It Beats the Shakers

It Beats the Shakers, or, A New Tune (1905) is a feminist, anti-Shaker satire by British novelist Anna D.
Evans, based around a fictional community of Shakers.[1]

In It Beats the Shakers, the birth of daughters is shown as bringing little joy; in response, supernatural
powers are shown as only allowing men to be born on Earth. Once this all-male generation hits biological
maturity, the same supernatural powers bring the men women from Venus to act as handmaids, wives and
companions.[2]

The men abuse their wives through neglect, adultery and exploitation. They are forced to do domestic
labor, unpaid work in family businesses, and take the full financial burden for household care. In disgust,
the women return to Venus with their daughters and leave the Earth a solely male planet. The novel then
concluded apocalyptically with the Day of Judgement and the establishment of a New Jerusalem on Earth
which is inclusive of women.[3]

Analysis
It Beats the Shakers criticizes the Shaker belief in celibacy and separate spheres for women, arguing that
only through a radical change will men no longer treat their wives as their chattel. According to Nan
Albinski, Evans' view is that while separate spheres may offer "a healthy alternative for women", "it is too
limited to be fully effective. If adopted less than universally, men outside the communities will continue to
preach self-sacrifice and subordination to the women around them".[3] If adopted universally, it would
bring about the end of humanity.[3]

Influences
Many contemporaries of Evans (such as Eva Wilder Brodhead in Diana's Livery, 1861) wrote critical
novels on the nascent Shakers, focusing on the role of women in the movement, although Evans goes
further than them in her criticism of the movement.[3] Evans claims she was unaware of her contemporaries'
interest in the movement.[1]

References
1. Signs (https://books.google.com/books?id=tLxu7bgzrAoC). Chicago, University of Chicago
Press. 1975. p. 833.
2. Lewes, Darby (1995). Dream Revisionaries: Gender and Genre in Women's Utopian Fiction,
1870-1920 (https://books.google.com/books?id=cjVaAAAAMAAJ). University of Alabama
Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-8173-0795-0.
3. Albinski, Nan Bowman. "Utopia Reconsidered: Women Novelists and Nineteenth-Century
Utopian Visions" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3174114). Signs, vol. 13, no. 4, 1988, pp. 830–
834. JSTOR.
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