Margaret Dunmore; or, A Socialist Home

Clapperton’s little known 1888 novel is, essentially, a socialist treatise. The title character, a wealthy woman, leads a predominantly female group in forming a “socialist home”--an early experiment in equal, communal living. The home, called La Maison, features collaborative parenting, a focus on progressive early childhood education, and gender equality in the home’s division of labor. Little is known about Clapperton, but Margaret Dunmore seems to be her only novel. Otherwise, Clapperton, a social theorist, wrote mainly political pamphlets and treatises regarding similar themes as the novel, including socialism and communal living. In one pamphlet, Scientific Meliorism, Clapperton argues that individuals should make small steps towards a utopian reality, just as Margaret and her companions do by starting one socialist home in the novel. The novel also contains strong feminist themes, something else which reflects Clapperton’s non-fiction work. In the beginning, Margaret encourages her friend Vera, a subversive, perhaps “New Woman” figure, to evade marriage with a misogynistic man.

Lehigh University Catalog Record: https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/Record/10765794

A version of this text has been digitized and is available through the Internet Archive.