Looking Backward

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888) is a utopian science-fiction novel by Edward Bellamy. In 1887, Bellamy was a relatively unknown journalist and author from Massachusetts. However, after Looking Backward was published in 1888, he became famous. The novel is now considered the second best-selling American 19th-century novel after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). Like Stowe’s novel, it owed its popularity to an urgent call for social change—in this case, labor reform. The novel follows Julian West, who falls asleep in 1887 amid a series of labor riots and wakes up in the year 2000 to an idealized socialist society. Despite being more intellectual experiment than dramatic narrative, the novel nonetheless captured the imagination of the public. Looking Backward was the most popular of the century’s many utopian novels; it pushed public opinion and even national policy left on the political spectrum, and it led to the founding of many socialist communes and “Bellamy Clubs” across the country. Bellamy followed up the novel with a sequel, Equality, in 1897, and this work dealt mainly with women’s oppressed status in 19th-century America.

This guide uses the Oxford University Press paperback, which was reissued in 2009.

Content Warning: The novel harbors offensive ideas about gender and race. It uses dated language to describe people of color and assumes bio-essential differences between men and women in its description of a utopian society. It describes a utopian society in which men hold all major leadership positions, reinforcing a patriarchal view of society. It also suggests that women are romantically interchangeable. It presents a utopian society that has a specific religious leaning and does not favor religious pluralism. It advocates for a utopian society that is patriarchal, misogynistic, trans-exclusive, racist, ableist, imperialistic, heteronormative and implicitly anti-gay, and classist. The novel advocates for a brand of nationalism. It contains references to death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Julian West is a wealthy young man in 1887. He is engaged to a wealthy young woman named Edith Bartlett and is planning to marry her as soon as their new house is built. However, frequent labor strikes keep delaying the construction of the house, and West is a typical aristocrat of his time; he thinks he is superior to the working class and resents their demands for a better quality of life. The narrator, a more enlightened Julian West of the future, illustrates the wealth gap of the 19th century by describing a coach where the upper classes, obsessed with social status, are pulled by the lower classes, who care only about survival.

Because West has insomnia, he sometimes sleeps underground in a sealed room; a mesmerist named Dr. Pillsbury hypnotizes him, and West’s servant, Sawyer, revives him the next morning. Yet one evening, West’s home is destroyed by a fire, and West is trapped in a trance underground and is presumed to be dead. He wakes up 113 years later, in the year 2000, after Dr. Leete discovers West’s perfectly preserved body while preparing to build a new laboratory. After some initial skepticism, West believes Dr. Leete’s story about his 113-year sleep. He asks his host, Dr. Leete, many questions about Boston in the year 2000 and learns the United States solved many of his time’s social ills while he was asleep. Dr. Leete is curious about the 19th century, and they compare the socialist utopia of the present to the evils of individualism and capitalism in the 19th century.

Dr. Leete explains that when corporations formed monopolies of all the major industries in the country, the United States government nationalized them. Now all citizens work for the state. Citizens all receive a college education, are mustered into the industrial army at age 21, work in common labor for three years, then choose their profession. Then everyone is invited to retire at the age of 45. Regardless of each person’s capacity, everyone puts in the same amount of effort at their job and receives the same portion of the country’s wealth, which is issued in the form of a “credit card” every year. The system completely eliminated class struggle, crime, war, hunger, and other social ills. Each day, West spends time with either Dr. Leete or his daughter, Edith Leete, and learns about the Boston of the future while comparing it to the Boston of his own time. He shares breakfast and dinner with Dr. Leete, Edith, and Mrs. Leete, and then stays up late with Dr. Leete discussing the design of the utopia.

On the morning of his second day in the year 2000, West wakes up overwhelmed by the shock of his time travel. He walks through Boston in a daze before returning to the Leetes’ home and being comforted by Edith. That afternoon, Edith takes West to see one of the distribution centers, a department store where everyone acquires goods with their credit allowance. Edith places an order, which is delivered to a central warehouse by pneumatic tube, where a clerk fills the order and delivers it, via pneumatic tube, to the Leetes’ home. Later, Edith shows West how to use the telephone wire to listen to that day’s music program in the house. That evening, Dr. Leete and West have a long discussion, because West has difficulty understanding how an industry works without wages. Dr. Leete explains that industry is modeled after the military and everyone puts full effort into their work for the glory of the nation. He emphasizes that the people of the 20th-century share a common goal, to make life better for all humanity, and that includes taking care of people with disabilities and illnesses.

On West’s third day, they discuss world politics over breakfast. Most of the world has since adopted the utopian government, and so there are no longer significant international disputes. Even immigration and emigration have become free and easy. For dinner, the Leetes go to a public dining house, which impresses West for its grandeur. West witnesses firsthand a waiter who seems to be content in what West believes to be “menial” work, a concept that is, according to Dr. Leete, no longer relevant. Dr. Leete convinces West that when everyone works toward a common goal rather than personal luxury, much is possible without sacrificing freedom. Dr. Leete expresses outrage at how uncaring the wealthy of the 19th century were toward the people who needed the most help. After dinner, they visit a public library, and West learns why the 20th century was also a renaissance for the arts and letters.

On his fourth day, West visits the central warehouse. On the way home, he asks Dr. Leete many questions about the structure of the government. He learns that the states have been demolished in favor of a centralized system that basically runs itself, since there are no longer any needs for new laws or their enforcement. Government officials are elected only by individuals who have aged out of the industrial army. They must first rise within the army’s ranks; once they retire from the highest position within the army for five years, they become a candidate to become the President, or the general-in-chief. On his fifth day, West learns about the legal system. There are no more prisons because, without money or ignorance, most crime has been eliminated. If anyone commits a crime now, they are considered ill and treated in hospitals. Because social class has been eliminated, nobody lies anymore, so trials are simple affairs. There are no more lawyers; the President appoints recently retired workers as judges. That afternoon, Edith takes West to the underground chamber where they found him, and West discovers he no longer mourns his past and his feelings for Edith Bartlett faded.

On his sixth day, Dr. Leete takes West on a tour of the universities, and he explains that now everyone receives a college-level education because, if they didn’t, inequalities between people would arise. West also notes the dedication to fitness and health among the population and learns mental illness and death by suicide no longer exist. That night, Dr. Leete explains how the utopia is paid for by describing the ways that the 19th-century economy, so full of shortsightedness and competition, was wasteful. On his seventh day, West learns reform did not occur until the labor movements of the 19th century shifted their rhetoric. A new political party, called the national party, won political power based on the premise that labor reform was for the benefit of all, not just the working class. He asks Dr. Leete about women in the new world; Dr. Leete explains that women also participate in the industrial army (to a much lesser extent than men). Because women are no longer financially dependent on men, all marriages are based on love.

The next day is a Sunday, and the Leetes listen to a sermon over the telephone wire; the sermon is about Julian West. The preacher sermonizes that human nature is good as long as conditions of life are not as bad as they were in the 19th century. The sermon sends West into sadness because he realizes he is in love with Edith Leete. He fears she thinks him backward and morally bankrupt. When West confesses his love to Edith, she reciprocates, and the Leetes reveal Edith is actually the great granddaughter of West’s fiancé in the 19th century. In fact, she was named after Edith Bartlett. At the end of the novel, West wakes up in the 19th century, as if nothing happened. He walks through 1887 Boston and observes the terrible conditions, the inequalities, and the cold-heartedness of the wealthy. He breaks down into tears. Then he wakes up in the year 2000 and realizes it was only a nightmare.