Huxley’s Vision of Gender Utopia and the Philosopher-Ruled State in The Brave New World

Abstract

This article examines the vision of gender utopia presented in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and explores its utopian possibilities in Mustapha’s World State, which is compared to the philosopher-ruled state in Plato’s Republic. The theme of utopia has been approached differently in liberalism and socialism: liberal utopia prioritizes individual freedom, while socialist utopia emphasizes egalitarian community. The World State in The Brave New World abolishes patriarchy with advanced scientific and technological civilization and depicts a gender utopia without female reproductive labor, emotional labor, and care labor, while the actual main woman characters such as Lenina and Linda suffer pain and death. Therefore, Huxley’s World State represents an ideal gender utopia, while the female characters are evaluated based on their appearance and live tragic lives due to excessive national norms enforcing order. On the other hand, Mustapha’s World State embodies some of the ideal state described in Plato’s Republic, and the two polities are similar in that they are class societies based on stability ruled by philosophers. However, the World State places too much emphasis on community stability, suppressing individual freedom, emphasizing sensual pleasure rather than spiritual happiness, Eudaimonia of Plato’s polity. Eventually, Huxley’s utopia has an ideal structure of gender equality, but the women living there are not so happy. Although it is excellent in terms of stability and efficiency as an ideal politeia ruled by a philosopher, it has limitations that its educational method is rather oppressive, only indulges in pleasure, then represents a failed gender utopia in the end.