Unveiling a Parallel

What It's About

Unveiling a Parallel (1893) follows an unnamed male narrator who travels by aeroplane to Mars, where he discovers two distinct civilisations. In Paleveria, women have claimed equality by adopting men's own tactics of aggression and vice, while in Caskia, men and women share power in genuine harmony. Through his encounters with characters such as Elodia and Severnius, the narrator's assumptions about "natural" male and female behaviour are repeatedly challenged and overturned.

Key Concepts

Written as a satirical utopian romance, the novel asks what equality between the sexes actually looks like — and whether it can go wrong when built on a corrupted model rather than a balanced one. It uses its Martian setting to hold up a mirror to the rigid gender roles and moral double standards of 19th-century America, questioning whether women's supposed piety and purity are innate qualities or simply the product of social conditioning.

About the Author

Alice Ilgenfritz Jones (1846–1906) was an American novelist who spent most of her life in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and also wrote travel essays for Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Her collaborator, Ella Merchant, was a fellow resident of Cedar Rapids about whom little biographical detail survives. The two women originally published this novel together under the joint pseudonym "Two Women of the West."