Literature of the Anthropocene: The Utopian Turn in the Contemporary Feminist Dystopian Novel

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse contemporary speculative dystopian literature of the twenty-first century written by women, examining resistance strategies enacted by female protagonists. By utilising a multidisciplinary methodology that draws from Tom Moylan’s theoretical utopian turn, utopian theory and conceptions of space and place, the textual analysis considers the modalities of resistance in seven selected texts, written by Sarah Hall, Sophie Mackintosh, Naomi Alderman, Lidia Yuknavitch, Louise Erdrich, Margaret Atwood and Nnedi Okorafor. The thesis examines whether the resistance to dystopian states is something inherently utopian and considers how women negotiate forms of gendered control. Each text is situated, to some degree, within a moment of anthropogenic change, and this thesis also considers how this is entangled within utopian resistance measures. The thesis principally argues that although utopian resistance measures are enacted, they offer multiple and sometimes conflicting examples of what constitutes a contemporary utopian praxis. It centres the debate on how each text explores Moylan’s premise of the ‘utopian turn’, a form of gestalt shift that changes the protagonist’s worldview, and how this is enacted by the protagonists. Through an analysis of the selected texts, it uncovers how a protagonist attempts to break free from repression and enacts, or attempts to enact, liberatory and potentially utopian change. Whilst the texts demonstrate that protagonists attempt to enact the utopian turn, they do so whilst transgressing non-utopian boundaries, particularly through the deployment of violence. The use of violence, it concludes, is a significant finding in contemporary speculative literature, as it demonstrates how conceptions of utopian change may need updating in the twenty-first century. Thus, in exploring what is being resisted by the protagonists and how, the texts offer important commentaries on sexual politics and the resistance of subjugation in the age of the Anthropocene.