Abstract

At the end of the 19 th century in the US utopian tradition there are some images of societies led by women that describe a social order based on the love bonding mother and child. If read as «fictions of the possibility» as Hans Blumenberg suggests, these representations can be interpreted as critical political stance against women’s subordination based on the idea that women are «fit» for public life and political charges. Reinterpreting the «republican motherhood», these utopias ask for recognition for full women’s emancipation developing the idea that matriarchate guarantees the convergence between individual rights and social cooperation better than men’s political order.