SOURCE: "Frances Wright and the Second Utopia," in Restless Angels: The Friendship of Six Victorian Women. Ohio University Press, 1983, pp. 23-62

In the following excerpt, Heineman discusses Frances Wright's correspondence concerning the establishment of Nashoba, a colony intended to serve as a model of emancipation and equality.

We have seen that among early peoples the quite normal man is warrior and hunter, and the quite normal woman house-wife and worker-round-the-house; and it is quite conceivable that if no intermediate types had arisen, human society might have remained stationary in these simple occupations. But when types of men began to appear who had no taste for war and slaughter—men, perhaps, of a more gentle or feminine disposition; or when types of women arose who chafed at the slavery of the house, and longed for the open field of adventure and activity—women, in fact, of a more masculine...