Customer Reviews

Herland

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The title of Gilman's novel may be a bit misleading. The novel is described as a feminist novel. Yet, this is not exactly acurate. The absence of men in the utopian society may seem extreme to some, and it is. This is how Gilman makes her point. She does not create a world without men because men are terrible creatures who have corrupted the world. The utopia which lacks men is a clean peaceful place, excelling in every way American society fails. But, it is neither the absence of men nor the presence of women that faciliates this. Gender, in this novel, is symbolic for the most part. Gilman does separate the two genders to destroy steroetypes, but also to establish a concrete difference between the two worlds. The male world is not bad, and the female good. The world in which people are defined by others and limited to these defined roles is bad, while the world in which people are free to grow without being defined or compared to others, and are able to see the oneness of all people is good. Comparing Herland to the reader's own world, Gilman begins destroying gender based stereotypes. Because there are no distinctions of gender in Herland, nor any superficial characteristics which accompany gender, Herland women take on the roles of all people without considering any limitations. These women are strong, agile, nurturing, intelligent, cooperative, and able to rely on themselves. They are not "typical" females. As Gilman explains through the male character Van, "Those 'feminie charms' we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity--developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process" (59). In the same way, stereotypes about men can be discredited. Such ideas have been made up to help people deal with the differences between men and women. Gilman shows the reader that if people stop basing their identities on what others want, they will no longer be slaves to limitations. They will be free to discover their true selves and will allow others to do the same. Gilman shows readers that men and women are distinct people, but reminds us that they are people first. This can be seen when Somel, a woman of Herland, innocently questions a male visitor, "But surely there are characteristics enough which belong to People, aren't there?" (89). Focusing more on these characteristics, those belonging to "People," allows humans to fulfill their personal potential without fear of jealousy. The women of Herland are able to live in "such universal peace and good will and mutual affection" (99) because "they lacked the sex motive and, with it, jealousy" (99). The women of Herland are free and equal because they are secure enough in themselves to offer and accept help for a joint cause, the betterment of their world. All readers, men and women alike, can learn a great deal from this humanist utopian novel.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was arguably the most important American author of the women's movement in the early 20th-century. In addition to editing a newspaper, "The Forerunner," she wrote "Women and Economics," one of the first studies of the role of women in the economic system. Gilman also wrote a number of utopias: "Moving the Mountain" in 1911, "With Her in Ourland" (1916), and her best-known, "Herstory" in 1915. In "Herstory" Gilman creates a homosocial (one-sex) utopian society made up entirely of women in which the culture, political system, and families are the result of having women as the basis (instead of merely stemming from the absence of men). However, while other American utopian novels, most notably Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward 2000-1888," were standard reading for decades, Gilman's "Herland" was pretty much forgotten until it was rediscovered in the 1970s. Even after four decades Gilman's satire was seen as still speaking to the conditions faced by American women.

Following the conceit first used by Sir Thomas More in writing his "Utopia," Gilman's "Herstory" tells of three American explorers (male, of course), stumbling upon an all-female society in an isolated mountain valley in a land far away on the even of the first World War. Since they find this strange land to be civilized the explorers are convinced there must be some men hiding someplace, and set out to find them. As they search high and low for the male of the species they learn about the history of the country, the religion of motherhood, and the other unique customs, while trying to seduce its inhabitants. Many generations earlier the women had found themselves separated from the human race, with the men dying off. The society evolved, organizing itself around raising children and living in harmony with their surroundings. In the end, the three mail visitors end up falling in love with three of the women and are essentially converted as naturalized aliens.

"Herstory" is less science fiction than many of the utopian novels written during this period, and clearly its primary value is in terms of its provocative commentary on gender roles in the United States in the early 20th-century. Not surprisingly, Gilman questions the roles assumed by men and women in the "bi-sexual" society by showing the relative perfection achieved in Herland with its uni-sexual society. What Gilman sidesteps, of course, are the issues of sexuality: the women of "Herstory" are asexual beings, although they are capable of parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). Also, by talking about these women as being descended from good Aryan stock she raises the specter of racism as well. But clearly Gilman's purpose is to provide a critique of the social order of the day, using humor as a way to mask her telling barbs and to provide her unorthodox views of gender roles, motherhood, individuality, privacy, and other issues. Then there are the parts where the inhabitants of "Herstory" are amused and horrified to learn about the conventional aspects of courtship, marriage, families, warfare, labor relations and even animal husbandry in the "real" world.

Because "Herland" is essentially a novella, running only 124 pages in this unabridged Dover Thrift Edition, it is fairly easy to work it into a class looking at 20th century American utopian literature or the women's movement. In many ways, although it is not as well written, "Herland" is a much more provocative critique of women in American society than Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" or Marge Piercy's "Woman on the Edge of Time." "Herstory" also stands out because it is a true utopian novel, written at a time when the dystopian emphasis was about to redefine the genre of utopian literature.

Obviously, many people who read this book -- including most of the reviewers here -- clearly misunderstood Gilman's tone and objective in writing "Herland." The purpose of the book is NOT to say that women are better than men in every aspect of life, or that women can survive without men. Indeed, the inhabitants of Herland realize that without males, their society is incomplete, which is why the three young women are encouraged to court the three male visitors. Gilman portrays two of her three male characters sympathetically and intelligently, and even the chauvinistic one is portrayed as intelligent, just misguided.

Gilman has two purposes, neither of which is to show the 'inferiority' of men. One, she wishes to show what a society would be like if everyone were treated equally. Two, and related, she wishes to show what society were like if people put the greater good above their individual goals. In that sense, Gilman's society is not socialism but more like anarchism -- there IS no central government; Herland operates like a large utopian family, in which everyone's role is equal and everyone has a very important role in society. No one's role is more important than any others, be they male or female.

The reason for the Herlandians' physical besting of the men is to show that women are only 'weak' because they are sheltered, and in turn are sheltered because they are weak; also, while the Herlandians were natural women living in the natural world, the men are essentially 'sheltered' by technology (all of them being specialists in an area) and thus are not physically trained as the women are. It's like a female Olympic runner beating a male who runs for his college in his spare time.

Of course, the book has flaws -- the utopian society of course, is without chink or problem, and Gilman ironically venerates traditional aspects of women, casting them into the stereotype of communal, compassionate, sacrificial mothers. The veneration of 'motherhood' almost religiously is hypocritical, as if every woman desires to be a mother. Predictably, no woman in the history of Herland seems to have a problem with denying self for the greater good, or the lack of tradition, or the taking away of her own children for communal rearing. For that, I have to say that Gilman -- while trying to deconstruct the typical notion of a woman -- inadvertently BUILDS it by assuming that all women have these characteristics naturally.

Have you ever wondered what our world would be like without testosterone? Herland gives us some insight into such a hypothetical world. What would the crime level be like? How about wars? Rape? All of these terrible things are often initiated by men. Although a female-only society would probably be much less utopian than Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, it is still interesting to speculate. Even the late Dr. Richard Dehann, a doctor and Bible teacher, speculates that original sin is inherited through the father; so maybe Ms. Gilman's land is not so far-fetched. It still makes interesting reading. If you are interested in female-dominated societies, check out Suzie McKee Charna's Holdfast Chronicles, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Free Amazons of Darkover, and/or Joanna Russ's Female Man.

Like most utopias, Herland hasn't aged well. What sounds like heaven to one generation seems more like hell to another. What makes this book most interesting is its artifact status in the evolution of feminism.

Most modern-day feminists would, I believe, be horrified to be plunked down in Herland to spend their lives: a world without coitus, where motherhood is the end-all and be-all of a woman's existence. There is no Sapphic hanky-panky going on among the inhabitants of this uterine utopia; the very concept of sexual pleasure is foreign to these ladies. Where feminists once wanted motherhood without sex, today they are more likely to want sex without motherhood.

In addition, Herlanders are unabashedly pro-life and horrified when the idea of abortion is raised. A woman's right to choose is as unthinkable in their world as a topless bar would be.

On the other hand, there is plenty of it-takes-a-village-to-raise-a-child; every inhabitant of Herland is a career woman; and when the men raise the issue of their wives taking their names, the brides-to-be scornfully refuse.

As a political manifesto, Herland cannot be taken seriously in the modern world, yet it maintains its importance both as historical artifact, illuminating the thought of the early 20th century, and as evidence that -isms are not static but constantly evolving.

This book was assigned reading for me back in college 12 years ago and I have been thinking about ever since then. Last week I finally broke down and decided to re-read it and see if it was as fascinating now as it was then.

It is the story of three male adventurers who discover an unknown land that is virtually impossible to get to inhabited only by women. Scientific and curious by nature they plan a mission to fly over the country in a plane to investigate further only to be captured and held prisioner in "Herland." While captive they are tutored by and taught to speak the language of the inhabitants. Once they have mastered the language they learn that their captors do not mean them any harm, but rather want to learn from them about the outside world as they have been cut off from it for 2000 years by their natural barriers. The men learn from the women and the women learn from the men. We see how different life could be in a society ruled and inhabited only by women.

As a utopian or fantasy novel, this one is outstanding. There were parts I liked better and was more appreciative of now that I am older than when I first read it, and others that had me thinking "as if!" If you can get past the whole parthenogenisis premise its an easier pill to swallow, but this time around I wasn't buying it. I also found the over zealous religious tones near the end to make this short novel drag out far too long.

All in all I am glad I re-read it and encourage anyone who hasn't to do so.

The premise is interesting enough: after a combination of man-made and natural catastrophes in a remote area, only a handful of women remain alive. Through some miracle, one woman becomes parthenogenetically pregnant - without normal fertilization - and civilization is rebuilt.

But without men.

The story opens 2000 years later, after the culture has flourished and stabilized, when three men of very different temperaments arrive. This brief story sketches the Edenic society. The women have their entire country under the most intense cultivation, and it is lush and productive. The women have a stable population, and a rich culture built around progress, peace, and single-minded devotion to the creation and care of the next generation. That is the cental axis of Gilman's world. Religion and everything else revolve around that.

The women themselves, through Lamarckian and social evolution, have become strong, wise, happy, and oddly sexless. They seem not to have discovered the happiness of physical affection, especially when separated from procreation. I find it odd that there is not even a hint of that physical intimacy in this otherwise attractive world, even though the women could easily share it between themselves.

Of course, one of the men commits an outrage, and they are banished back to the evil outer world - Eve casting Adam out of the garden, this time. Nearly nothing is said about the economy of this world, and just a little about their system of justice. As utopias go, it's a bit one-sided and bland, with one chilling exception. In the very last sentences of the book, there is a hint that their justice can include capital punishment. It would be carried out by overdose of anesthesia, a 1915 prediction of today's "lethal injection."

//wiredweird

In her novel of a positive utopia made up only of women, Gilman gives us a vision of what perfection would be like, if only the inevitable power, money and sex did not get in the way of things. In Herland, there are no men thus eliminating the sex motivations. And they live a highly socialized communal life within which most of the problems of modern society have been conquered or mastered.

The ladies of Herland have been isolated from the rest of the world for about 2000 years and during the early part of that period all the men in their society were killed or died off. This left a society of women only. To go on, they developed the ability to have virgin births, (in the modern wild turkey this exists today and is called Parthenogenesis, where in the absence of male turkeys, they may produce eggs that turn into female chicks) through an unusual biological quirk. But all the offspring are women.

Throughout the book references and allusions to Edward Bellamy's famous positive utopia book "Looking Backwards" are evident. Yet Gilman's treatment of the topic is fresh and interesting in that the element of sex is removed from the utopian environment. In addition, the concept of the story is that 3 men happen to find the utopia and this allows Gilman to engage in a long discussion with those men and the women of Herland; comparing their worlds.

Interestingly, even though Gilman wrote the book in 1915, not much seems to have changed. There is still injustice, greed, hate, love, war, peace and poverty. The book is a virtual wake up call to all societies, especially the Western Developed countries that there are yet things to be done in this world.

The book is recommended to those who are interested in a vision of a better world. While Gilman's vision is an impossibility, as was Karl Marx vision of perfect Communism, nonetheless, it gives us a real reason to think on the bright side of life, as it may yet be possible to achieve.

Back in 1915 when HERLAND was written, women were widely considered weak and uncreative and had the sole responsibility of taking care of home, family, and being socialites. So, when 3 young American men in the novel encounter a country comprised entirely of women, they look everywhere to find out where they must have hidden their men. Of course, being emperialist men, they think it should be easy to conquer and subdue a country of women. However, they are looking at these "women" through the eyes of their own culture, not realizing their full potential as "humans". These are women who have such little land to support their people that they've only kept and cultivated food-bearing trees like most people would cultivate a garden and who have learned how to have children without men. Some women! Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this novel after leaving her own husband and home, going off to prove that women are as capable as making a living for themselves as men are. I can only imagine the stir this book must have caused among the feminists of the day. Gilman has written a very interesting book with only one minor flaw. She keeps on building the reader up to this "big thing" that the women of Herland evidently have in store for the men who have dropped by bi-plane into their perfect little world. It turns out to not be such a shocking thing after all and pretty obvious in fact. Despite this slight transgression, the book is superb. HERLAND is a short book that is surprisingly quick-paced and imaginative. It's a gem of a book to add to anyone's collection.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (Dover, 1909)

I always found it odd that Gilman, a prolific writer during her life, had become so obscure less than a century later as to be remembered for only a single short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper." Now, having had the distinct displeasure of having read a second piece of Gilman's writing, I have to wonder if that obscurity isn't well-deserved.

Herland is everything that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is not. It is boring, overly expository, dry as dust, and most importantly, didactic. It is didactic in the same way your history teacher who spoke in a monotone is didactic; you end up hating the delivery so much that whatever's being said gets tuned out along with the noise. It doesn't help that Herland is a vastly inferior knockoff of such nineteenth-century fantastic-journey novels as Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, James DeMille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, or Doyle's The Lost World. All three of those novels had the same generally socially conscious bent as does Herland, and held up a dystopian land to our own to show us where our own civilization is lacking. But all three of them (even Poe, who despised the novel form and never wrote in it again) had a basic understanding of the structure of the adventure novel and how to keep things moving while passing along their message about what's wrong with society. Gilman lacks this facility, and what's worse, she's of that strip of author who feels that, in order to make sure the message is clearly heard by the reader, she must go out of her way and add a clarifying sentence. After all, the reader is far too stupid to pick up on inferences.

The popularity of The Yellow Wallpaper and the obscurity of Gilman's other work cannot, of course, be dismissed as understood after reading only one of her other works. But Herland certainly doesn't have me straining at the leash to go looking for anything else Gilman wrote. Uniformly awful. (zero)