the English language. He uses the pronoun "he" while defining the jobs and the requirements. Instead of saying men and women or “they” referring to both sexes, he prefers to use “he”: However, someone has a mind to go in another direction. In that case, he is transferred by adoption into some household that practices the craft that has caught his fancy, care being taken by his father and the magistrates that he be assigned to a grave and honorable father-of-the-household. (p. 54) In the part where he talks about social interactions and the housing system, More expresses that women need to move into their husbands' and their parents' houses when they are adults, a common tradition in England at the time of the book's publication. Therefore, More’s utopic system does not abolish the burden of the patriarchy on women. However, it strengthens it: 450 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia “Women (when they become adults) are placed with their husbands’ families, and move into their houses” (p. 57). Women do not decide for themselves, and the male members still decide the utopic society in Utopia. Again, the authority is the patriarchy: “But male children, and the grandsons after them, remain in the household and obey the oldest male parent…” (p. 57). It is clear that Thomas More created a utopic society which had dystopic roles and definitions for women: It can be argued that Utopia is a patriarchal society where women are essentialized to 'matrixial entities', or spaces of (re)production. The creation of Utopia is framed by male individualism and female relationality. Like the land of Utopia, particularly the gardens, utopian women are contained, fenced in, and around the home. Education, while seemingly progressive, only serves to reify patriarchal social relations that see women in terms of their relationships with men and as inherently needing improvement. (Jimenez, p. 61) More changed the economic model or the system of job distribution or agriculture or the elections in a way; nevertheless, he did not change anything about the current positions or problems of the women: “But I return to the citizens’ social life. The oldest male (as I have said) has charge of the household. Wives attend to their husbands, children to their parents, and generally the younger to the older" (More, p. 58). While Thomas More introduces the food distribution and cooking system, he once again expresses that women cook and serve the food in Utopia. He implies that cooking is a feminine job and only women from every household should do it in rotation. Men and women are equal when farming or weaving linen, and both genders can do it. However, when the job is cooking, it is a job which requires women, which adds to the dystopic representation of women in the book: “But the duty of cooking the food and preparing it, and finally of setting out and serving the whole banquet, is something only the women from each house hold, perform, in rotation” (p. 59). Women are not only assigned the job of cooking and serving food, but they are also seated in a different part of the dinner table: The men are seated along the wall, the women on the outside of the tables, so that, in case they feel any sudden pain, which usually happens at times to those who are pregnant, they can get up without disturbing the seating arrangement and go off to the nursing mothers. (p. 60) After explaining the lunch and dinner sessions, More explains the reproduction of society and the nursing system in Utopia. He puts the responsibility of giving birth and looking after the babies only on women. Women are seen as vessels for reproduction in Utopia. In his article called “On Utopus’ uterus: The colonisation of the body and the birth of patriarchal utopia in 451 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Mehtap SARIARSLAN Thomas More’s Utopia”, Almudena Machado Jimenez focuses on the function and position of women and labels More’s Utopia as a patriarchal one: While Plato opts to erase family relationships in his Republic, More imbues Utopia with the patriarchal family. I assert that both means of planning Utopia ultimately rely on biological essentialism that justifies female subservience and women’s codification as ‘breeders’ in a patriarchal utopia. Further, the education systems in these fictional utopias serve to reinforce the patriarchal hegemony. (Jimenez, p. 49) Men have nearly no roles or responsibilities in this system other than impregnation. In More’s utopic land, it is still women who cook, serve, give birth, and look after the kids, which makes it possible to claim that More's Utopia can be a dystopic land for women: These women sit apart with their infants nursing in a particular room designated for this, with a steady hearth fire and clean water, with cradles also nearby, in the meantime, so that they can put the infants down to sleep and, if they want, take off their swaddling bands and let them have some freedom to move around and play by the fire. Each nurse has her own offspring, unless death or sickness prevents it. (More, p. 60) In addition to giving birth and looking after the babies, More talks about the pregnancy periods of women and describes the women’s craving for some food as a defect: “And because of this vice they cherish bitter things instead of sweet. It is no different from pregnant women with their defective sense of taste thinking that pitch and tallow taste better than honey” (p. 71). Being a pregnant woman and having some biological or personal needs are depicted as a defect. Women get married, get pregnant, give birth, and look after the babies; they carry out all the traditional tasks without getting help from men, and still, their actions are judged and labelled defective by men, unfortunately. Another example of gender discrimination appears in the part about marriage. Women are expected to marry at the age of 18, while men are expected to marry at the age of 22. More thinks that women are much more ready for marriage than men, which is a stereotypical thinking style of patriarchal societies of all times: "A woman does not marry before eighteen, a man not until four years later than that” (p. 77). Women need to marry, give birth, look after the kids, and cook; therefore, women's roles have not changed at all, but they have been kept the same. Moreover, when there is a potential candidate for a woman for marriage, women are shown naked like an object. They are looked at, scrutinized, and evaluated like a horse. In return, an old wise man shows the man naked to the girl, which is totally humiliating: When choosing spouses, they seriously and solemnly observe our thinking, which is a most absurd ritual. For the woman, whether a virgin or a widow, is shown naked to her suitor by a serious and respectable matron, and in turn, some highly respected man stands the naked suitor in front of the girl. (p. 78) 452 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Dystopian representation of women in Thomas More’s Utopia However, the more humiliating part comes when More provides more information about the partner choosing process and says that it is good to look at the body of a woman before marrying her in order to be sure if her body is good-looking or not, or if her body looks healthy or not. He uses a horse analogy and compares women to horses. Although men are also shown naked to women, More makes this comment only about women, which shows the patriarchal mindset that prioritizes men's opinions and puts them at the center. Men are in the position to choose, or they need to look at the body because they need to like what they see. It is the men whose expectations must be satisfied: "although it is revolutionary in many aspects, it is clear that the conceptualization of the utopian woman was subjugated to gendered hierarchical relations within the family and the city” (Jimenez, p. 51). Women are secondary in this system, and they are not allowed to have expectations. The quote provided below proves it: Utopians for their part were amazed at the apparent foolishness of all other nations, who, when it comes to obtaining a new horse, are so cautious over a matter of a small quantity of money, that although the animal is already almost bare, customers still refuse to buy it unless the saddle has been taken away and all the clothes stripped off to expose some hidden sore; when it comes to choosing a wife (from which situation either pleasure or disgust will accompany one through all of life) they act so carelessly, that— the rest of the woman's body being covered with clothes— they judge the whole woman by the space of one span (since nothing is seen but her face) and they unite her to themselves at no small risk (if anything offensive appears afterwards) of not sticking together… indeed, so foul a deformity may lie hidden under those coverings as to absolutely estrange a man's mind from his wife, when he can no longer be separated from her in body. (More, p. 78) Regarding crimes and the justice system, More gives more information about the system in Utopia. He clearly mentions that there is a death penalty. If people commit adultery several times, they are sentenced to the death penalty. So far, the rules seem equal and fair for both men and women, but when it comes to minor crimes, husbands must teach and correct their wives. Again, men have authority over women. Women are expected and defined to be submissive in this equation: "Husbands correct their wives, and parents their children, unless they have committed a crime so big that it is in the interests of public morality for it to be publicly punished” (p. 79). Regarding clothing and appearances, More says that appearance is not that important. Utopians get dressed humbly in the same color clothes. There is a difference between single people's clothes and married people's clothes. Women wear the same color clothes as men. Women are prohibited from wearing jewelry because it has been seen as humiliating. Only enslaved people and very young children can wear jewelry. Women are not allowed to wear makeup. Inner 453 USBED, 7(13), 2025, Sonbahar / Fall Mehtap SARIARSLAN beauty is promoted: "So also is it disgraceful arrogance, in their opinion, to seek help from cosmetics, for they know from their own experience that there is no attractive feature of a wife's appearance that can win over a husband so much as her goodness and reverence" (p. 80). Nonetheless, showing the body of the female candidate naked in order to prevent any further complaints and requests for a divorce is a tradition that conflicts with the compulsory application of the no makeup rule, which brings forth the paradoxical question of whether inner beauty is more important than everything. In Utopia, men and women are trained for a possible war (p. 83). Regarding military training, both men and women have similar roles. Regarding religion, Utopians are free to believe in any religion they want. However, they need to believe in a religion or faith system because being an atheist is not accepted. More creates a utopic state and gives some liberal and egalitarian features, and then puts another feature which wipes out all the others, like you can believe in any religion; it is acceptable, but being an atheist is not acceptable. Men and women are equal in farming, but not looking after kids. Women can become priests like men, but only if they are old or widowed (p. 95), so there is still different treatment and discrimination. Another example of gender discrimination is about confessions. Women confess their sins to their husbands and throw themselves at their feet, which again highlights the situation that women are seen as secondary to men. They need their husbands' consent and approval even for spiritual and religious salvation: However, on End-feast days, before they go to the place of worship, wives throw themselves at the feet of their husbands, children at the feet of their parents, and confess that they have sinned, either by commission or some duty negligently performed, and beg pardon for their offense. In this way, if a small cloud of a quarrel in the house had overspread them, it is dissipated by such apologies that they may be present at the sacrifices with a clear and tranquil mind. (p. 97) Even when they go to the temple, men and women sit in different parts. Men go to the correct part while women sit on the left (p. 97). In addition, all family members sit in such an order that they see the father of the house, which shows the women’s position and place even in the religious surroundings. They need the male authority in every part of their lives in a utopic state. CONCLUSION Although it was designed as a utopic land in the first place, Thomas More’s Utopia sounded like a dystopic land for women when the book was published at the beginning of the 16th century. It is still a dystopia for most women all around the world. More criticized the English state, the authorities of the monarchs, and suggested some alterations and created an alternative