For centuries, the creators of fictional utopias have proposed myriad alternatives to their societies–everything from the left of anarchy to the right of fascism.  Yet all of these schemes invariably start out by asking "what if?"  What would happen if, for example, a republic were governed by the principles of temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice? or if an island were peopled by pagans who were somehow more Christian than Christians? or if totalitarianism were given such free rein that the state controlled the way people thought?  For many nineteenth-century women, the "what if" question pertained to gender specific roles:  men had been in charge since the beginning of time, after all, and it might be argued that there was considerable room for improvement. What if the supposed "separate spheres" imprisoning women and men alike were suddenly reversed?
Two nineteenth-century women answered this question in their utopian fictions.  In 1870, Annie Denton Cridge published a short work entitled Man's Rights; or, How Would You Like It?  consisting of five "dream visions" detailing life on the topsy-turvy world of Mars, where women rule the country and men remain at home to mind the children.  Later that year, Cridge published a serialized version of the text in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly, adding an additional four "visions."  The narrative first offers a sympathetic portrait of housebound men trapped in an endless loop of domestic drudgery, then explains how a Man's Rights movement eventually succeeds in creating an equitable society in which both genders move freely between the public and private spheres.  Twelve years later, Mrs. J. Wood published Pantaletta, a Romance of Sheheland (1882), a novel which also employed the role-reversal model to make its satiric point.  Wood's narrative, however, is an antifeminist dystopian satire, detailing the exploits of a disoriented American aviator who happens to land in Petticotia–a society composed of effete, enslaved males ("Heshes"), and dominant females ("Shehes") who smoke and drink while secretly hungering for the attentions of an old-fashioned, "manly" man.  Thanks to the hero's machismo and the longings of the man-hungry females, the "natural" order of things is eventually reinstated.
Little is known about either author.  Cridge was the sister of William Denton:  a geology professor and the original publisher of Man's Rights, he was also an authority on psychometry (the ability to sense people and events by holding inanimate objects).  Cridge was herself a gifted psychometer, and the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology cites several of her "readings" at some length. In addition, an 1868 Boston Investigator article suggests that she and her husband Alfred lived in Washington and promoted social reforms such as cooperative kitchens and workshops.  Nevertheless, she remains an elusive figure:  even her dates of birth and death are unknown (although in 1884, her son Alfred Denton Cridge referred to her as the "late" Mrs. Cridge in his Utopia, or the History of an Extinct Planet).  Still less is known about Mrs. J. Wood:  aside from the fact that she wrote an antifeminist utopia, she exists only as an initial sandwiched between the marital honorific and her husband's name--and even that single initial might be his.
The texts that these women produced share a good deal of common ground:  both were written by nineteenth-century women, and were published within a span of only twelve years; both employ the utopian genre, and both employ role-reversals to make their satiric point.  Yet they express diametrically opposed political philosophies:  Cridge's inverted society is a place of justice and order managed by responsible, reasonable women, while Petticotia is a chaotic madhouse, run by jealous, strident harridans.  These oppositions reflect nineteenth-century women's differing individual perceptions of their own nature, as well as their role and place in society. Both works address specifically feminist concerns:  the need to blur the notion of separate spheres in order to provide equal access to education, equal work and pay, and equal participation in public political matters.
In the nineteenth century, these concerns were all linked by a single element: clothing, which accentuated, reinforced, and promoted gender difference.  Fashion determined that the female image should epitomize aesthetic sensibility, physical delicacy, and womanly grace.  These apparently innocuous qualities had dire consequences for women who wished to vote, obtain higher education, or work.  Aesthetic sensibility translated into a preoccupation with frippery, frills, and other non-essentials, and perpetuated the view of women as frivolous, light-minded creatures.   Women's physical delicacy, a myth due in part to the physical constraints of women's fashion, precluded any sort of strenuous activity--physical or mental--and was used as an argument against female higher education.  Of course, without advanced training, women were effectively barred from any lucrative profession.   Fashion thus tacitly forced women to remain in the domestic sphere, the ideal frame for their natural grace and moral superiority.  It is no wonder that feminists such as Annie Denton Cridge argued for dress reform which blurred gender difference; it was the first step toward increased political, educational, and occupational opportunity for women.  Nor is it surprising that Mrs. J. Wood's antifeminist novel ridiculed all of these issues, using satire, exaggeration, pseudo-science, and false logic.
Fashion has always been an oppressive tyrant--especially women's fashion.  Any twentieth-century woman who has struggled into a girdle or hobbled after a taxi in high heels and a long tight skirt can readily identify with nineteenth-century women's complaints about their clothing.   The more exaggerated styles of late nineteenth-century middle-class woman bordered on torture:  vise-like corsets; long dragging gowns (made of highly delicate fabric which could easily be ripped or stained); tiny, narrow, pinching shoes with precariously high heels; bulky headgear perched atop complex hairdos.  These clothes were not only obviously inconvenient; they were also implicitly absurd.  Women who preferred a sixteen-inch waist to breathing, whose clothes prevented them from walking any distance or raising their arms above their shoulders, whose feet were deformed by shoes several sizes too small, whose internal organs were compressed out of shape by steel-reinforced corsets, were hopeless slaves to fashion who could hardly be taken seriously as intellectual beings.
Neither can the men of Cridge's Marsian society.  Although they still wear the pants in the family, they do so with a difference: their suits are monuments to excess and frivolity.  Men are all but unrecognizable beneath masses of brightly colored garb, smothered in lace, embroidery, bows, and streamers.  They peer out at the world from beneath fantastic headgear, covered in "flowers, bits of lace, tulle or blonde, feathers, and even birds" (Cridge 13-14) and topped with ribbon, tinsel, and glitter.  Maneuvering in such a getup is difficult at best, and the men have been forced to develop a swinging gait, "something like that of a sailor, that made their coat-tails move to and fro as they walked" (14).  As if all this were not sufficiently demanding, they must also "carefully and daintily" hoist their trouser-legs as they attempt to navigate the city boulevards, lest "the laces, ribbons, embroidery, or ruffles ... come in contact with the mud of the streets" (14).  Marsian women, on the other hand, dress simply in  "plain, substantial clothing."  Like nineteenth-century men, Cridge's women are not expected to define themselves through fashionable dress.  Nor is their power dependent upon their physical attractiveness:  as the narrator is quick to point out, there is "something about them far more beautiful than beauty” (13).  Unencumbered by frippery, they move gracefully through the streets, physically, morally, intellectually, and politically powerful beings.
Cridge's text demonstrates that notions of a specifically male or female "nature" is essentially a question of convention. She does not ridicule the wretched men who are trapped in her reversal of social norms; instead, she finds them pitiable.  A fashionable Marsian male, teetering on his high heels as he struggles to keep his ludicrous hat on his head with one hand while clutching his fantastically decorated trousers in the other, is not comical.  He is instead a tragic figure, a degraded human being who has been stripped not only of personal dignity but of his own humanity as well:  "a monkey standing on two feet" (34).  His degraded state is not due to any personal shortcoming, but rather is the result a humiliating costuming designed to make him appear foolish, childish--even infantile.  Such garb is a cultural marker, indicating that the wearer is to be patronized (or, in this case, matronized), petted, and spoiled.  His fragility is emphasized by the diminutives that characterize his clothing:  "little ruffles . . . round the bottom of the pants", "rows of small ruffles" on the vest, "little flat hats" with childish "ribbon streamers" (13),  his "little green velvet cap" and "tiny porte-monnaie" decorated with the emblem of his servitude:  "little chains" (35).
The men of Mrs. J. Wood's Pantaletta are even more degraded--they, after all, do not even have the consolation of trousers, but must drag about in skirts.  They have one dubious comfort, however.  Since everyone in Petticotia cross-dresses, everyone is ridiculous.  Mrs. Wood has little compassion for any gender that persists in behaving in a perverse, unnatural fashion.  Instead, she exploits the comic possibilities of transvestitism:  her men are grotesque parodies of women, and her women hideous travesties of men:  indeed, they are no longer "women" and "men", but androgynous "shehes" and "heshes."  Shehes sport preposterous false beards and moustaches; they have traded away their glorious womanhood for a chance to be false men.  They have been encouraged to do so by females who have proven inadequate as women:  few of them "have ever been married, and those who [are] so fortunate have been, with few exceptions, childless or unhappy in their family relationships.  Their milk of human kindness is somewhat soured" (Wood 84).  In this new world order, however, the most masculine females are perceived as the most attractive.  The result is a grotesque amalgam of "exaggerated pantaloons, stiff dress-coats, high collars, low foreheads, short noses, bulging eyes, and other strange physical proportions"(190).  Petticotian males' attempts at ersatz womanhood are equally futile.  No amount of shaving or cosmetics will make even the most effeminate heshe womanly, so the result is an equally ridiculous "medley of giraffe-like beings in petticoats, endowed with roman, aquiline and mongrel noses of generous proportions, big chins and inexpressive eyes" (190).
The nineteenth-century debate over dress reform notwithstanding, Wood sees nothing wrong with women's fashions per se.  Indeed, she values them as a reassuring part of the natural order of things:  flounces and frills, corsets and crinolines do not demean, nor do they indicate an essentially frivolous nature.  Such niceties are merely a reflection of a cultured women's taste for beautiful things, a genteel sensibility which even a male should be able to appreciate.  When Wood's American intruder is forced into female garb, he feels "ill at ease, to say the least."  Yet his primary concern has relatively little to do with fashion, and a great deal to do with role shifting:  he is terrified that someone will charge him "with being a fraud and a vile not-what-I-seemed" (100).  The clothes themselves do not upset him overmuch:  he remarks that his wig is a bit unwieldy, that he cannot feel his hat through all the extra hair, and that his corset hugs him "rather closely."  His only real complaint is that his artificial inflatable rubber breasts (which, like the women's false beards and moustaches, emphasize the unnaturalness of Petticotian arrangements), sit "like a late supper upon [his] chest."  Otherwise, the experience is "not as dreadful as [he] expected" (100).  Later in the novel, he even goes so far as to describe his satin and velvet ball gown in fairly approbatory terms.  The implication is of course that feminists have no real basis for complaint about fashion.  Still, he feels uncomfortable and unnatural in women's clothes; they act as a litmus test of Real Manhood.  The parallel test of a True Woman is her distaste for trousers, and the lovesick, pantalooned President of Petticotia passes with flying colors.  When she attempts to attract the American by bejeweling and gowning herself--"in all a [traditional nineteenth-century] woman's splendour" (81), she immediately notices the comfort of dressing as nature meant her to:  she is "greatly relieved by this change from the uncomfortable garments [i.e., trousers] which the law assigned to her sex" (85).  Her relief is understandable;  in her pre-unisex era, after all dress is a very real indication of gender–and gender difference.  Skirts are a synecdoche for femaleness; trousers represent everything masculine.  Any deviation from gender specific clothing seems perverted and unnatural (which may be why Cridge avoids any reference to cross-dressing in her narrative).
Yet her relief also reflects the late nineteenth century nexus between helplessness, femininity, and social status.  These elements were so tightly linked that anything which gave women physical freedom was immediately perceived as not only unfeminine, but a touch déclassé.  Dress was a cultural signifier, after all, a marker of one's social position:  even lower-class women tried to look as if they were members of the "carriage class".  A protected, beloved household goddess did not need to breathe deeply, since her movements were invariably (and unavoidably) graceful and stately--nothing to put one out of breath.  Nor would she need to bend over, since her servants would presumably attend to her every need.  Any woman who wished to be fashionable must at least look as if she spent her days moving from parlor to carriage and back.  Complaining about an inability to perform rigorous activity was tantamount to confessing one's failure as a female:  either the complainer was insufficiently attractive to secure male protection, or she was one of those "mannish" feminist types--the same thing, really.  For many women, the very word "healthful" was linked with a dangerous androgyny, one that threatened to blur the separate spheres.  As Kate Gannett Wells asserted in 1850, "instead of grace, there has come in many women an affectation of mannishness, as is shown in hats, jackets, long strides, and a healthful swinging of the arms in walking" (cited in Kinnard 194).  How much more ladylike to luxuriate in one's delightful helplessness, to enjoy what one 1870 woman termed the "delicious sensation of perfect compression" afforded by stays--a sensation so delightful that "when once accustomed to it," women would corset themselves tightly even "if appearance were no consideration at all" (cited in Murray 67).
Yet appearance was a consideration--a consideration so important that nineteenth-century women were willing to risk their very lives in the name of fashion.  The long, trailing skirts that provided a feminine aura of grace and dignity were not only inconvenient; they could be dangerously unhealthy as well.  As the nineteenth century progressed, walking skirts ballooned into tents generally four to five yards around; ball gowns were so huge that an average room could hold no more than two.  Many a careless woman strayed too close to the fireplace and went up in flames:  an 1865 English newspaper lamented that "not a year passes but in this country alone hundreds suffer death by burning through crinoline" (cited in Cunnington 221).  The longer, trailing skirts that replaced it, however, were even more uncomfortable and difficult to maneuver: in 1878, Margaret Oliphant complained that "No-one but a woman knows how her dress twists around her knees, doubles her fatigue, and arrests her locomotive powers" (cited in Gernsheim 65).  The narrower skirt had yet another disadvantage, however:  it required severely tight-laced corsets to maintain the illusion of a tiny waist (the crinoline had been so voluminous that any waist looked small by comparison).  These whalebone-and-steel contraptions were not merely painful; they could be lethal.  By forcing women's bodies into unnatural contours, corsets often caused the uterus to prolapse.  This complaint became so common that "pessaries" (devices to hold internal organs in place) became a regular, albeit unmentionable, fashion accessory.  Additionally, corsets not only tended to force ribs to grow directly into the lungs, but could so weaken the spine that many women had to wear "night stays" in order to sit upright in bed.  Even champions of clothing which emphasized the separate spheres were troubled by the more exaggerated fashions–although their concern was for the most part limited to domestic issues such as motherhood and housekeeping.  Stays, for example, were criticized not for their effect on the woman who wore them, but because they could render her incapable of producing children.  Fashion must not deny a woman her natural, divinely ordained function in life.  Antifeminists also condemned long, trailing skirts--again, not because of an individual woman's convenience or health, but rather out of a concern that such fashions were unhygienic, since long skirts tended to pick up mud and germs and bring them into the home, contaminating the family sanctuary.
Yet women's fashions threatened even more than physical health.  They took an emotional toll as well.  Corsets, huge skirts, and crippling shoes could make even the healthiest woman not only appear frail, but feel frail.  In many cases, this ingrained sense of personal infirmity had been encouraged since early childhood, when she had been conditioned to accept the middle-class aversion to female exercise:  anything vigorous enough to raise perspiration was at best undignified and at worst, unnaturally "mannish".  Proper young girls remained inside, sewing or playing with dolls, while young men were free to engage in rough-and-tumble play.  Proper young ladies were trained to enjoy "feminine" pursuits designed to help them acquire a husband and the financial security he would bring.  As Harriet Martineau noted in Society in America, "the sum and substance of female education ... is training women to consider marriage as the sole object in life" (II.47).  Young women were encouraged to appear as fragile and delicate–as feminine–as possible.  Even had their clothing permitted unladylike vigorous activity, such exertion could only repel a potential suitor.  Unfortunate young women who had physical heartiness thrust upon them by an overly resilient constitution generally tried to conceal the fact.
After all, antifeminists argued, physical delicacy was a natural–even essential–component of the female constitution, meant to complement male strength.  A strong, physically powerful woman, they argued, was a freakish androgyne who, if she did somehow manage to attract a husband, should certainly not be encouraged to reproduce.  The feminist/antifeminist clash over woman's physical nature is dramatically illustrated in Man's Rights and Pantaletta.  Indeed, the role-reversal mechanism--in which women behave like men and vice-versa--is especially relevant in an age which hotly disputed exactly how women and men should behave.
Cridge argues that nature does not produce frail people.  It is fashion and convention which give such an impression, and thus fashion and convention must be defied.  Resisting social norms will enable nature to generate healthy, strong men and women.  Supporting such perverse norms, on the other hand, will result in feeble weaklings such as Cridge's young male Marsians, imprisoned by their upbringing and clothing.  A Marsian boy must be confined to "over-heated rooms" since his inadequate clothing--"flimsy pants of white muslin" and a "flimsy jacket and paper shoes"--provides little protection from the elements.  He is expected to be "a dear little gentleman" and not spoil his delicate clothes, while his sister frolics outside in her "warm cloth dress" and "substantial over-garments, and thick shoes.... The girl may romp and play in the snow, climb fences and trees, and thus strengthen every muscle; while the little pale-faced boy presses his nose against the window-pane, and wishes–alas! vainly–that he, too, had been a girl" (26).  Cridge argues that a childhood based on the notion of separate spheres dooms young Marsian men women to a life of poor health, a painful existence composed of weakness, disease, and poor muscular development.  Most maddening is the fact that such frailty is perceived as a natural thing, when, in reality, it is "ignorance and custom" which are "the foundation for bodily weakness ... dependence and mental imbecility." "Were boys subject to the same physical training as girls," she asserts, "the result would prove that no natural inferiority exists" (27).
For Wood, however, physical inferiority is an innate part of womanliness.  In Petticotia, only ugly and mannish females enjoy physical strength--although since these females now breed, their type is increasing with alarming rapidity.  (Happily, the few True Women who remain have managed to retain their delicate and sensitive nature despite perverted social norms which demand female health and vigor.)  Wood presents physical strength as an inherently male quality, which should remain exclusively so:  anything else is abnormal and degenerate.  Petticotian history exemplifies the danger of perverting this natural order of things:  the founder of the female republic was a monstrous, man-hating freak known as "Tyrania the Strong" (151), "a man in all but sex" (153) who was so physically powerful that "half-a-dozen ordinary men would be to her in single-handed combat as a litter of pups, tossed with ease wherever she pleased to bestow their insensible remains" (152).  She used her strength to challenge the patriarchal order of things, and plunged the nation into civil war.  The result was a political bloodbath, described with horrific Revolutionary imagery:  tumbrels rolling through the streets, mass beheadings, and so forth.  Tyrania has little in common with the beautiful President of Petticotia (the True Woman who assumed female garb in order to seduce the American visitor).  Despite her feminist conditioning, the President remains "a creature all softness and sensibility, bearing happiness meekly and sorrow with fortitude:  gentle, mild, submissive" (183)–and she invariably drops into a dead faint when excited.
Such a woman reflects the stereotypical image of the Victorian belle-ideal:  an innocent darling clad in adorably frivolous frills and furbelows, too weak to even pick up her own dropped handkerchief, obviously in need of a big, strong man to protect her–and unwilling to challenge him in anything.  The portrait in itself might be seen as an amusing period piece, the harmless stuff of nostalgic Victoriana.  But the effect of such a portrait on actual women's lives was insidious.  Women imprisoned in awkward clothing and denied exercise since earliest childhood could be convinced fairly readily that they were far too fragile to withstand the rigors of any activity outside the shelter of the domestic sphere.  And this myth of inherent physical frailty prohibited them from obtaining an education, from engaging in profitable work, and from taking part in politics.
Late nineteenth-century America witnessed an ongoing debate about exactly how much exertion members of the frail sex could endure, and–more importantly–about precisely what kind of exertion best suited them.  Feminists such as Cridge regarded female frailty as a direct result of the physical constraints placed upon women, and many argued that the myth of inherent female infirmity was engendered and enforced by those who wished to keep women confined to the domestic sphere.  It was a powerful myth indeed, and one which was the basis of powerful arguments against female education, since it was used not only to keep them from rigorous exercise, but from rigorous study as well.
Many renowned male scientists were quick to explain that all work outside the home–including intellectual activity–was terribly dangerous and debilitating for women, since it made unnatural demands upon them.  Dr. Edward H. Clarke, for example, a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard, expounded at some length on typical examples of educated or independent women.  "Miss A___" was a brilliant scholar whose erudition resulted in chorea, "prolonged dyspepsia, neuralgia, and dysmenorrhoea" (69).  "Miss B____" was a successful actress who "persisted in the slow suicide of frequent hemorrhages"–in fact, she even "encouraged them by her determination to work "in a man's sustained way" (73)–and eventually fell victim to heart palpitation, difficulties in breathing, "dizziness, semi-consciousness ... anemia and epileptiform attacks" (74). "Miss C____" was a bookkeeper whose refusal to make "allowance for the periodicity of her organization" and "shape of her skeleton" resulted in "neuralgia, backache, menorrhagia, leucorrhoea, and general disability" (77).  Dr. Clarke was finally forced "to consign her to an asylum" (87).  The good doctor continues through a substantial portion of the alphabet in this fashion, tossing out abstruse scientific terms dexter and sinister.  The medical jargon alone would have been enough to intimidate a woman denied specific medical training:  impressive statistics seem even more impressive when they're incomprehensible.
But intimidation was precisely the idea.  Women had to be frightened away from specific medical training–or any training which could draw them away from the domestic sphere with the promise of lucrative and stimulating work.  This need to keep women in the home generated article after article, and book after book, all `proving' `scientifically' that female education was directly linked to female illness.  Dr. Clarke cited cases of young women who "graduated from school or college excellent scholars, but with undeveloped ovaries.  Later they became sterile" (39).  Noted gynecologists such as Dr. William Goodell asserted definitively that female "boarding-schools and public schools ... breed a host of sickly girls" plagued by "manifold diseases, both functional and structural" including "neuralgic pains," "amenorrhoea," "irregular menstruation," "spinal irritation, leucorrhoea, irritable bladder, pruritus vulvae, painful ovaries, a bearing-down feeling, and various pelvic aches and congestions" (Goodell et al. 669).  The famed neurologist S. Weir Mitchell argued that intellectual work is "dangerous" for women, "sexually incapacitative to a varying amount," and the cause of "hysteria, or hysterical hypochondriasis" or "neurasthenia" (Goodell et al. 672).  Sir James Crichton Browne declared (in the medical journal Lancet, no less) that education causes women's brains to consume themselves, resulting in "nervous disturbances, insomnia, anaemia . . . general delicacy," and "anorexia scholastica" (cited in Kinnard 256).  Women were clearly too frail to undergo the specialized training that would enable them to debunk the very same pseudo-science that prevented them from getting that training.
Women could not even be sure of reassurance from other members of their gender:  some of the most violent antifeminists were women--and ironically, many were highly educated, well-paid career women (Eliza Lynn Linton was a noted author, Sarah Josepha Hale the editor of the popular and influential Godey's Lady's Book).  All, however, were quick to jump on the scientific bandwagon.  Those who lacked medical training relied on questionable logic:   Miss M. A. Hardaker, for example, argued in 1882 that since the male brain is larger than that of the female, one can establish "an exact correspondence between brain-substance and intelligence," since "in the case of every other organ of the body we know there is an ascertainable correspondence between size and condition, and the amount of work that an organ can do" (578).  Just as larger heart will pump more blood than a small one, a larger brain will pump more intelligence.   Eliza Lynn Linton pointed out that education took both a moral and physical toll on women:  it not only made women "arrogant, pretentious, [and] vain" but "ruin[ed] them for pregnancy, lactation, and child rearing" (cited in Kinnard 232).  She condemns the young intellectual woman who selfishly risks her reproductive organs, and suggests that she not taint the race with her brain-damaged body:  "let her then dedicate herself from the beginning as the Vestal of Knowledge, and forego the exercise of that function the perfection of which her own self-improvement has destroyed" ("Higher Education" 818).  In other words, women's intellect was not merely incompatible with, but a direct negation of her biological imperative.  The desire to educate or support oneself was not a noble effort, but an indication of hormonal deficiency.  Either one was a "womanly" woman, whose happy ovaries generated a healthy maternal urge; or an unnatural "mannish" female, whose natural instincts had been perverted into a craving for "public applause, an audience, excitement, notoriety" (Linton, "Revolt" 201).  Lacking the warm love and validation provided by a husband and children, such failed women could only hope to be "lecturers, professors, entitled to wear gowns and hoods, and put letters after their names" (Linton, "Revolt" 201).  They are more to be pitied than despised, since their personal ambition exposes their deficiency of womanly grace and force.
Antifeminists were not anti-woman, by any means–as long as one accepted their rather narrow definition of the term.  A True Woman was a highly moral, impeccably chaste, invariably noble creature, who devoted herself selflessly to her husband and family.  The domestic sphere was her glory and her protection, and she would leave it only on missions of charity, in order to extend
its benefits to those less fortunate than she.  She was a fragile being, but not a weak one; although unnatural activities such as education would rob her of her strength, a woman who lived according to God and nature–whose priorities were centered on her own biology–could draw upon her own huge reservoirs of moral and spiritual power.  This might explain how a nineteenth-century woman managed labors which would daunt even the most aerobically fit twentieth-century matron:  shopping at a bewildering variety of stores (and a thrifty housewife would make it a point of pride to discover the establishments which offered the best value that day), doing the necessary baking, canning and preserving (with fruits and vegetables grown in her own garden), dressing slaughtered meat, churning butter, laundering (a chore which involved sorting, carrying buckets of hot water, scrubbing clothing on a washboard, and ironing), floor-scrubbing and sweeping, rug-beating, furniture-dusting, dish washing, bed-making, window-washing, sewing and mending clothing and undergarments, knitting scarves and socks–assuming, that is, she had put the children to bed and had no invalids to nurse.  The wealthiest of women could afford the battalions of servants needed to perform such tasks (and overseeing servants is in itself a fairly exhausting activity, requiring interviews, hiring, firing, upholding high moral standards, planning, and ceaseless supervision); most middle-class housewives struggled to maintain the illusion of a grand establishment with a single housemaid and a cook; the less fortunate were left with no resources except their own two hands. Yet, while such an extraordinary level of activity might be expected to kill a physically frail creature, Truly Womanly women apparently drew strength from their household devotions:  ironically, managing such a grueling regimen was seen not as evidence of innate female vigor, but as proof that they were doing the work for which they were best suited.  Indeed, such work was perceived as actually beneficial to women because it was a natural, womanly occupation.  Woman's natural place in society was the defining criterion.  Intellectual exertion was deadly because it was outside women's natural ability.  Such unnatural activities as formal education, and the manly activities to which it would lead (earning money or taking part in political action) were the real threat.  Such endeavors would take the woman out of the domestic sphere, away from home:  the source of her joy and fulfillment and the site of whatever power she had managed to obtain.
Feminists who had encountered all this supposed joy and fulfillment first-hand were a trifle skeptical, however.  Annie Denton Cridge presents a more realistic portrait of domestic bliss and its effect on the housebound spouse.  Marsian men tend to be "very pale, and somewhat nervous" (3) "stoop-shouldered .... weak and complaining," "pale and haggard" (4),"poor, sickly" (7) "very feeble ... suffering from dyspepsia" (6) and a host of other ills.  Their fragile state is not due to excessive study, however; like American women, Marsian men are discouraged from attempting higher education or entering the business world.  Their poor health is a direct result of their crushing domestic work-load:  their "long and weary battling with the cares of the household" (4).  The poorer Marsian male must arise at dawn in order to tend to the fire and prepare breakfast.  He must hurry, hurry, hurry, trying to get as much as possible accomplished before the baby wakes--for of course he then must continue his chores "with baby in his arms, carrying it around with him" as he "rake[s] the fire, frie[s] the meat, and set[s] the table for breakfast” (4).  At some point during all this frenzy of activity, he must see that his older children are washed and dressed.  No wonder his appetite is gone as, "pale and nervous," he finally sits down to his meal, still holding the baby in his arms.  Throughout all of this, his wife has sat "quietly and composedly" (4) drinking her morning coffee and reading the morning paper, "apparently oblivious of the trials of her poor husband, and of all he had to endure in connection with his household cares" (4-5).  His day has only just begun, however.  When his wife leaves for work, he must do the laundry while the baby sleeps, rocking the cradle and washing at the same time.  He must then perform his daily chores, "running and hurrying here and there about the house; while in his poor, disturbed mind revolve[s] the thought of the sewing that ought to be done, and only his own hands to do it" (5).  After dinner, the husband sits late into the night, "darning stockings and mending the children's clothes after the hard day's washing."  Unfortunately, the clothesline breaks and drops the clothes he has so painfully washed into the mud of the yard; "the poor man [has] a terrible time rinsing some and washing others over again" (5).  Finally, he soaks the laundry in tubs filled "with water he had brought from a square distant" (5-6).  Throughout all of this, his wife "in comfortable slippers" (6) sits reading by the fire.
Things are not much better in the homes of the wealthy.  Upper-class gentleman-housekeepers, just as "pale and unhappy" as their poorer brothers, do the best they can to manage their household, but the result is a round of "bad coffee, burned meat, and heavy biscuits."  The lady of the house chastises her husband, telling him he "ought to attend to things better" (6).  Yet good help is hard to come by, even on Mars; too delicate and too uneducated to direct his domestic staff properly, the husband is frequently terrified of his own servants, "crushed and held by his help."  If anything, the level of anxiety increases with the number of servants that are kept; they bring him no relief, but only trouble:  "trouble about washing, trouble about ironing, trouble about children; there was waste, there was thieving" (7).
Cridge argues that the dismal situation of these men has nothing to do with supposedly natural inferiority.  The "beautiful, noble" (19) Marsian women would have been in exactly the same degraded condition had they been "trained and educated as these degraded men,–without a motive in life, limited in education and culture, shut out of every path to honor or emolument, and reduced to the condition of paupers on the bounty of the opposite sex" (19).  Men's lack of education has excluded them from "nearly all avenues to pecuniary independence."  No wonder that marriage is "necessarily their highest ambition," for there is "no other way for them to obtain wealth or a home."  Their only hope is to devote "all their powers to the one grand object of catching a woman with money" (19).  Ultimately, both spouses can suffer from such arrangements, since women are frequently "trapped into marriage by one of these silly, worthless men, who [has] learned well the arts and schemes of wife-catching" (19-20).
Even a woman burdened with such a mate, however, can find some consolation in her work, which is bound to be far more manageable, far more lucrative, and infinitely more satisfying than his.  Women are the movers and shakers on Mars–and are clearly in a position to keep things that way.  They hold all legal and political power, and "every office of honor and emolument"; they control "all colleges and literary institutions," which "with very few exceptions," have been "built for women, and only open to women" (16).  Their physical appearance reflects their physical and intellectual freedom:  healthy, happy, relaxed, and powerful, they are "almost divine" (16).  Students, professors, lawyers, judges, and jurors, they can be found in the "lecture-room and the pulpit, the house of representatives and the senate-chamber,–yea, everywhere" (16-17).  In a world in which women determine their own "natural" abilities, it seems as if "Nature had intended–in this part of the world at least–that woman, and only woman, should legislate and govern; and that here, if nowhere else, woman should be superior to man" (17).
Petticotian arrangements, however, suggest that female superiority has not worked out particularly well there.  In order to show the unnaturalness of male domesticity, Wood depicts heshes not as housebound drudges--no man is capable of running a house or rearing children properly--but as vacuous, bubbleheaded flirts.  In order to attract beaux, heshes "rub villainous snuff on their gums, chew fatty and resinous substances, paint their faces," and "eat arsenic for the complexion" (177).  Thanks to technology, they have the leisure to do so:  even degraded males remain good with machinery.  In order to be able to devote themselves "to lives of voluptuous ease and fashion," they have invented "curious appliances and machines for domestic use, which reduced their tasks materially."  Heshes with children are still housebound, but the "thousands who had no babes to watch over" now "pass half their time in reading novels, thrumming insipid music, studying the latest styles of trains, or acquiring the fascinating art of flirting" (171).  If men are not permitted to be men, Wood suggests, they will be as frivolous and flighty–and promiscuous–as women.  Indeed, the problem of heshe promiscuity is so great that fairly draconian laws regarding male morality have been enacted.  Males must testify as to the state of their chastity each year.  Those heshes found guilty of perjury are beheaded; those who confess openly to a fallen state are immediately sent to a brothel.
There is a lively trade in such places, for shehes have adapted "all the vices and wickedness of men" (176) along with their trousers.  In addition to whoring, Petticotian females drink, gamble, smoke, chew tobacco, and take snuff; they indulge in "racing, prize fighting, stocks, and other costly iniquities" (176)  Yet although they have abandoned their womanly natures, they have managed to retain such "womanish" characteristics as jealousy, envy, backbiting and greed.  Physically, they are caricatures of the nineteenth-century feminists:  "tall, angular, ugly-faced" (33), prematurely gray, bitter, and man-hating.  Their unnatural way of life has marred them physically; their mannish behavior has stripped them of whatever feminine charm they might have once possessed.  It has marred them ethically as well–their abandonment of female morality leads them to participate in such unladylike activities as murder, treason, and perjury.  A number are mentally crippled as well:  General Pantaletta, the title character, is an ugly androgyne who has been driven nearly mad by her consuming ambition.   As a result, she behaves irrationally, and her speech frequently deteriorates into incoherent, rambling, Lady Macbeth-like soliloquies.
To be sure, there are a number of True Women left in Petticotia who manage to withstand their conditioning; all they need is a Real Man to set them straight.  The American visitor is just such a type:  even his low-cut gown, wig, petticoat, and falsies cannot obscure his virility (although perhaps the fact that he has managed to retain his moustache helps somewhat).  His masculinity strikes a responsive feminine chord in the young President, who ultimately repudiates her rank and power in favor of docile submission:  "I lay my presidency--all that I possess of honors or riches–at your feet," she cries.  "Share them with your devoted slave and speak but one kind word that her pain may be turned to joy … I love you, love you–yes adore you" (89).  Wood's philosophy is readily apparent:  women only think they want public lives because they have not met the right man; once they do, conditioning is no match for biology.  The aviator realizes this, forgives the president her unnatural (and unwanted) position of political power, and lauds her essential being as the quintessence of his own version of the domestic ideal:  "a sweet tempered, laughing-eyed little woman, whose face is full of intelligence and refinement," who "steps out in the hallway and meets the loving eyes of him for whom her heart beats first and last" (141).
Such an ideal was seen as positive:  even the staunchest feminist found it difficult to criticize the "womanly" woman whose high moral standards ensured her modesty and chastity, and whose maternal instincts were the source of her noble selflessness and gentleness.  A model of grace, decorum, and gentility, she functioned as a moral exemplar to all who were fortunate enough to enter her sphere.  Yet, feminists such as Cridge argued, were not her virtues the best argument for female suffrage?  Surely such a paragon would have a decidedly positive influence on worldly, corrupt males?
Cridge's depiction of Marsian social arrangements suggests that female government might improve things anywhere–precisely because women are endowed with such strong moral force.  Her paragons of womanhood do not drink or smoke, and while they may not be particularly helpful around the house, no instances of husband or child-beating are reported.  Women are the soul of chivalry; they courteously open doors and give up train seats to the weaker sex–and invariably rise when a male enters the room.  They occupy themselves with refined pursuits, and are respectable and civic-minded.  Their leisure time is devoted to self-improvement, or to their spouses and families:  women escort their gentlemen to church or to the theater, perhaps take them to an "ice-cream saloon" (18) for refreshment, and gallantly see them "safely home" (18) afterwards (although, in this community of order and decency, one wonders what the men are being kept safe from).  The matriarchal society of Mars certainly appears to be better run than its terrestrial patriarchal counterpart.
Indeed, the only real shortcoming of Marsian women is their myopic inattention to their husbands' oppression.  Even this, however, is eventually overcome by the innate female sense of fair play, and a willingness to blur or even dissolve the restrictions of separate spheres.  First, women invent machines "that [can] cook, wash, and iron for hundreds of people at once" (9), eliminating all heavy labor, and greatly easing their husbands' domestic burdens.  In Petticotia, such machinery resulted in lazy, bored, flirtatious male belles; on Mars, however, the benefits of female technology are directed toward a higher goal.  Marsian men use their surplus time and energy to organize a Man's Rights movement.  Their arguments are so persuasive and their evidence so compelling that women are speedily won over to the cause.  Marsian females are not so jealous of their power that they will refuse to share it; instead, they demonstrate "a profound respect for the rights of man, and a sincere desire that man should enjoy every right equally with themselves" (24).
 Anti-feminists, however, had a rebuttal for such thinking.  A true woman effected social change from within her proper sphere:  the home.  A wife could wish no more than to be a moral and spiritual exemplar to her husband and children.  Any other arrangement was doomed–as antifeminist tracts were quick to point out.  Wood, for example, portrays non-domestic women as monstrous, selfish freaks, who have abandoned not only their husbands and families, but their moral imperative as well.  No wonder Petticotia has become ethically, economically, and politically bankrupt under the rule of women.  The shehes, after all, have defied nature and God by refusing to be meek and submissive, and have degenerated into jealous, petty viragos, driven by emotion.  Religion has become a sham:  there is indeed "a fashionable sort of gewgaw which passes for public worship, but it is rather a concert in which the choir displays its culture, the clergywoman her gorgeous vestments, and imbecile man the thing he once ridiculed, namely, a bonnet" (171).  The  Bible, along with all history and literature, has been rewritten to suit the times and justify female rul Financially, the country is at the point of collapse; the entire economy is based upon worthless paper money that citizens will not use and outsiders are beginning to suspect.  The government is impossibly corrupt, and, racked with political infighting and partisan struggle, teeters on the brink of revolution.  Without the guiding presence of Real Men, and the moral influence of True Women, the situation is hopeless.  Order will be restored in Petticotia only when the natural  order of separate spheres is restored also.  Fortunately, the American aviator manages to escape, and plans just such a restoration.
Ultimately, both Man's Rights and Pantaletta close with what their authors see as a return to a natural order, although their perceptions of exactly what constitutes "natural" are diametrically opposed.  Cridge's negative exemplar argues that a natural balance can exist only when society eliminates gender division and advances to egalitarian social arrangements, while Wood's topsy-turvy novel closes with the replacement of an "unnatural" gynocentric hierarchy with a "natural" androcentric one. Cridge's Man's Rights demonstrates the unfairness of such arrangements, and offers a tantalizing view of a world in which femininity is a powerful force for good, a gentle strength directed away from control, toward nurture, peaceful coexistence, and egalitarian harmony.  Wood's Pantaletta presents a world view in which woman can only be fulfilled when she seeks and gains the protection of a strong male (although, ironically, her dogged defense of  customary arrangements might have inadvertently subverted its own agenda:  although she would probably have been horrified by the notion, some women might well have read her powerful women as an intriguing alternative to the nineteenth-century status quo; others might have considered that the pathetic situation of males trapped in the domestic sphere in no way enhances its appeal).  Ultimately, however, both texts reflect the philosophical and social divisions which characterized nineteenth-century female experience, and, many might argue, are still being debated even today.