What the ‘future histories’ of the 1920s can teach us about hope

What the ‘future histories’ of the 1920s can teach us about hope Getty Images Looking to a brighter future? Brittain's wasn't the only "future history" of the time. Getty Images The future imagined by Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagined equality – but with dark consequences In Gilman's future, "equality" has been reached. Gilman, like many others in the 1920s, was falsely convinced by the ideas of eugenics, and that "moral character" is strictly inherited rather than being shaped by one's environments or upbringing. Here lies the power of writing future histories like Brittain's, approached with playful irreverence to one's present.