Readers do not come to realize the disillusion of the utopian community until reading
the final volume in David Simple, in which characters die one by one and the family falls apart. The problematic gender play in the minimized community ends with the fall of it.
Not many readers consider the failure unrealistic, because such a weak family invites such a breaking down. With both males and females, the David family keeps its biologic balance in reproducing children. However, the single-gendered community falls short of the interior gender balance. In the performative Amazon- like community, the male sex is only used for reproducing children. The utopia differs a lot from the outer world where masculinity governs and secures the whole household. Re gardless of financial weakness, the little family without masculinity would be defeated in all aspects because of their uneven gender in dealing. The double-sexed, yet single-gendered, household of David causes the utopian disillusion. At the end, readers cannot help but question the moral lesson in this novel, because no one is entirely sure that such a respectful death of David is worth of their everlasting virtues.
The feminine values in the novel are so strong that they efficiently benefit the procedure of building this utopian community, however, some of the qualities are overwhelmingly destructive in such an innocent community. Livia, who used to be her best friend and her stepmother, initiates Camilla’s misfortune. In Fielding’s description, Livia was in love with the fortune of her elder husband, father to Camilla and Valentine, so that she cannot stand to see his children staying at home to share the money (129). Forced by avarice, Livia breaks off the happy family and gives rise to the leaving of her best friend— Camilla.
In addition to Livia, the Orgueils, the Ratcliffs, and the sisters of Cynthia in David Simple also share a part in tearing down the utopian community. These people adopt various methods to ruin the feminine utopia: the sisters laugh at the womanly right, and others, whether out of jealousy or other malicious intentions, make the best use of David ’s innocence and benevolence to fulfill different demands. Interestingly, males are silenced in the devastation— both the two unfriendly males are “ably supported” or “to a large extent
led” by their wives in being malevolent; as a result, that of David Simple does not appear as the condemnation at a patriarchal society dominated by masculine egotism but becomes a fully feminine one (Bree 85). In the first book, readers are told that the feminine qualities help to construct the feminine utopia, but there comes the suspicious ending in Volume the Last in which the feminine qualities destroy the utopia with little effort. Cynthia ’s sisters tease her about learning before her with their scornful statements: “I wonder which of her Books will teach her to be a Housewife,” and “undoubtedly her Husband will be mightily pleased, when he wants his Dinner, to find she has been all the Morning diverting herself with Reading, and forgot to order any” (98; emphasis in original). The sisters and her parents prohibit Cynthia ’s reading and make her a common woman possessing intelligence but learns little. Being a woman with little education, Cynthia can never behave like a man, neither can she protect the family, the disability opens the door for those outsiders to ruin their happiness. If she had more time to study and to combine the lesson with her personal intelligence, she might possibly switch the role with David in her adventure.
Likewise, the ideal family is ruined by the jealousy of Mrs. Orgueil and the desirous Mrs.
Ratcliff; both of them do nothing severe, yet all the minor badness are enough to ruin the family. It is dubious that the feminine utopia is constructed and ruined with the very same gender play: femaleness. Were it not for the feminine goodness, a utopia like this would never take place; but the big success arouses the envy of an outsider who sets plans to stop the sparkling happiness. All the evil treatments result from Mrs. Orgueil’s jealousy to Cynthia, and that makes her to plan for the spiteful job in Jamaica. The jealousy woman believes that,
… Cynthia being absent, [Mrs. Orgueil] could impose whatever she pleased on Camilla. It is with Reluctance I must relate her strongest Motive, but certain it is that her chief Eagerness for Valentine and Cynthia’s going to Jamaica displayed itself, when a Gentleman, just come thence, had related that the Place was very
unhealthy, and that many of the English had lately died there, from the extreme Heat of the Climate. (340)
Encouraging Cynthia and Valentine to work in East Indies for money, Mrs. Orgueil sentences them to death without doing the dirty job herself.27 The schemed malicio us plan indeed causes the fall of the family. Likewise, Mr. Radcliff selfishly takes the land of David Simple merely because of his wife instead of any emergent difficulty of living. The competitive wife finds that “she was in great Necessity of a larger Fortune ” in order to “out shine her Friends in Brightness” by wearing lavish jewelries in parties; her vanity arouses the attempt of Mr. Ratcliff to occupy the land as his own possession (361). This vanity woman does nothing bad to David straightly, so she never knows the side-effect of her unlimited need to jewelry may results in the deaths of other family merely because her husband takes over the family’s only property. In the final volume, many of the misfortunes are indirectly caused by these two women— Mrs. Orgueil and Mrs. Radcliff— their unfriendly concerns for David make him lose some lovely children as well as the land. In light of the fact, women and the qualities they possess are the reasons for the utopian disillusion in the novel. Readers might regard that the feminine ideal community is ruined by masculine cruelty; however, it is in fact ruined by feminine malice that is hidden behind males.28 When the utopian family was set up to satisfaction, the disordered femininity strives to destroy it for unknown reasons. It is surprising to read a novel that begins and ends with femininity.
The performances of two feminine groups cause the problems in the essential
requirements of utopia; in the leading utopian literature of Plato and Thomas More, a utopia should be clear from intended performance, either in gender or humanity; a good-place-to-be should not be performative. In such a good place, the initial goodness should be
27 The unspoken reason for Mrs. Orgueil’s hatred on Cynthia will be further disclosed in Chapter III.
28 David Simple is definitely a “self-destructive” utopia as Woodward claims in her title; the masculine males in the novel take little part in the destruction of David’s utopia. Perhaps they just are not interested with such a feminine community for that is not of their taste.
spontaneously for everyone’s benefit. While it is a win- win society with people doing for other’s good, they are also helping themselves. But the suggested utopian model of David constructs with over exaggerated performance, cannot help from been categorized as part of his performance. That is to say, the utopia is not a spontaneous building of humanly goodness; instead, it is made up of synthetic imitations to goodness. The decomposition in David Simple makes it no longer an ideal utopia, because the performance is very similar to charity but the inner goodness; nevertheless, the made-up charity is unnecessary in utopia, and it never supports but speeds up the deconstruction of utopia. Accordingly, the disillusion of utopia is the absolute outcome taken for granted.
During the process of constructing and ascertaining their utopia, the family members tend to curtail their masculine qualities and enlarge the feminine one into utmost degree; their ideal utopia is built through gender performance. Thus, the family inevitably becomes a single- gendered one, without masculinity to go vern it. The “masculinity” here is not the performative masculine patriarchal system in David and Valentine. In the above discussions, the lack of utopian quality in gender and sexuality has been announced with the obvious example of housewifery and decision- making. In those cases, the male characters are performing their congenital patriarchal disease that infected from the society. By avoiding all the housework, the men ascertain their sexuality of being “male ” at home. Though they do a good job on performing masculinity at home, characters out of the family do no regard them as “men. ” As a result, they are still feminine in nature, and that explains the collapse of the lovely community. Since all the family members are prone to femininity, the
unbalance induces others to take advantage from the weak union which knows nothing about badness and cruelty.
Among the characters, Cynthia could be the most masculine one standing for the family to deal with all the financial affairs, who replaces David and her husband Valentine to do the men’s job. It is a pity that she remains a woman who suffers from the sexual/gender
discrimination from the outer world. She loses track of education in her youth for her sex, otherwise she should be much more talent ed and intelligent than both David and Valentine and becomes the leading one of their family. Asserting that “she was at no loss to find out the Reason of the Scene, … for she knew the common Cause of most Evils, Envy was at the bottom of it” long before the family is tortured by others, Cynthia is the only one who knows about the world among these friends (176).29 There comes a coincidence when Cynthia leaves the home for Jamaica with Valentine, misfortunes come to the David family. Little Cynthia died first, then comes the poverty and losing the land. It seems that the family
cannot help itself without Cynthia, and leads to its ruin directly in the following years.
Despite the gender inequality, the family is an equal utopia with everyone sharing money and care, and that is the main reason why it can be called a utopia. However, the loss of gender equality turns to be its Achilles’ heel in being a utopia for women. It takes efforts to construct a utopia, and it takes even more endeavor to complete a feminine utopia;
most of the people regard the achievement unattainable. In her study on the Owenic community, Carol A. Kolmerten pinpoints the blindness in utopia of a patriarchal society.
Utopian visions, with few exceptions, have always been grounded firmly in one of the most obscure abstractions of modern history: patriarchal power. … Because of this overwhelming and pervasive ideology, imaginative thinkers have rarely been able to create a world, even a fictional one, that considers men and women equally.
“Utopian” thinkers have been able to critique most of the institutions of the culture in which they live— economic systems, religious systems, educational systems—
[… ] even the most “utopian” of thinker have been unable to question the primary
“given” in a patriarchal system: the unequal relationship between the sexes.
(Kolmerten 2-3)
29 Without the envy from both Mrs. Orgueil and Mrs. Ratcliff, their household would not break down in such a short time. Sarah Fielding has put a prophesy at the beginning of her novel to indicate the possible reasons for their misfortunes.
We have never heard about a utopia that is created specifically for females in which men and women are entirely equal for not only human right but also all the other affairs. Even the feminine utopia by Sarah Fielding is, depressing to admit, contributed for the benefit of masculinity; with women providing all the domestic service, husbands can enjoy their life without disturbance. A problematic Amazonian community like this is doomed to “be held up for ridicule” in reader’s response, in which not only will fail but also to be mocked (Schnorrenberg 264). With the argument about femininity and masculinity, I am not
claiming that females cannot construct a feminine utopia successfully for they are “women, ” it is the unbalance between gender that disturbs. If there were a place where exists only masculinity but feminine qualities, there are also problems for these manly people to build their own utopia. In light of this, it becomes easier to explain the success of the inner David family and the collapse between it and the outside world. The family itself keeps the gender balance within the house by having the male characters perform their masculinity at home;
there are obedient women and directive men responsible for different affairs at home and keep the imitated peace. On the contrary, all of the family members, except Cynthia, are feminine to the outer society exposing their innocence and weakness; the single-gender deficiency is deadly to utopian construction. Because none of the characters are strong enough to fight with the intruders, they can only wait silently for the conclusion of the book.
If only Cynthia had came home earlier before all the misfortunes, the story might not be such a miserable one.
Dubious voices rise when the novel ends with only Cynthia and little Camilla surviving of all family members. It is hard to judge the conclusion as a feminine defeat or victory because Cynthia is the most masculine character responsible for most of the family affairs.
The survival of this intelligent woman answers both the claims of patriarchalists and the feminists; both of the two sides could presume that the ending proves their arguments in gender specialization. Like the dubious moral lesson in the novel, readers cannot figure out
the exact message from Fielding’s ending. Therefore, the open ending remains a mystery whether this novel is a novel for women’s progression or women’s depression.
Another reason for the utopian disillusion comes from the inadequate feminine education. In general, all the girls in the novel come from middle-class or higher classed families, so that all are well-bred ones with decent teaching and refined manners. However, none of them are as well educated as they should. Females are the decoration to patriarchal utopia, and the situation undoubtedly results into the fall of their feminine utopia.
Daniel Defoe, the eighteenth-century novelist contemporary with Sarah Fielding, proposes an improvement on female education in his essay (On) The Education of Women.
He sarcastically opens his passage with “[women] are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or so; and that is the height of a woman’s education.” Defoe continues to propose that what women should learn is the ability to know and judge, including music, dance, language, and history. In his declaration, education is the “great distinguishing difference” between men and women; his statement is very correct, especially in his age. A world in which females deserve not even a modest education is not an ideal place.
In Cynthia’s story, not only do males prohibit her from reading, her two sisters dislike her because of her advancing wit. It is the women themselves that despise the feminine wit of theirs. Cynthia depressingly gives up reading because of her family, and so did many other girls in their youth who eagerly desired for knowledge in reading. Disappointment is the only made noise. Decades after Daniel Defoe, Mary Astell in 1701 declares her
assumption on female education in her essay, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies,
For since God has given Women as well as Men intelligent Souls. Why should they be forbidden to improve them? Since he has not denied us the faculty of Thinking, why [should] we not (at least in gratitude to him) employ our Thoughts on himself their noblest Object, and not unworthily bestow them on Trifles and [Gaieties] and facular Affairs? (Astell 47)
In her passage, education should not be a privilege only open for males because women possess the same mind and spirit as men do, which is really “cruel and unjust” to exclude females from education, learning and enjoying (Astell 48). With such misconception on female education, a variety of excellent females are kept out of helping or educating the world with her outstanding insights. Such a case happened in the imagination of Virginia Woolf, the talented sister of Shakespeare who “ was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil;” his sister was asked to mend the stockings and pay attention to the stew while she tries to pick up books of her brother (Woolf 61). Girls like Cynthia and the suggested sister of Shakespeare was everywhere in their ages, who suffered from deficient education. Astell further indicates that the foolishness in women’s talking and behavior is the result of her deficient education;
hence a woman who receives little education cannot behave wisely, neither can she express her anger on unequal treatment. Therefore, women are obligated to be obedient, chaste, and silent, for these are the requirements of her “virtue.” Marlene Legates scornfully formulates the argument, “[w]hile women may be clever and even erotic, their appeal and strength
ostensibly lie in their virtue ” (29). If the deficient education cannot make a woman virtuous, at least she has to be weak, for “the woman must be under male control” (Legates 31). As for other limited educated females, be they Cynthia or Sarah Fielding, they have limited ways out: being a governess, a housekeeper, a companion, or marry a wealthy husband— “she must either have or marry money” (Schnorrenberg 271). However, being a teacher or governor is not a decent job in Mary Wollstonecraft ’s viewpoint, she regards it as “only a kind of upper servant, who has more work than the menial ones” (71).30 In eighteenth-century England, feminine individuality is found with difficulty, let alone the ideal feminine utopia. Even in More’s utopia, there is no clear description about female education and no assert on building
30 The same notion of women being the “upper servant” is also claimed by Cynthia when she was asked to marry a gentleman she does not like in David Simple (Fielding 100).
a gender equal good-place.
Until the end, these good- natured members of David family still cannot realize the cruel fact: no benevolence and tenderness can solve all the problems in everyday life. These feminine qualities are good at gathering people together, but not a promise for the future fulfillment. If females keep on doing the domestic work instead of learning the worldly lessons, femininity will undoubtedly lead to ruin in practical life. The combination of femininity to weakness and passivity brings the utopian illusion to everyone. Though the characters may still be hopeful about the family, but they cannot stop their home from breaking, and losing track in existence. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the
Until the end, these good- natured members of David family still cannot realize the cruel fact: no benevolence and tenderness can solve all the problems in everyday life. These feminine qualities are good at gathering people together, but not a promise for the future fulfillment. If females keep on doing the domestic work instead of learning the worldly lessons, femininity will undoubtedly lead to ruin in practical life. The combination of femininity to weakness and passivity brings the utopian illusion to everyone. Though the characters may still be hopeful about the family, but they cannot stop their home from breaking, and losing track in existence. The Adventures of David Simple and Volume the