ABSTRACT
Sarah Scott’s A Description of Millenium Hall is a representative text for utopian ction in the eighteenth century. The novel engages critically with the belief in human progress, which the Enlightenment conceived as achievable if principles such as reason and sympathy would govern people’s (inter)actions. A contribution to both philosophical thinking in the Enlightenment and to feminist utopian writing, the text draws attention to the political, economic, and legal rights of women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As a novelist, Sarah Scott was part of the utopian tradition, albeit one who sought to substantiate her reformist designs in real life as well as in literature. The following analysis discusses Millenium Hall in the context of Enlightenment ideas of progress, showing how Scott introduces an alternative vision to the linear notion of advancement: the Millenium Hall community is founded on the bonds of individual friendship, structured by the economic principles of interpersonal charity, and reliant on joint, continuous efforts rather than singular achievements.
