ABSTRACT
Intentional communities were declining in number and popularity towards the century’s close, but their experience was a useful model of reform, and their radicalism, particularly in sexual or gender role experiments, was frequently re-examined by turn-of-the-century feminists. Arthur C. Clarke’s Co-opolitan presents a successful community, but one in which the major figure is a woman, who makes the choice to join, and whose own success as a novelist is reflected in the community’s success. Marie Howland was also a staunch proponent of domestic feminism, and her Papa’s own girl modelled on the Fourierist community established by industrialist Godin at Guise, France, incorporates the domestic arrangements that she saw in action there. The strength of religious belief can be gauged already through responses to both religious and secular communities. Although both may fail, secular ideals are usually pilloried in a way that religious principles are not.
