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Both the Republic and contemporary utopian work address specialization and hierarchy as they relate to forward social progress. Often enough, specialization is synonymous with a hierarchical system of rule and subjugation. Swift’s description of Houyhnhnm includes a rigid state-sponsored social hierarchy, while Gilman’s Herland, though less assertive in its descriptions, demonstrates a world where specialization is decoupled from the dictations of the state.

Plato’s city of justice relies on dividing society into three ranks according to the natural inclinations of citizens to exhibit one part of the tripartite soul above the others. Beyond the formative years of youth, these social boundaries become strict. “Meddling and exchanging between these three classes, then, is the greatest harm that can happen to the city.” (434b) While the Republic aims to convey its rigid use of specialization as an instrument to better meet the needs of the society, a modern critic of the work cannot help but address issues of philosophical inequality involved with its hierarchical system of consumers and producers – of rulers and subjugates.

There is a subtle boundary between specialization and the more modern forms of separatism that civilized societies now view as unethical barriers to social progress. Some utopian authors seem to hold the ideal that all citizens of a society should develop each element of the partite soul. This is an entirely different system of personal development than what Plato offers – one in which a natural propensity for a certain element of soul is nurtured and cultivated to the near exclusion of all others.

In Gulliver’s voyage to the Houynhmhmns, Swift provides a flimsy but effective basis on which to perform one of his characteristic rants against the moral depravity of eighteenth century England. It is not sufficient or correct to view his breeds of Houynhhmns and Yahoos as resulting from a role reversal of the horse and human. In reality, the Houyhnhnms possess much of the benevolence for which mankind classically strives, while the Yahoos possess only the basic moral and emotional maladies which are so often criticized in recent literature.

The topics of specialization and class hierarchy are most readily visible in the division of Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. For all of the virtue to be found in Swift’s ponies, there is no question that they are mostly an oppressive force on the race of Yahoos, which they use for such chores as “Draught and Carriage” as soon as they are “fit for Service at … Twelve.” (271, 273) While most of the Yahoos’ hardship truly does come from their own natural vices, the Houyhnhnms really do very little to help rebalance their inequity, nor to serve in any Platonic sense as guardians of virtue.

Swift defines the quality of a living creature nearly entirely on their capacity for reason and virtue, much in the way our current society does. The Houyhnhnms do not seek social progress so much through the use of specialization, but rather by class distinction on the basis of virtue. The Yahoos are repeatedly claimed to be without any capacity for reason, and this is chiefly the reason that Gulliver repeatedly refers to the Yahoo as a “brute” or an “animal,” and does not originally accept this breed as being of his own stock.

Swift’s value of reason is illuminated by Gulliver’s own view of the Yahoos. Not long after arriving at this “remote nation of the world,” Gulliver describes the Yahoos as “odious Animal[s]” (237) and expresses “Uneasiness at [being given] so often the Appellation of Yahoo” by his master. (237) Gulliver observes the “Temperance, Industry, Exercise and Cleanliness” (269) learned by the Houyhnhnms, while the Yahoos are the “most unteachable of animals.” (266) The Houyhnhnms are endowed with a “general Disposition to all Virtues,” (267) and have none of the paragraph-long list of unvirtuous qualities Swift lists at the beginning of Chapter X.

Through further observation of the horses and more discourse with his master, Gulliver realizes the moral similarities between the people of the civilized world and their breed of Yahoos. He can no longer deny that he “was a real Yahoo, in every limb and feature.” (267) Gulliver comes to hate his own reflection, and when he returns home he cannot stand to be in the company of even his own wife. It is this revelation on the absence of human virtue and reason that makes him capable of such horrifying acts as constructing “a Sort of Indian Canoo … with the Skins of Yahoos,” like one might do with the flesh of any other brute animal. (281)

It is interesting to note that Gulliver’s master describes the specialization of roles of men and women in the human world to be an “Instance of Brutality.” (269) The pairing of males and females is for the entirely rational desire for propagation of the species, and the society of horses takes great measures to balance and weigh the pairing of couples according to what will produce the best results for the society. As in the city of justice, women are viewed near as equals, and they are afforded proportionately the same education as the males.

Conditions for women are nowhere as favorable as in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, where there are no men to raise the evils associated with competition and aggression. The women are all part of a great Motherhood, wherein there is no quarrelsomeness and no opposition, only progress. It is to be said that Herland largely lacks the fragmentation of society into specialized roles, as there is such common agreement among the women on how things are and how they shall be.

Specialization is claimed to exist within the society, although truthfully, the visitors to Herland are most impressed by the general knowledge and collective attributes that are possessed by all citizens of the country. Herland is an advanced society which needs to do very little to sustain itself. It is perhaps due to this lack of great necessity for labor that this socialist utopia can pursue equal development of the elements of the tripartite, and not be forced to the usual division of labor principles of which Plato speaks.

The narrator’s wife in Herland, Ellador, explains that knowledge is broken into two types in their country: common knowledge and special knowledge. Common knowledge is taught to the girls of Herland at all opportunities. Ellador mentions only that “the special knowledge is open to all, as they desire it.” (90) Ellador and her friends Celis and Alima are foresters, but this role is not well defined in the text. The three seem to do work in the forest, but the specific descriptions of this “work” don’t go far beyond that of them sitting together in a tree, giggling.

The women of Herland are described as having all of the capacities and advantages that early twentieth century America assumed women to be lacking. Van the narrator admits, for example, that “[intelligence] was the most impressive … of any single feature of Herland.” (67) Moreover, he observes a superior morality in the women who all “prayed and worked” for “Beauty, Health, Strength, Intellect, Goodness.” (51) Much of the book continues on in this manner; Van and Jeff repeatedly submit themselves to accept the various moral and intellectual superiorities held by the women of Herland.

The women’s physical superiority – or at least equality – is also infused throughout the text. In the opening action of the book, the agility of two fleeing women is paralleled to that of “wild antelopes.” (14) One of the most shocking admissions in the entire novella comes at the end when Terry speaks of his attempted forced sexual intercourse with his wife. Terry, the staunchly prototypical male, is unsuccessful in his attempt and is restrained from his wife, Alima, with the help of another woman. Terry “believe[s] Alima could have done it alone,” however. (122)

Even the critic who is more disposed to conservatism in the gender inequality debacle may think the novella to stem from a broad range of motives. The book could be seen as the expected literary outlet of a stock-model feminist, or in the extreme as a work of unbridled and cyclically hypocritical sexism. It is best to take Herland for what it is, though: a light-hearted utopian novella, the conclusions of which are perhaps as imaginative as the book’s unrealizable foundations of plot. The country of Herland is nearly completely without all of the “bad things” societies have seen within themselves and others throughout the course of history. It seems to suppose that division into gender groups creates opposition to social progress, and that a unified sisterhood is better equipped to handle all aspects of a society.

Darwin’s Origin of Species supposes that the evolutionary motive for the division of species into male and female forms is one of specialization – a division of labor. The ideas that men should carry things for women and that women should stay at home seem as foreign to the women of Herland as they might seem brutal to Gulliver’s master. None-the-less, the women are blindly enthusiastic to start a “New Motherhood” with the visitors, leading to a “bi-sexual” race. The women of Herland look forward to having this new bi-sexual connection with the other nations of the world so that they can meet them “to love and help them – and to learn of them.”

In the Republic we see a complete reliance on specialization as a means of social progress, while the horses of Virtue rely less on specialization, and more on class distinction to suit this purpose. Herland offers an even more attractive solution, wherein class distinction is of no value, and specialization is an open opportunity that is supposed to be actively pursued by all of the citizens.

In the case of the utopian works, many details are left unwritten as to how social progress comes to be. Herland, perhaps because it is such a short work, offers little mechanical explanation of their social progress with such statements as “They … had easily inferred that there was room for more [improvements].” Perhaps slightly better is the elaboration of the decision to limit births in Herland, although this ends with the puff of magic that the women “decide” not to have the children. Worse yet, A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms almost presupposes that a great land of horses had existed in all their virtue statically through all time.

The Republic may impose an unattractive system of rulers and subjugates, but it offers specialization as the framework for social progress. In those places where conscious horses and parthenogenesis are not in abundance, Plato’s city of justice may seem a more worthy model for a society. The description of the city lacks several key elements of the utopian work, though. The lack of fantastical basis does nothing to solve the worrisome relationship between specialization and hierarchy, for one. And most importantly, the constricting desire to specialize into one component of each individual’s tripartite is in complete disharmony with the ideals of universal virtue that we see so adamantly sought in the utopian work.