Eve and the New Jerusalem

Imaginings of a utopian, or utopian socialist, future can be traced from chapters in Scripture to present-day works. The 19th century was particularly fruitful in this respect; it not only produced works of literary imagination but abounded in significant, organized movements in Europe, some of them exported to this country, aiming to mobilize communities on egalitarian principles. But as it concerns the liberation of women, none was more energetic than that of the Owenites in England (who were among those roundly condemned as “unscientific” by Friedrich Engels). They were founded by Robert Owen, a Welsh manufacturer who first experimented with a kind of anticapitalist “social engineering” in his own mills, then turned to organizing a general movement for the betterment of men and women— and to this Barbara Taylor directs her primary interest in a richly detailed book, Eve and the New Jerusalem, from which we excerpt a brief section below.

Feminism a...