View source for Mizora

{{short description|1880–81 novel by Mary E. Bradley Lane}}
{{italic title}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
'''''Mizora''''' is a [[feminist science fiction]] [[Utopian and dystopian fiction|utopian novel]] by [[Mary E. Bradley Lane]], first published in 1880&ndash;81, when it was serialized in the ''Cincinnati Commercial'' newspaper. It appeared in book form in 1890.<ref>New York, G. W. Dillingham, 1890.</ref> ''Mizora'' is "the first portrait of an all-female, self-sufficient society,"<ref>Mary E. Bradley Lane, ''Mizora: A World of Women'', Introduction by Joan Saberhagen; Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1999; Introduction, p. vi.</ref> and "the first feminist technological Utopia."<ref>[[Howard P. Segal]], ''Future Imperfect: The Mixed Blessing of Technology in America'', Amherst, MA, [[University of Massachusetts Press]], 1994; p. 117.</ref>

The book's full title is ''Mizora: A Prophecy: A Mss. Found Among the Private Papers of Princess Vera Zarovitch: Being a True and Faithful Account of her Journey to the Interior of the Earth, with a Careful Description of the Country and its Inhabitants, their Customs, Manners, and Government.''

== Publication history and influences ==
''Mizora'' was part of the wave of [[utopian and dystopian fiction]] that was published in the later decades of the nineteenth century.<ref>Jean Pfaelzer, ''The Utopian Novel in America 1886&ndash;1896: The Politics of Form'', Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984; pp. 146-50.</ref> The novel is "the second known feminist utopian novel written by a woman," after [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/cridge/rights/rights.html ''Man's Rights''] (1870) by [[Annie Denton Cridge]].<ref>James Matthew Morris and Andrea L. Cross, ''Historical Dictionary of Utopianism'', Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press, 2004; p. 172.</ref>

The concept of an all-female society dates back at least to the [[Amazons]] of ancient [[Greek mythology]] &mdash; though the Amazons still needed men for procreation. In Lane's ''Mizora'', reproduction is by [[parthenogenesis]].

''Mizora'' also belongs to the class of [[hollow Earth literature]].<ref>Peter Fitting, ''Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology'', Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press, 2004; p. 157.</ref>

The second edition of ''Mizora'' appeared  in 1975, and it was re-released in 1999 by the [[University of Nebraska Press]]. Little is known of the author; Mrs. Lane did not want her husband to find out she was writing about the world being better off without men.{{citation needed|date=October 2017}}

== Plot synopsis ==
The book depicts an all-female "utopia" existing within the Earth. The Mizorans practice [[eugenics]]; all of them are blonde "Aryans," who disdain people of darker skin. Their society is composed of blonde women and daughters.

In its ancient history, the land was ruled by a military general elected president (a version of [[Ulysses Grant]]). When the general ran for a third term (as Grant was urged to do in 1880), the society of Mizora descended into chaos. Eventually a new all-female social order arose in Mizora. The last men were "eliminated" &mdash; though it is not clear whether they were overtly killed or left to die out. It is said that men are more forgotten than hated.

The first-person narrator, Vera Zarovitch, is a young political fugitive who has fallen foul of the Czarist regime and been sentenced to exile in [[Siberia]]. She escapes northward into the Arctic, where her kayak is swept over a vast waterfall to Mizora. She spends fifteen years there, learning the ways of the culture; at the end of that time she longs to return to her husband and child, and teach her own society what she has learned. Although Vera ultimately manages to return to her own society, her husband and son are dead, and a Mizoran friend also dies. Vera is left only with the hope that future generations will be better off, "through the promises of universal education and the deeply questionable practice of eugenics".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Lake|first=Christina|date=2018|title=Eugenics in Late 19th -Century Feminist Utopias|journal=American Journal of Economics and Sociology|volume=77|issue=5|pages=1277–1312|doi=10.1111/ajes.12251|s2cid=149954554 |issn=0002-9246}}</ref>

As a utopian novel, the book devotes some time to the futuristic technology such as "videophones." The Mizorans can make rain by discharging electricity into the air. Though Mizora has no domestic animals, its women eat chemically prepared [[Meat analogue|artificial meat]] &mdash; an innovation that is only under development in the early twenty-first century.

== Social commentary and legacies ==
The novel makes frequent commentary on gender and race. Lane plays with the customs and conventions of her own society, as utopian writers normally do. In Mizora, a [[narrow waist]] is considered a "disgusting deformity" &mdash; reversing the preference of Lane's own time for [[tightly-corseted]] women.

It also refers to political repression in contemporary Russia, and the suppression of the [[Polish revolt of 1863]].

Lane's book anticipates some of the features of [[Charlotte Perkins Gilman]]'s famous ''[[Herland (novel)|Herland]]'' by three decades. It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, Mrs. George Corbett's ''[[New Amazonia|New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future]]'' (1889), and ''[[Unveiling a Parallel]]'' (1893) by collaborators Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant.  Simultaneously, some male utopian writers published works that involve feminist issues and questions of gender roles; Charles Bellamy's ''An Experiment in Marriage'' (1889) and Linn Boyd Porter's ''Speaking of Ellen'' (1890) are examples.

==See also==
{{portal|Novels}}
* ''[[Arqtiq]]''
* ''[[The Diothas]]''
* ''[[The Republic of the Future]]''
* ''[[2894 (novel)|2894]]''

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24750 ''Mizora: A Prophecy. A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch.''] by Mary Bradley Lane. New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1890, at [http://www.gutenberg.org/ Project Gutenberg]
* {{librivox book | title=Mizora | author=Lane}}
*[http://www.sfsite.com/09a/miz88.htm SFSite review of ''Mizora'']
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20051215113553/http://nebraskapress.unl.edu/bookinfo/3776.html University of Nebraska Press]
* {{Gutenberg author | id=26713| name=Mary E. Bradley Lane}}
{{Feminist science fiction}}

[[Category:Feminist utopian novels]]
[[Category:1881 American novels]]
[[Category:1881 science fiction novels]]
[[Category:American science fiction novels]]
[[Category:Novels set in the Arctic]]
[[Category:Fiction about the Hollow Earth]]
[[Category:Novels set in subterranea]]
[[Category:Feminist science fiction novels]]