Abstract
In Looking Backward, A Modern Utopia, and Moving the Mountain, Edward Bellamy, H.G. Wells, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, respectively, refashioned conceptions of women’s roles as the basis for their visions of economic and social order. Although each of these authors offered his or her own method for creating new forms of social order, all started from the premise that order will follow from universal access to education, satisfying work, and a high quality of food, clothing and shelter because these provisions will allow women to fulfill their highest duty: they can become mothers to children who are healthier in mind, body, and spirit that they otherwise would be, and so continuously improve the physical, mental, and moral health of humanity.