Zona Gale's Friendship Village: Expanding the Scope of Feminist Fabulation and Brodening the Boundaries of Speculative Fiction (Critical Essay‪)‬

While many writers in the canon of mainstream U.S. literature consider social activism and literary aestheticism to be mutually exclusive, progressive era author and feminist Zona Gale saw them as mutually constructive. In her essay "The Novel and the Spirit," first published in the October 1922 issue of Yale Review and reprinted in her 1928 collection Portage, Wisconsin, and other Essays, she outlined her hope for the future of American literature: "It is a great moment in any art when the artist transfers his attention from the extension of his method to the extension of his material" (135). Contrary to prevailing views, she did not believe that literary works were artistically damaged or aesthetically compromised by engaging societal concerns. Instead, as Deborah Williams has written, "ignoring social issues, in Gale's formulation, becomes detrimental to the making of art" (Not 49). Given Gale's views on writing, it is surprising that neither past nor present critics have connected her with either speculative fiction or feminist fabulation. In keeping with the cultural aim of literary speculation, she believed that writers ought not to distance themselves from social, political or economic events, but should embrace them. In her mind, novelists, poets and playwrights had not just a right but rather a duty to examine current societal practices, critique them and offer better alternatives. Likewise, echoing the goal of feminist fabulation, Gale was interested in undermining patriarchal practices and empowering women. In both her essays and speeches and her numerous novels and poems, she was one of the leading voices for feminism during the early twentieth century.