The Future is Feminist!
More findings from an imaginary future
Piero Gondolo della Riva
fig. 6 – fig. 4 – fig.5 series of plates entitled “XXe siècle” images ©Piero Gondolo della Riva
There are writings dating back to the beginning of the eighteenth century that foresee the equality of the sexes: in 1718, in Le Monde renversé, written by Alain-Renéé Lesage in collaboration with d’Orneval, he already imagined that women would be able to practice freely in the professional world and in 1741, the Danish baron Ludwig af Holberg published in Latin his Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum where equality of the sexes is taken for granted. In 1865, Achille Eyraud published the Voyage à Vénus where he imagined that on Venus women were carried out all kinds of jobs (tailors, milliners, employees, doctors), also to avoid them being obliged to “earn the bread that they can’t earn through work, through vice”. Among the numerous futuristic writings published from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century three are definitely worth remembering for their full on way of facing feminism.
fig.1 – fig. 2 – fig.7 images ©Piero Gondolo della Riva
The first being La Vingtième siècle, a famous novel by Albert Robida, that from the second edition, carried the subtitle Roman d’une Parisienne d’après-demain. In an imaginary 1952, Hélène Colobry puts various male careers on the line: that of the lawyer (fig. 1), the politician, the journalist and the banker, taking it up to the point of a duel between two ladies (fig.2). We are in a society where women, during a revolution due to take place in 1953, even fight along the barricades demonstrating flags with “FEMALE SUPREMACY” printed on them (fig.3)! There is a splendid series of twelve plates, entitled “XXe siècle” that was largely inspired by the homonymous novel by Robida, showing an ugly and strict lawyer dressed in a toga giving orders to her husband on domestic duties and childcare (fig.4), a female police officer (fig.5) and a lady diver (fig, 6). Likewise there is a lovely postcard from around 1911 that shows a female aeroplane pilot (fig.7). La Femme future by Henri Desmaret came out in 1890, in the novel the author shares his fears about how the emancipated female could lose her femininity by dedicating too much of her time to male activities.
fig.3 – fig.8 images ©Piero Gondolo della Riva
Lastly, in 1910 Jacques Constant published Le Triomphe des Suffragettes. Roman des temps futurs (fig.8) that is set in 1995. It is a satirical book: female emancipation has been accepted by now and the man replaces the woman in all domestic duties. There is no more time for love or breastfeeding. Let’s not, however, fall into the trap: they were probably written by men who were afraid, with all the new theories, of being ousted by women, all of these three novels end pessimistically. The last phase of Constant’s book is particularly significant (quoted by a woman): “I was blind, a woman’s duty is to obey and the man’s to command”.
