Thomas More - Utopia Summary
Utopia – Landscape and Town Layout • Island is crescent shaped
• Always 200 miles wide but the tapers at the ends in to perfect half circles
• Interior side of the island is like a giant harbour
• Mouth of the harbour is full of rocks and shoals, making it incredibly dangerous
• Only the utopians know the way into the harbour, this prevents invasion
• Was once a peninsula but Uptos dug a channel and turned it in to an island
• There are fifty four big towns, all identical
• The towns are no more than a day’s walk from each other
• Aircastle is the capital
• At regular intervals are large houses for farming
• Everyone farms for a period of 2 years
• The grand plans of the towns are square
• The towns are surrounded by a high wall and then an empty moat
• Houses are separated by twenty-foot carriageway
• Behind the houses are large gardens
• Anyone can enter the houses, there are no locks
• Houses are swapped every ten years
• Houses are three storeys, made of hard stone
• The roofs are raised to the horizontal with concrete
• They use glass for the windows.
Social relations/arrangements in Utopia. • Households are the smallest social unit - no less than ten adults and no more than sixteen. • Households are governed by the oldest male. • Wives are subordinate to their husbands, children to their parents and younger people generally to their elders. • When a girl marries she joins her husband's household, whereas boys of each generation stay at home. • Each town consists of only six thousand households.Every town is divided into four districts of equal size. Each with its own shopping centre in the middle. • Everyone in the town assembles at lunch and dinner in the dining-hall. Children under five eat in the nursery. • The children that aren't old enough to be married, wait at the
• Always 200 miles wide but the tapers at the ends in to perfect half circles
• Interior side of the island is like a giant harbour
• Mouth of the harbour is full of rocks and shoals, making it incredibly dangerous
• Only the utopians know the way into the harbour, this prevents invasion
• Was once a peninsula but Uptos dug a channel and turned it in to an island
• There are fifty four big towns, all identical
• The towns are no more than a day’s walk from each other
• Aircastle is the capital
• At regular intervals are large houses for farming
• Everyone farms for a period of 2 years
• The grand plans of the towns are square
• The towns are surrounded by a high wall and then an empty moat
• Houses are separated by twenty-foot carriageway
• Behind the houses are large gardens
• Anyone can enter the houses, there are no locks
• Houses are swapped every ten years
• Houses are three storeys, made of hard stone
• The roofs are raised to the horizontal with concrete
• They use glass for the windows.
Social relations/arrangements in Utopia. • Households are the smallest social unit - no less than ten adults and no more than sixteen. • Households are governed by the oldest male. • Wives are subordinate to their husbands, children to their parents and younger people generally to their elders. • When a girl marries she joins her husband's household, whereas boys of each generation stay at home. • Each town consists of only six thousand households.Every town is divided into four districts of equal size. Each with its own shopping centre in the middle. • Everyone in the town assembles at lunch and dinner in the dining-hall. Children under five eat in the nursery. • The children that aren't old enough to be married, wait at the