Utopian Studies

In Human Nature and Politics in Utopian and Anti-Utopian Fiction, Nivedita Bagchi's purpose is primarily to examine "human nature" as a historical concept that can help us to make sense of the political theory of her chosen works of fiction within their authorial context. Bagchi does not use the term "Human nature" first and foremost as a category for analysing the present but rather to address historic texts on terms their authors would have understood. [End Page 696]

Following an introduction, the book's four main chapters cover Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1887), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). The conclusion also contains an analysis of Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed (1973). Each chapter is logically organized with sections outlining the respective author's views of human nature and how they are developed in the work under analysis, followed by critical overview of interpretations of the work in relation to human nature. The book avoids long-windedness and makes a virtue of brevity.

The concise nature of the analysis at times leads to generalizations about the motivations of authors of utopian and dystopian fictions that might be profitably unpacked further. While Bagchi does recognize the position of the author may not match that of any given position explored in their novel (51), she insists that authorial intention is knowable (59) and (implicitly) that the author-text relationship is of prime importance in our interpretations of works of fiction. Elsewhere, important points are only touched on briefly: for instance, footnote 2 in the introduction reads, "I use the terms anti-utopian and dystopian synonymously through the entire book" (xxi). Given the extensive scholarly discussions about the politics of these terms, this interchangeable usage surely requires elaboration with reference to work in the field of Utopian Studies over the past twenty years. However, such references are largely absent from text itself and the brief bibliography.

The chapter on More shows the importance of the dialogue form to More's goal "as the character More encounters the text the same way the readers do—as a verbal picture rather than a sensory experience" (4). This allows More to stress the interrelated necessity of "education, religion and … the abolition of private property" (11) to establish and maintain a utopia. Humankind's imperfections mean that while religion may be based on reason and reason upon nature, any utopia must be political and "less than perfect" (17). To be successful such a state must create conditions in which "men cannot choose but to be good" (9). By contrast, Bellamy is presented as a post-Darwinian thinker for whom "the evolution of human nature makes utopia possible." In his work the self-interest that haunts More's text is channeled into "service of the entire community and nation". In Bellamy's year 2000 everyone wants to work and it is dishonorable not to want to do so. Here a social-Darwinian misprision of natural selection locates ideological enforcement of the new order in women's refusal "to marry men who do [End Page 697] not accept this institutional system" as "women feel that bettering the race is their duty" (25). The relationship between gender, "race," and human nature briefly sketched here is worthy of further investigation.

Against Bellamy's views, "Huxley is skeptical of the conditioning power of even the most technologically advanced political system" (37), while nevertheless providing "a warning about seeing technology as an unequivocally positive force" (40). The state's goal is isolation of the individual—especially from the family and "specifically, love as the emotional glue that ties the family together" so as to withhold justice (42). Yet for Bagchi Brave New World also shows the impossibility of "suppressing feelings, wants and desires" by any modern means, whether eugenics or conditioning, something which is revealing of an inalterable and essential...