They were Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Robinson Merchant [ca], writers who lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Jones and Merchant differed from some other feminist novelists of their generation (like Corbett and Lane, mentioned above) in that they made their fictional protagonist male instead of female.

In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous.

The narrator first lands in the Martian country of Paleveria, which is a republican and capitalist state, with clear class divisions; the people are vegetarians, and dress in loose robes.

Women in Paleveria can vote, hold political office, and run businesses; they propose marriage to men, have sex with male prostitutes, and even participate in wrestling matches.

Elodia is a banker by profession; she drinks alcohol and imbibes a Martian drug, has affairs with men, and eventually reveals an illegitimate child.

This northern country has a more co-operative and egalitarian social and economic order than Paleveria has; its people cultivate intellectual, artistic, and spiritual qualities.

In the city of Lunismar, the traveller meets another Martian woman, Ariadne, who is more traditionally feminine by conservative Earthly standards.

By making the new world seem familiar to the middle class, Merchant and Jones hinted at the possibility of equality between the sexes and how it would work in their American lives.

Whenever the traveler encounters something new on Mars, he gets confused and will ask many questions and explain why he thinks things work differently on Earth.

Severnius then can explain why Martians do it differently so that anyone reading the story can see the argument that Jones and Merchant are trying to make about why equality between men and women would be possible in America.

The traveler tries to give a reason for why women are not allowed the same rights on Earth by mentioning the laws around owning land as a requirement for voting.

Besides simply looking at similar issues, both stories are told from an outside man's point of view who is related to their contemporary American society in some way.

Even something which should bring people together, such as religion, has become tangled with the distinctions between the rich and poor, showing how deep the problem goes in the Martian society.

These negative relationships between the rich and poor were very similar to the sort of class conflicts that Americans were dealing with during the Progressive era.

Alice Ilgenfritz Jones (1846–1905) wrote other novels during her career: High Water Mark (1879), Beatrice of Bayou Têche (1895), and The Chevalier of St. Denis (1900).