Theme & Character Lists: Dystopias

A feminist dystopia would be one in which the treatment of a gender creates a nightmare, unjust world. (Most realistic fiction could be regarded this way!) Well -- for the purposes this page I'm only considering works in which the repression is extreme, and the sex roles play a large part.

Interestingly enough, many of the dystopias include a utopia also in the work (Gearhart; Starhawk; Piercy). Many of the dystopias contrast urban dystopias with rural or ecologically balanced utopias (Gearhart; Piercy; Starhawk). A couple have rural dystopias with possible salvations elsewhere (Friesner; Tepper). Most dystopias involve some degree of government dictatorship; often with a theocratic slant (Atwood, Friesner, Starhawk, Tepper).

• Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

• Katherine Burdekin's Swastika Night

• Suzy McKee Charnas' Walk to the End of the World

• Sybil Claiborne's In The Garden of Dead Cars

• Elana, Myrna. "Hourglass City" in Hot Ticket: Tales of Lesbians, Sex, and Travel edited by Linnea Due (Alyson: 1997) (dystopian city; sm dyke sex fantasy)
• Elgin, Suzette Haden. Native Tongue
  --. Judas Rose: Native Tongue II

• Zoë Fairbairns' Benefits
• Esther Friesner's The Psalms of Herod

• Gapper, Frances. "Atlantis 2045: no love between planets" (in Jen Green & Sarah Lefanu, editors, Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind, The Women's Press: 1985)
• Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground

• Kettle, Pamela. The Day of the Women (1969) (Women take over England, and set up a rather fascistic feminist dictatorship.)

• Le Guin, Ursula K. The Telling (2000) (Two different "dystopias" are lived and experienced by the same woman, an Ekumenical observer.)
• Marley, Louise. The Terrorists of Irustan (1999)
• McNeill, Pearlie. "The Awakening" (in Jen Green & Sarah Lefanu, editors, Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind, The Women's Press: 1985)

• Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time

• Pamela Sargent's The Shore of Women
• Saxton, Josephine. "To Market, To Market"
• Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing

• Sheri Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country

• Elisabeth Vonarburg's The Silent City

• Wilhelm, Kate. "The Funeral."