Ruptures in Separate Spheres: Deconstruction of Cross-Gender Solidarity in George Noyes Miller's The Strike of a Sex and Annie Denton Cridge's Man's Rights

This article examines George Noyes Miller's The Strike of a Sex (1891) and Annie Denton Cridge's Man's Rights (1870) as dystopias attempting to depict the ideal of human equality achieved through cross-gender solidarity. The novels' inconsistencies are seen as resulting from an erosion of generic patterns, rhetorical strategies, and stereotypical characterizations as the authors seek to express new sentiments in a cultural ambience still governed by binary thinking and well-established beliefs. The result of the juxtaposition of the fossilized conventions and advanced, idealistic approaches produces a rudimentary form of dialogism where crucial roles are played by the imagery of separate spheres and the concept of boundary crossing, while the notion of cross-gender solidarity becomes the textual dominant of both works.