Reviews for The Mountains of California

The average rating for The Mountains of California based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-09-24 00:00:00 Joshua Martin In Bellamy's Boston in the year 2000, many things have changed from how they were in 1887, and the consensus among the book's characters is that they have changed for the better. I do not imagine many people would argue the merits of the eradication of poverty and war. But when one looks more closely at gender roles, "utopia" becomes a bit more blurry. The fact that women have jobs outside the home is exciting and progressive. However, they are still treated as quite secondary to men. Being "inferior of strength to men, and further disqualified industrially in special ways" women work within an entirely separate labor structure (257). The men discuss it as if the women are playing at work. "Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree of labor, to her sex" (257). Further discourse shows that rather than seeing women as deserving of work just as they are, men "let them" work as long as it does not interact with their "serious" industry. Dr. Leete says that "they permit them to work at all only because it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind" (257). In other words, they permit them to work because it makes them prettier. One sees the condescension even more clearly when Dr. Leete explains, "We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it" (259). And finally, to see how little society's respect for women has "progressed," we learn that their main role and value is still as producers of children. In fact "the higher positions in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex" (261). Perhaps this is a challenge that no utopian writer has yet conquered: creating a society that everyone thinks is utopian. In Bellamy's future society, Dr. Leete explains that "we have nothing to make laws about. The fundamental principles on which our society is founded settle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in your day called for legislation" (208). Even if we concede that the elimination of money and personal property would obviate many laws, how can we be convinced that there are no legal or moral issues on which people disagree? The yearning to create a perfect society has captured many artists, and will no doubt continue to do so. But who decides what is perfect, much less what is better? Who defines progress?

Review # 2 was written on 2013-01-21 00:00:00 Johnny Kollam As a novel, this book isn't much. That isn't a mark against it, though - the story serves as a light frame to build an explanation of socialism around, and it does that very well. Looking Backward is the best and clearest way I have ever seen socialism presented (although that is not hard, since I have never seen socialism presented in any light other than a negative one), and in almost every way it seems better than capitalism. It raises questions in me that I have never had occasion to consider. Why, indeed, should we not all work together? Why should one have so much more than another, when all people are created equal? Why waste so much manpower and economic power with endless duplication of enterprise? Why should many of us live under constant threat of poverty and hunger, when the good earth is rich, and can support us all equally? Five hundred million people live in poverty in Africa, one of the poorest regions on Earth. Two hundred million in China. Fifteen million in the United Kingdom. Forty million people live in poverty even in America, the richest nation on Earth. This past year the people on the Forbes 400 list have accumulated an additional two hundred billion dollars ($200,000,000,000), while at the same time median family income in America dropped by 4 percent. After reading this book, perhaps I might call myself a socialist. ---- For thirty years I had lived among them, and yet I seemed to have never noted before how drawn and anxious were their faces, of the rich as of the poor, the refined, acute faces of the educated as well as the dull masks of the ignorant. And well it might be so, for I saw now, as never before I had seen so plainly, that each as he walked constantly turned to catch the whispers of a spectre at his ear, the spectre of Uncertainty. "Do your work never so well," the spectre was whispering, - "rise early and toil till late, rob cunningly or serve faithfully, you shall never know security. Rich you may be now and still come to poverty at last. Leave never so much wealth to your children, you cannot buy the assurance that your son may not be the servant of your servant, or that your daughter will not have to sell herself for bread."