Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Sarah Scott (1723-95), an eighteenth-century writer, historian, and social reformer, wrote in a variety of genres: romance, The History of Cornelia (1750); history, The History of Mechlenburgh (1762); utopia, A Description of Millenium Hall (1762); and novels, The History of Sir George Ellison (1766) and The Test of Filial Duty (1772) – to name a few. Forgotten for almost 250 years, she has begun to attract some critical attention in recent decades, almost all of which focuses on A Description of Millenium Hall and even less frequently, The History of Sir George Ellison. One subject that has hardly received any attention in this reevaluation is religion. This paper attempts to show that Christianity – more specifically, Anglicanism – is the basis for the utopian social vision of Millenium Hall, a text in which Scott’s religious principles manifest themselves most clearly. Millenium Hall, Scott’s utopian vision of a landed estate owned and run by women, is based on a combination of enlightenment rationalism and latitudinarian principles and offers, in other words, the construction of a proto-feminist utopian community based on the reconciliation of reason and faith. The primary focus of Millenium Hall is the construction of a secluded utopian community meant, eventually, to be spread across England; Scott suggests that any estate can, and should be, run like Millenium Hall.