In Utopia, Thomas More paints a picture of a society which we are led to believe, while admittedly imperfect, has achieved the highest level of order, legality, and productivity humanly possible. The island of Utopia is intricately designed, with a complex social system that seems to provide recourse for nearly every human failing, mistake, and crime. A Utopian has very little to worry about from birth to old-age, as every choice is guided and provided for by the Utopian government, leaving every Utopian happily employed in the trade of his or her choice until their death. Did More believe that such a place could, or should, exist? I believe that More meant Utopia to be a socio-political satire due to the many clues he placed in the text. For example, Utopia is Greek for “no-place,” the name he gives to the mayors of Utopia is “no-people”, and his narrator Raphael Nonsenso, who enthusiastically proclaims the virtues of Utopia, is named in the original text “Hythlodaeus” which translates to “dispenser of nonsense.” I think that More wrote Utopia not only to point out some of the failings of his own government and other governments at the time, but also to show how such a place as Utopia could never—and perhaps should never—exist. I believe that one of the dangers that More was trying to warn us against in Utopia is the disintegration of the family that is inevitable in, and necessary to, a communist society.
On the island of Utopia there are several laws regarding the families that make up each town. Among them is a law that “no household shall contain less than ten…adults” (60). The Utopian government reasons that if a family unit of a mother, father, and children are left to themselves, they could make foolish decisions and perhaps raise unproductive or delinquent children. However, if they receive the guidance and assistance of the other eight adults in the household, they are more likely to make wise and informed decisions and raise productive citizens for the Utopian state. Not only are mothers and fathers not allowed their own home, they sometimes are not allowed to keep their own children. Utopian law states that “if a child fancies some other trade, he’s adopted into a family that practises it” (56). For example, if a child wishes to practice leather-working while his parents are bricklayers, the state will simply find him a new, more suitable set of parents. Utopian families are also discouraged from eating together as a household since, they reason, “it seems silly to go to all the trouble of preparing an inferior meal, when there’s an absolutely delicious one waiting for you at the dining-hall just down the street” (62) and instead “thirty households…have their meals.” (61) together in a large dining-hall. Utopian law seems to want as little private interaction between family members as possible, always striving to keep each citizen’s mind focused on the community.
In fact, being at home seems to be so disagreeable to Utopians that More’s character Raphael Nonsenso goes so far as to say that “practically everyone would rather be ill in hospital than at home” (62). New mothers in Utopia are not allowed to spend time at home, instead they spend their maternal leave in “a room reserved for nursing mothers and their babies” (62). However, there seems to be little respect for motherhood, since if a mother is unable to nurse her baby, he or she will be given to a wet-nurse who then adopts the child, and as More’s narrator Nonsenso states, “the child itself will always regard her [the wet-nurse] as its real mother” (63). This Utopian policy reveals how the bonds of parents to their children are of little relevance to the state and are consistently minimized for the benefit of the larger community. In George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, Orwell’s communist leader Napoleon believed that the best way to control his citizens was to remove their familial bonds. Orwell writes of a litter of puppies, “as soon as they were weaned, Napoleon took them away from their mothers, saying that he would make himself responsible for their education” (Ch 3). The founder of Utopia, Utopos, would most likely agree with Orwell’s suidaen antagonist on this point.
Another thinker who would agree with this idea is Marxist revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai who wrote, “The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children.” (Communism and the Family). She believed, like Napoleon and Utopos, that the natural bond between a mother and her children merely impeded the proper functioning of a communist society. Kollontai goes on to say that the communist woman should not only forsake bonds with her children but also with her husband. She writes that “a woman must accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society, and not from the individual man.” Dissolving or minimizing the importance or presence of family bonds is a consistent theme throughout communist thought. Kollontai equated family to slavery, saying, “Cast off your chains! Do not be slaves to religion, to marriage, to children. Break these old ties, the state is your home, the world is your country!” (Mirrors of Moscow. Louise Bryant 1923). The Utopians equated marriage to purchasing an item or commodity, saying of foreigners, “when you’re choosing a wife…you don’t even bother to take it out of its wrappings” (84). The Utopians looked at marriage simply as a means to have intercourse since, in Utopia, “very few people would want to get married…if they weren’t carefully prevented from having any sexual intercourse otherwise” (83-84). This Utopian view of marriage directly contradicts the doctrine of the Bible which teaches that marriage is a holy union which mirrors both the union of Persons in the Trinity and Christ’s union with His Church. For example, the Apostle Paul writes, “husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25 NIV). This model of marriage is vastly contrary to the Utopian model. More, as a devout Christian, surely must have held a very different view of marriage and the family than his Utopian citizens.
Did Thomas More believe in his Utopia? Was he trying to illustrate how an ideal society might be created and governed? Or was he trying to show us the inevitable failings of a communist society, a society in which the welfare of the individual is sacrificed for the perceived benefit of the community. An ideal communist society requires completely unbiased, unselfish, and benevolent leaders in order to function as its designers envision, but this is impossible. As the once leader of Communist Russia Joseph Stalin said, “A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.” In other words, a sincere diplomat cannot exist. If this is true, then a society like Utopia cannot exist either. Therefore, I believe that Utopia is mainly satirical and expresses a belief contrary to former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s claim, that it “takes a village” to raise a child. Rather, it takes a mother and a father to raise a child.
