Mizora

Key takeaways

Mizora belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mizora to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mizora from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mizora is a feminist science fiction utopian novel by Mary E. Bradley Lane, first published in 1880–81, when it was serialized in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper. It appeared in book form in 1890. Mizora is "the first portrait of an all-female, self-sufficient society," and "the first feminist technological Utopia." The book's full title is Mizora: A Prophecy: A Mss. Found Among the Private Papers of Princess Vera Zarovitch: Being a True and Faithful Account of her Journey to the Interior of the Earth, with a Careful Description of the Country and its Inhabitants, their Customs, Manners, and Government.

Publication history and influences Mizora was part of the wave of utopian and dystopian fiction that was published in the later decades of the nineteenth century. The novel is "the second known feminist utopian novel written by a woman," after Man's Rights (1870) by Annie Denton Cridge. The concept of an all-female society dates back at least to the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology — though the Amazons still needed men for procreation. In Lane's Mizora, reproduction is by parthenogenesis. Mizora also belongs to the class of hollow Earth literature. The second edition of Mizora appeared in 1975, and it was re-released in 1999 by the University of Nebraska Press. Little is known of the author; Mrs. Lane did not want her husband to find out she was writing about the world being better off without men.

Plot synopsis The book depicts an all-female "utopia" existing within the Earth. The Mizorans practice eugenics; all of them are blonde "Aryans," who disdain people of darker skin. Their society is composed of blonde women and daughters. In its ancient history, the land was ruled by a military general elected president (a version of Ulysses Grant). When the general ran for a third term (as Grant was urged to do in 1880), the society of Mizora descended into chaos. Eventually a new all-female social order arose in Mizora. The last men were "eliminated" — though it is not clear whether they were overtly killed or left to die out. It is said that men are more forgotten than hated. The first-person narrator, Vera Zarovitch, is a young political fugitive who has fallen foul of the Czarist regime and been sentenced to exile in Siberia. She escapes northward into the Arctic, where her kayak is swept over a vast waterfall to Mizora. She spends fifteen years there, learning the ways of the culture; at the end of that time she longs to return to her husband and child, and teach her own society what she has learned. Although Vera ultimately manages to return to her own society, her husband and son are dead, and a Mizoran friend also dies. Vera is left only with the hope that future generations will be better off, "through the promises of universal education and the deeply questionable practice of eugenics". As a utopian novel, the book devotes some time to the futuristic technology such as "videophones." The Mizorans can make rain by discharging electricity into the air. Though Mizora has no domestic animals, its women eat chemically prepared artificial meat — an innovation that is only under development in the early twenty-first century.

Social commentary and legacies The novel makes frequent commentary on gender and race. Lane plays with the customs and conventions of her own society, as utopian writers normally do. In Mizora, a narrow waist is considered a "disgusting deformity" — reversing the preference of Lane's own time for tightly-corseted women. It also refers to political repression in contemporary Russia, and the suppression of the Polish revolt of 1863. Lane's book anticipates some of the features of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous Herland by three decades. It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, Mrs. George Corbett's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889), and Unveiling a Parallel (1893) by collaborators Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant. Simultaneously, some male utopian writers published works that involve feminist issues and questions of gender roles; Charles Bellamy's An Experiment in Marriage (1889) and Linn Boyd Porter's Speaking of Ellen (1890) are examples.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mizora

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mizora claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mizora before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mizora ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mizora

In research: Mizora appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mizora in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mizora is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1880s English-language novels, 1881 American novels, 1881 science fiction novels, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mizora outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Mizora in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mizora means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mizora out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mizora in simple terms?

Mizora is a feminist science fiction utopian novel by Mary E. Bradley Lane, first published in 1880–81, when it was serialized in the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper.

Why does Mizora matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mizora?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mizora.