Throughout history, writers have envisioned radically different societies to the current. The corpus of utopian literature has speculated what a better world may look like, and dystopian writing has offered frightening propositions for a world worse than our own. Of the many aesthetic techniques used by these writers, cognitive estrangement is perhaps the most effective in compelling us to re-think the ‘normal’ through the ‘factual reporting of fiction’,[1] which alienates us ‘from our usual assumptions about reality’.[2] In other words, cognitive estrangement places something that seems familiar in a context or surrounding that is unfamiliar, thus compelling us to ‘imagine a different way of conceiving the world’.[3] This essay will argue in favour of feminist critic Mary Eagleton’s claim that feminist utopian and dystopian writing lends itself ‘to an interrogation of the existing social order and to the possibility of transformation.’ The essay will assert that cognitive estrangement in feminist utopian and dystopian writing can challenge ‘the existing social order’ by making us consider current gender hierarchies, and therefore can bring forth ‘the possibility of transformation’ towards the direction of equal rights for women. In doing so, it will first explore cognitive estrangement in the 1905 feminist utopian short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’ by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, followed by Caryl Churchill’s 2016 play, Escaped Alone, an apocalyptic dystopia.
With the ability to re-imagine society, utopian writing has become a popular genre for the politics of emancipation, and consequently, many feminist writers have imagined a better world for women. An example of this is Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream.’ This short story is narrated an Indian woman, Sultana, who falls into a dream and meets a female figure, called Sister Sara, in the fictional ‘Ladyland’. Sultana is given a tour of the streets and gardens of this community, and discovers that gender roles are reversed, meaning that females are dominant over males. Ladyland implements the opposite of purdah, the ‘social system which restricts the spaces that women are allowed to occupy’,[4] which is common in many Muslim and Hindu communities. This means that men are confined to sub-ordinate domestic roles and prohibited from leaving their house alone, whilst women hold the dominant positions in society. Whilst gender hierarchies that we see in purdah are fortunately not implemented in Western culture, it is likely to still come across as a familiar and believable concept to many readers, as it is well known that such hierarchies have existed throughout history, and still exist in some countries today. This narrative feature, therefore, is an example of cognitive estrangement, because we are presented with the complete reversal of something previously familiar to us, and therefore encouraged to re-think what we see as ‘normal’. This reversal is best exemplified by Sultana’s humorous remark of ‘How the tables are turned.’[5] Hossain’s inclusion of male characters in the short story differs to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, another feminist utopia from the era.[6] The utopian society in Herland is comprised entirely of women, with no native male populace. Hossain’s text instead chooses to change the role that men have in the utopia, rather than removing the male presence altogether.
Despite the concept of purdah being fathomable to readers, even in countries where it does not occur, Hossain’s depiction of the reversal of purdah appears striking and bizarre. This is because no society like this has ever existed, due to traditional gender roles that have prevailed throughout history. By reading something this starkly unfamiliar, we are in turn encouraged to re-consider why the opposite (male domination and female confinement to the home) does not seem as strange to us. Moreover, by positioning men in the text to be treated the way that women are actually treated in many cultures, Hossain forces the male readership to perceive the female perspective. By extension, male audiences may be more likely to empathise with females who are subjected to patriarchal hierarchies, which in turn could foster more support for feminist causes. This cognitive estrangement, therefore, supports Eagleton’s comment, as it could cause ‘transformation’ towards gender equality in this way.
This reversal of gender roles is demonstrated on page 5, when Sara reveals that the women of Ladyland ‘shut [the] men indoors,’ to which Sultana replies, ‘Just as we are kept in the zenana?’[7] Contextually, the zenana is the ‘women’s quarter of the house’ where females are confined to in some Indian cultures.[8] Sara’s revelation of keeping men indoors is likely to prompt shock, perhaps even humour among the readership. By saying ‘Just as we…’, Sultana’s response seems to overtly speak to the reader, to draw attention to the fact that this is a lived reality for her gender. This estrangement prompts audiences to reflect on the zenana being part of the lives of many women today, some one hundred and eighteen years later.
Despite these arguments that critique the ethics of the zenana and purdah from a Western perspective, it is important to be mindful of other cultural practices. The footprints of British colonialism have undoubtedly left their mark on other cultures, and the zenana ‘has been subjected to the scrutiny of the colonial gaze’.[9] In her feminist critique of the lives of Muslim women, Ghandi points out that not all women feel oppressed by these practices: ‘Some elderly women still lament the fact that they’ve lost their zenanas… where they could be away from men and have their own worlds.’[10] Despite the nuance of this argument, it still seems clear that the cognitive estrangement of ‘Sultana’s Dream’ has radical possibilities to challenge the existing social order and bring about change in the direction of women’s rights, due to its possibility of forcing men to see the female perspective.
Sultana’s anxiety due to not being covered up shows how her cultural norms differ to that of Ladyland: ‘I feel somewhat awkward… I am not accustomed to walking about unveiled.’[11] Sara reassures her that she ‘need not be afraid of coming across a man here. This is Ladyland, free from sin and harm. Virtue herself reigns here.’[12] Sara’s response attributes ‘sin’ and ‘harm’ to men, so Ladyland is safe because there are no men, and ‘virtue herself’ attributes this positive characteristic to femininity. On page 4, Sultana narrates that ‘[Sara] felt my fingers tremble in her hand’ during their walk, and her fear draws attention to another reality for women – the threat of sexual violence. This bears relevance to contemporary discourses around women’s safety. Recent feminist activism, such as ‘Reclaim the Night’ marches, highlight how society places the onus on women to avoid walking alone at night to prevent attacks, whilst less attention is given to preventing men from committing these crimes in the first place. This idea is brought forth with Sara’s analogy of an asylum on page 5: ‘Suppose, some lunatics escape from the asylum and begin to do all sorts of mischief… Do you not think it wise to keep sane people inside an asylum and let loose the insane?.. In your country this very thing is done! Men… are let loose and the innocent women shut up in the zenana!’ Whilst engaging with humour, this comparison effectively conveys the female perspective, engaging in feminist debates that are relevant today.
Cognitive estrangement features not just in the reversal of gender roles, but also gender attributes. During Sultana’s walk on page 3, passers-by joke that she looks ‘mannish’, which Sara reveals to mean ‘shy and timid like men.’ Traditionally, ‘mannish’ connotes masculine stereotypes of strength and bravery. Here, we see a reversal of those norms to the point where the language of Ladyland has changed. Stereotypically, literature is often more likely to associate women instead with these characteristics of diffidence. The fact that men in the story are instead viewed this way suggests that these negative attributes are given to women in real life due to their lower position in the gender hierarchy, and that society forces them to be shy because of that. This reversal almost ‘re-defines’ womanhood, as there is an implication that women’s weaker attributes are not an intrinsic part of being female, but a product of their social position in the hierarchy. This is an example of estrangement because it de-familiarises the notions of womanhood, and challenges stereotypes of female weakness in relation to men. In this way, we are forced to re-imagine our ideas about gender. Sargisson argues that female characters ‘shed’ their female attributes and acquire male ones in order to survive in patriarchal institutions. This seems to be the case here through the ‘swapping’ of traditional gender characteristics between the genders.[13]
Despite this reversal of gender stereotypes, Hossain borrows from the traditional association of femininity with nature and beauty. Sultana observes ‘a beautiful vegetable garden’ on page 7, where ‘every tomato plant itself was an ornament… the windows were decorated with flower gardens.’ She also narrates: ‘I was enjoying the scenery… I mistook a patch of green grass for a velvet cushion.’[14] This imagery evokes almost a ‘garden of Eden’ construct of Utopian beauty. Sara tells Sultana, ‘Your Calcutta could become a nicer garden than this if only your countrymen wanted to make it so’ on page 4. Here, it seems as though the garden may act as a loaded metaphor for ‘the condition of Indian womanhood’ that Sultana thinks about on page 3. The land’s beauty acts as pathetic fallacy to symbolise the happiness and freedom among the female population in Ladyland. If Sultana’s home city were to implement more equal values, then they too may have a flourishing garden.
In spite of these points, it can be argued that the reversed gender roles do not bring about a feminist vision of equality, but rather enforce an oppression against males that is identical to what women in some cultures are subjected to. In response to this, I assert that instead of advocating female domination, Hossain is drawing attention to the reality of many women’s experiences in early twentieth-century India. Contextually, Hossain has been credited as ‘a pioneering educator of Muslim girls and women in South Asia.’[15] As we have seen, the cognitive estrangement she uses means that the utopia does have the possibility of transformation towards gender equality.
Having explored an early twentieth-century utopia, my analysis now turns to a modern dystopian play, Escaped Alone. This absurdist imaginary text by Caryl Churchill features four women of ‘at least seventy’, who sit in a back garden over several afternoons.[16] They engage in disjointed conversation, interspersed with a series of bizarre monologues given by Mrs Jarret, one of the women. In these speeches, she recall a cascade of strange apocalyptic events. The inclusion of four older female characters is an example of cognitive estrangement, because something rare in literature and unfamiliar to us is placed in the familiar setting of a play. Borrowing from Eagleton’s statement, Churchill’s decision to do this is an ‘interrogation of the existing social order’ by drawing attention to the lack of older female representation in literature. It has the possibility of transformation towards gender equality through raising awareness of this under-representation, and raising questions about why old people, especially women, are a marginalised demographic. This could in turn promote better representation of older female generations in literature. My argument with this text, therefore, is that Churchill’s cognitive estrangement has the potential for progress towards gender equality.
In Mrs Jarret’s third apocalyptic monologue, she recalls that ‘Domestic violence increased’,[17] which draws attention to a significant contemporary issue for many women. On the same page, we also read that ‘miscarriages were frequent leading to an increase of opportunities in grief counselling.’ Churchill seems to be criticising Capitalist opportunism, where companies prioritise profit over morality. In this example, there is an implication that bereaved mothers have been taken advantage of for financial gain, through the false pretence of support. We also read that ‘Gas masks were available on the NHS with a three-month waiting time…’.[18] This ludicrous idea of a waiting list for medical equipment that would be needed immediately draws attention to financial cuts and under-funding of public healthcare. This idea is less estranging now than it would have been for the 2016 theatre audience. Recent nurse strikes have demanded better pay in an industry that is around ninety-percent female, and has not seen the same wage increases that male-dominated medical occupations, such as doctors, have.[19]
One of the most striking features of the dialogue occurs when Mrs Jarret reads, ‘terrible rage’ twenty-five times consecutively on page 42. This explosion of ‘existential fury’[20] appears as a non-sequitur from the conversation that the characters are having at the time. Various readings of this bizarre outburst can be made. As pointed out by Adiseshiah, [21] it could be what feminist writer Sara Ahmed calls a ‘feminist snap.’ Ahmed describes this as a ‘breaking point… moments when it is all too much… that a life one has been bearing is a life one is no longer willing to bear.’[22] Chemaly points out that society ‘is infinitely creative in finding ways to pathologise women’s rage’, despite the fact that male anger is often ‘seen as a virtue’.[23] She also argues that female anger can achieve ‘meaningful change’, transforming women’s experiences ‘from debilitation to liberation’. Further readings of this speech have pointed out that the repetition creates the impression that ‘terrible age’ is spoken instead. This engages with ageism discourses, where stigma is attached to older people. Casandro-Gual interprets the inclusion of four old female characters as ‘signs of a ‘dehumanised universe’ in which the failures of social progress have rendered longevity insignificant.’[24] Combining this with Chemlay’s ideas of female anger, Mrs Jarret’s speech can be read as an expression of suppressed feminine rage, not only due to her marginalisation as a woman, but also as an old person. Churchill draws on this concept of intersectionality, where the women are part of two disadvantaged groups in a patriarchy that idolises youth.
As a more accepted form of prejudice than discrimination against other groups, ageism is facilitated by media and advertising, such as through ‘anti-ageing’ products. This prejudice also tends to be more directed towards older women. For example, older male celebrities are often described colloquially in the media as a ‘silver fox’, whilst older women do not receive such compliments about their greying hair. Furthermore, discourses around old female age are often characterised by a homogeneity, whereby all old women are viewed as having one identity that shares the same characteristics. Consequently, they have often been reduced to one of two binary opposite character types throughout literature: either the ‘sweet granny’ or the ‘old witch’ figure. Through cognitive estrangement, Churchill challenges both of these identities, which in turn has the potential for transformation towards better understanding and representation of old female culture, thus bringing progress towards gender equality. We discover that Vi (one of the women) ‘accidentally killed her husband’ on page 20. Whilst this is not as clear an example of cognitive estrangement as other techniques we have seen, it estranges us from our previous perceptions of what old women are like. Rather than conforming to the clichés of a weak and gentle old lady, Vi is capable of killing. The old witch identity is also challenged by the realism that Churchill uses in the conversations. Despite the unconventional dialogue, there is something realistic and ordinary about the characters’ ability to speak to each other and drink tea on a summer afternoon. Their rapport, and ability to finish each other’s sentences as they constantly change topic, is reflective of real dialogue. This challenges notions of an old witch, because there is no suggestion of evil or the supernatural; they appear (on the surface) to be four normal old ladies.
The characters’ friendship is also shown as they sing together at the beginning of scene 6. The stage direction on page 28 reads: ‘They are singing for themselves, not performing to the audience.’ This seems to be perhaps a collective display of feminine unity, and independence from patriarchal expectations of them to behave forthe benefit of others. Rather than singing for the patriarchy, they are singing for themselves. Zhang points out that ‘it is hard for contemporary women to speak out for themselves’, and reads their unity during the singing as ‘a symbol of identity and power.’[25] This sense of feminine solidarity is reinforced by the fact that the characters worked in a range of careers. Vi was a hairdresser (page 31), Sally a medical worker of some sort (page 30), and Mrs Jarret was a lollipop lady (page 31). This display of different economic backgrounds ‘crossing paths’ reinforces this idea of a feminine friendship that is not exclusive to one social status.
Assuming that the play is set near the time of publishing (2016), then these women who are now ‘at least seventy’ (page 4) would have been in their twenties and thirties during the ‘Second-wave feminism’ era of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. This period saw changes in reproductive rights for women, and the expectation of traditional female roles in the family and workplace were challenged.[26] Watkins argues that many apocalyptic texts ‘focus on men who are trying to survive… and trying to rebuild things the way they were before.’[27] Escaped Alone does not align with this. Instead, it seems to be a celebration of the older female demographic, which has been largely under-represented in the media. Rather than making things ‘the way they were’, Churchill offers an alternative future, one where the older female receives more representation. By cognitively estranging us from our expectations of seeing younger characters in theatre, we are compelled to ponder why older females are so under-represented in the first place.
The passing of time in the text is vague; it is unclear when the different afternoons end and begin, since we learn that ‘the action is continuous’ on page 4. This distorted sense of time, or ‘multiple layers of temporality’ as pointed out by Adiseshiah,[28] creates ambiguity as to whether Mrs Jarret’s monologues are recollections of past events, or predictions of the future. Given the use of the past tense, it can be assumed that the monologues are recalling an apocalypse that has already happened. The characters, therefore, have ‘escaped’ this apocalypse, and are now peacefully drinking tea in the garden, whilst the rest of the world perishes. In this way, Churchill seems to be making a point about the stereotypical fortitude of older generations, who are often credited for growing up in more difficult times. We also read of ‘airsick families taking selfies in case they could ever share them’ on page 28. This critiques the superficial and shallow behaviour that younger people exhibit on social media, in comparison to older generations, who often have no interest in the platforms.
Despite the apocalyptic references, the play has a feminist undertone, as we have explored. For this reason, it can considered what Lyman Tower Sargent calls a ‘critical dystopia’.[29] Texts that fall in this characterisation ‘maintain a utopian core at their centre, a locus of hope that contributes to reconstructing alternatives.’[30] The use of cognitive estrangement in the text helps us ‘reconstruct alternative’ futures by making us consider, and react to, the lack of old female representation in literature.
There are a range of similarities between the texts, such as the humour that they both use. Sultana’s quote of ‘How the tables are turned’ on page 7 of ‘Sultana’s Dream’ comically points out the reversal of the purdah system. However, it simultaneously draws attention to the lived reality of many women who live in such hierarchies. Similarly, the tranquility of the characters juxtaposed with an apocalypse in Escaped Alone is humorous, whilst the text overall also highlights the under-representation of the old female demographic in theatre. Another similarity between them is that neither text has any male dialogue, with both giving a voice to only women. Overall, both texts use the utopian and dystopian medium to argue in support of feminism. In response to Eagleton’s comment, the cognitive estrangement in these texts prompts us to challenge the ‘existing social order’ of gender, whether it is the purdah system of male dominance, or the under-representation of old women in literature. By forcing us to think about these issues, these texts have the radical possibility of ‘transformation’ towards gender equality.
Word count: 3349 (excluding bibliography, title and footnotes).
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Adiseshiah, Siân, ‘Ageing as crisis on the twenty-first-century British stage’, in Crisis, Representation and Resilience: Perspectives on Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Clare Wallace, Clara Escoda, Enric Monforte and José Ramón Prado-Pérez (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) pp. 21-38
Ahmed, Sara, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017)
Baccolini, Raffaella, ‘Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler’ in Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism, ed. by Marleen S. Barr (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), pp. 13-34
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Simon & Schuster, 2018). Perlego ebook <https://www.perlego.com/book/1393762/rage-becomes-her-pdf> [accessed 3 January 2023]
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Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2005)
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Sargisson, Lucy, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism, (London: Routledge, 1996)
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[1] Darko Suvin, ‘On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre’, College English, 34,3 (1972), pp. 372-382 (p. 374) in JSTOR <https://www.jstor.org/stable/375141#metadata_info_tab_contents> [accessed 24 December 2022].
[2] Perry Nodelman, ‘The Cognitive Estrangement of Darko Suvin’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 5,4 (1981), 24-27 (p. 24).
[3] Ian Buchanan, A Dictionary of Critical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 90.
[4] Bethany Jennings et al., ‘Purdah in the 21st century: Women’s experiences of work and space in Dhaka’, Women’s Studies International Forum 90 (2022), 1-8 (p. 1) in ScienceDirect <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2022.102560> [accessed 24 December 2022].
[5] Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag, (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2005), p. 7.
[6] Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland, (Berkeley: West Margin Press, 2021)
[7] Hossain, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag, p. 5.
[8] Haris Qadeer, ‘Routes, Roots, and Rihla: Cartography of Feminine Islam in Contemporary Anglophone Travel Narratives by Muslim Women from India’, South Asian Review (2022), 1-19 (p.12) in Taylor & Francis Online <https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2022.2146940> [accessed 31 December 2022].
[9] Qadeer, ‘Routes, Roots and Rihla’, p.12.
[10] Nighat Ghandi, Alternative Realities: Love in the lives of Muslim Women (Chennai: Tranquebar, 2013) p.105.
[11] Hossain, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag, p. 4
[12] Ibid.
[13] Lucy Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism, (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 71
[14] Ibid.
[15] Bagchi, Barnita, ‘Speculating with human rights: Two South Asian women writers and utopia mobilities’, Mobilities 15,1 (2020), p. 80, in Taylor & Francis Online, <https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2019.1667100> [accessed 12 December 2022]
[16] Caryl Churchill, Escaped Alone (London: Nick Hern, 2016), p. 4.
[17] Ibid. p. 17.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Matt Farrah, Stats And Facts On The UK’s Nursing Workforce 2023 (2022) <https://www.nurses.co.uk/blog/stats-and-facts-uk-nursing-social-care-and-healthcare/> [accessed 24 December 2022]
[20] Bonnie Marraca, ‘The Imagination of Catastrophe: Caryl Churchill’s Natural History Lessons’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 39,2 (2017), 1-6 (p. 4) in JSTOR <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26386832> [accessed 20 December 2022].
[21] Siân Adiseshiah, ‘Ageing as crisis on the twenty-first-century British stage’, in Crisis, Representation and Resilience: Perspectives on Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Clare Wallace, Clara Escoda, Enric Monforte and José Ramón Prado-Pérez (London: Bloomsbury, 2022) pp. 21-38 (p. 33).
[22] Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), p. 198.
[23] Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger (London:
Simon & Schuster, 2018), chap. 1, ebook, <https://www.perlego.com/book/1393762/rage-becomes-her-pdf> [accessed 3 January 2023].
[24] Núria Casado-Gual, ‘Staging the ‘crisis of aging’: Old age as the new apocalypse in The Children, and Escaped Alone’, in Understanding the Discourse of Aging: A Multifaceted Perspective, ed. by Vincent Salvador and Agnese Sampietro (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020) pp. 233-258 (p. 248).
[25] Min Zhang, ‘Anxious to Say: Communal Voice in Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone’, Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities 4,5 (2022), 76-79 (p. 77) in Bryan House Publishing <https://web.archive.org/web/20220609062807id_/http://www.bryanhousepub.org/src/static/pdf/JSSH-2022-4-5_15.pdf> [accessed 4 January 2023].
[26] Haradhan Mohajan, ‘Four Waves of Feminism: A Blessing for Global Humanity’, Studies in Social Science & Humanities 1,2 (2022), 1-26 (p. 11) in Munich Personal RePEc Archive <https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/114328/> [accessed 31 January 2022].
[27] Susan Watkins, Contemporary Women’s Post-Apocalyptic Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 1.
[28] Adiseshiah, ‘Ageing as crisis on the twenty-first-century British stage’, p. 30.
[29] Lyman Tower Sargent, ‘The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited’, Utopian Studies, 5,1 (1994), 1-37 (p.9).
[30] Raffaella Baccolini, ‘Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler’ in Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism, ed. by Marleen S. Barr (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), pp. 13-34 (p. 13)
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