Over the past fifteen years, feminist dystopias have enjoyed increasing popularity across both screen and literary texts. These dystopias often explore themes related to the control of women’s reproductive choices within the context of fictional, patriarchal societies. Within these societies, women are subjected to the ideology of biological essentialism which conceives of them purely as maternal bodies. This essentialism, I argue, connects the contemporary feminist dystopia to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, a period defined by biological essentialism that reduced women to maternal roles. This essentialism, however, is not unique to the early eugenics movement but remains present in societies across the world today.
Presenting the findings of a creative practice research project, this thesis contains two components exploring the creative and scholarly aspects of contemporary feminist dystopias that engage with and critique the eugenic reduction of women to maternal figures: an exegesis and my own feminist dystopia, a novel titled 435C32. Chapter excerpts from 435C32 will be presented after the literature review, which provides necessary historical and generic context to understanding the creative work. In turn, these chapter excerpts will provide necessary creative context for the main exegesis that follows, emphasising the synergy that exists between these two components of my research project.
My novel, 435C32, is a contemporary feminist dystopia set in a world that differs only slightly from our own, namely due to its social and political structures being formed around eugenic beliefs, policies and practices. 435C32 is narrated from the first-person perspective of C, a seventeen-year-old girl who has been imprisoned in a detention centre for the crime of carrying a child of mixed genetic classes – the product of sexual assault. Throughout the novel, multiple flashback chapters to C’s life prior to incarceration contribute to the work’s eugenic world-building. In addition, there are six “monologue” chapters (stories told to C from the first-person point-of-view of other characters) interspersed throughout the novel, revealing and exploring the impacts of eugenics on a range of different women.
As the first scholarly examination to bring the early eugenics movement into dialogue with the contemporary feminist dystopia, this creative practice project examines the ongoing relationship between eugenic ideology and gendered biological essentialism. I argue that the ideologies of the early eugenics movement are not historical but rather continue into our contemporaneity. The presence of eugenic themes within contemporary feminist dystopias indicates continued anxieties surrounding the restriction of women’s bodily autonomy, particularly as it pertains to reproductive freedom. The exegesis examines several feminist dystopias, across screen and literary texts, to explore the role of eugenics in their dystopian world-building. My close analysis of these case study texts is informed by scholarship across the fields of history, genre studies, literary studies and feminist media studies. Both the exegesis and the creative practice work engage with broader political, philosophical and bioethical debates within feminism, specifically surrounding issues of women’s rights and reproductive freedoms.