Moving The Mountain (novel) - Eugenics and Social Control

Eugenics and Social Control

In Moving the Mountain as in other of her works, Gilman entertains concepts of eugenics, often to the detriment of personal liberties. The raising of children and related matters are subject to social regimentation. As her protagonist John Robertson comments at one point, "I've glimpsed a sort of 'iron hand in a velvet glove' back of all this." New laws "check the birth of defectives and degenerates" and "criminals and perverts" are sterilized. Indeed, Gilman goes further in this book than she does elsewhere in her canon; it has been noted that this is the only one of her works "in which Gilman sanctioned the killing of social 'undesirables' by the state."

Gilman's fictional transformation of America had its dark side: one informant explains to John Robertson that "We killed many hopeless degenerates, insane, idiots, and real perverts, after trying our best powers of cure." Yet new methods of treatment make such extreme measures less necessary; the character in the book who speaks these words is a reformed alcoholic and cocaine addict who has become a university professor...of ethics.