NEWS FROM NOWHERE (1890)

William Morris

Utopia could be an imaginary place or government in which political and social

perfection has been reached in the material world as opposed to some spiritual
afterlife as discussed in the Bible.

In literature, the characters of such utopias are typically clean, virtuous, healthy and
happy. The utopian society is one that has cured all social ills.

In Greek, eu + topos means “good” and “place”.

Utopia would suggest the search for a perfect society and an impossible one.

Utopian literature is a term/genre for any text that presents the reader with (or
explores the idea of) a perfect society in the physical world, as opposed to a perfect
society existing in an afterlife.

Critics establish that the first literary utopia was Plato’s ideal commonwealth in the
Republic, in which a group of debating philosophers seeking to define justice end up
as a mental exercise creating a hypothetical perfect polis, or self-governing city of
about 8.000 citizens.

In this utopian society, philosophers are the rulers, but goods and women are
communally owned, and slavery is taken for granted. Artists, actors, and poets are
largely exiled.

Sir Thomas More’s Utopia opened a genre in 1516 and his name for the imaginary
kingdom became the term used in reference to the genre more generally. William
Morris’s News from Nowhere or H. G. Wells’s A Modern Utopia (1905) are two
important examples of utopian literature.

● News from Nowhere by William Morris (1890) tells a story of an

Englishman of 1890 that wakes up to find himself in a post-revolutionary and
post-industrial 21th Century England.

This new and ideal country is organized on an ideal communism with no money, no
private property and perfect equality. Labour is shared equally and is considered a
pleasure rather than a necessary tool. In some way, industrialism and science has
been abandoned in favour of low-tech crafts.

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The main character in the text is named “Guest” and he soon learn that:
1. Money has to be abolished.
2. Craftwork has pushed aside ‘wage slavery’.
3. Contract of marriage have been replaced by flexible bonds of affection.
4. Parliamentary democracy has given way to informal patterns of cooperation.

Human beings use to fall too quickly from hope and idealism to cynicism and
despair, a fall that signals our transition from innocence to death. The cynical attitude
is the resort of those who are too lazy to struggle for more growth. Some studies
regarding the critical approach to News from Nowhere state that this work would
provide the antidote; it would inspire us to strive towards the restoration of paradise.

Morris’s generation responded to the pessimism of the age by embracing art over
religion.He advocates that we all must live our lives as artists. This is the final
conclusion of his novel.

Five of Morris’s envisioned transformations which we find incredible to realize are:

1. The idea of fellowship replacing self-interest. Self-sacrifice for the good of the
community instead of the practice to self-assertion of the individual.
2. Who can believe that healthy, beautiful people will replace our corrupt, dirty,
social order?
3. That the sunshine will change our dreary weather?
4. That the clean fish will renew to our polluted rivers?
5. That good people will enjoy working without the rewards that distinguish
workers from loafers?

He challenges us to change the world by starting with the most profound of

philosophical questions: What it be like to live in heaven, to live a heavenly life on
earth?

He also dares us to consider this as a practical question that every responsible adult
should pursue rather than dismiss as a childish dream.

It is considered that he wrote News from Nowhere as a revolutionary response to

this fundamental question about the way we live our lives.

The subtext of Morris’s narrative romance is not so much whether or not a heavenly
utopia could ever become a reality. Morris is horrified that we no longer even wish for
it to happen.

In a lecture on ‘How I become a Socialist’, Morris explains how the capitalist system
has ‘reduced the workman to such a skinny and pitiful existence, that he scarcely
knows how to frame a desire for any life much better.

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He finds that art provides the answer. The first and last chapters of News from
Nowhere frame the desire for this utopian ideal, as the narrator’s friend repeats his
anxious wish to envision ‘what would happen on the Morrow of the Revolution’: ‘If I
could but see a day of it, if I could but see it’. By the last chapter, his despair has
turned to an affirmation of hope: ‘Yes, surely! and if others can see it as I have seen
it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream’.

The transformation is achieved through a complex dream-vision where the reader is

unsure who is speaking from the beginning through to the end.

Morris uses multiple levels of narrative as art of his utopian strategy: the story of this
dream-vision is a story to be passed from friend to friend, each spreading the world
from one another. Dream-visions were a popular Medieval convention for story-
telling, but Morris uses his dream-vision by providing psychological explanations for
such supernatural elements.

News from Nowhere is not an escapist utopian fantasy, but a political act.

● The Socialist League was one of several early socialist groups which arose
in Great Britain during the 1880s. Morris and other people founded the
Socialist League in Great Britain (they had political ideas about how english
society could be)

The League was an eclectic group of people (socialist and anarchism) who focused
on education and outreach as the most effective means to social league.

In its four or five years of greatest activity, the Socialist League sponsored
thousands of lectures, open-air meetings, and other educational efforts. It distributed
many thousand pamphlets, leaflets, newspapers and books, and facilitated literature
whose audience reached well into the next century.

Utopía: a place, state, or condition that is ideally perfect in respect of politics, laws,
customs, and conditions.
This does not mean that the people are perfect, but the system is perfect.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A UTOPIAN SOCIETY

- Information, independent though, and freedom are promoted.
- Citizens are truly free to think independently.
- Citizens have no fear of the outside world.
- Citizens live in a harmonious state and the natural world is embraced.
- The society evolves with change to make a perfect utopian world.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS IN UTOPIAN WORKS:

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 - Money does not exist and citizens only work for pleasure (News from
Nowhere)
- Governing ideas: Society is controlled by citizens in a largely individualist,
communal, social and sometimes libertarian “government”.
- Technology: in some cases, technology enhances the human living
experience and makes human life easier and more convenient. Other ideas
propose that technology represents a gap between humankind and nature.
- Ecological ideas: back to nature, humans live harmoniously with nature and
reverse the effects of industrialization.
- Philosophical/religious ideas: society believes in a common religious
philosophy (the biblical garden of Eden).

The Utopian hero/heroine can be an insider who works to promote the ideals of
society.
●He/she questions the existing social and political systems with the aim to bring
positive change.
●He/she believes or feels that the society in which he or she lives is always getting
better.
• He/She helps the audience recognize the positive aspects of the utopian
world through his or her perspective.
● He/She can also be an outsider who must learn about this new society.

Dystopia / Anti-utopia: A dystopia is an imagined universe in which oppressive

societal control or an apocalypse has created a world in which the conditions of life
are miserable, characterized by human misery, poverty, oppression, violence,
disease, and/or pollution.

Anti-utopias appear to be utopian or were intended to be so, but a fatal flaw or other
factor has destroyed or twisted the intended utopian world or concept.

Through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, authors make a criticism about a

current trend, societal norm, or political system through their dystopias / anti-utopias.
Characteristics:
- Propaganda is used to control society
- Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted.
- Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance.
- Citizens fear the outside world.
- Citizens live in a dehumanized state.
- The natural world is banished
- Citizens conform to uniform expectations.
- The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.
The last decade from the 1890’s was crucial for the British society, at least for
politics. Politics plays an important role in British culture and society.

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At the end of the 19th century we find the decline of Victorian values.

Morris proposed an ideal society with no money, no private property and perfect
equality.