Herland

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Alex Goody

A fantasy from an early feminist writer who dared explore a world without men.

A lost-world fantasy in the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Utopianism of William Morris, Herland inverted expectations with its exclusively female society visited by three men from the Edwardian era. An early example of feminist science fiction, this utopian fantasy explores miracle births, role reversals and concepts of peace and freedom.

Flame Tree 451 presents a new series, The Foundations of Feminist Fiction. The early 1900s saw a quiet revolution in literature previously dominated by male adventure heroes. Both men and women moved beyond the norms of the male gaze to write from a different gender perspective, sometimes with female protagonists, but also expressing the universal freedom to write on any subject whatsoever. Each book features a brand new biography and a glossary of literary terms.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flame Tree 451
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781804172421

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was an American author, feminist, and social reformer. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gilman was raised by her mother after her father abandoned his family to poverty. A single mother, Mary Perkins struggled to provide for her son and daughter, frequently enlisting the help of her estranged husband’s aunts, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These early experiences shaped Charlotte’s outlook on gender and society, inspiring numerous written works and a lifetime of activism. Gilman excelled in school as a youth and went on to study at the Rhode Island School of Design where, in 1879, she met a woman named Martha Luther. The two were involved romantically for the next few years until Luther married in 1881. Distraught, Gilman eventually married Charles Walter Stetson, a painter, in 1884, with whom she had one daughter. After Katharine’s birth, Gilman suffered an intense case of post-partum depression, an experience which inspired her landmark story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1890). Gilman and Stetson divorced in 1894, after which Charlotte moved to California and became active in social reform. Gilman was a pioneer of the American feminist movement and an early advocate for women’s suffrage, divorce, and euthanasia. Her radical beliefs and controversial views on race—Gilman was known to support white supremacist ideologies—nearly consigned her work to history; at the time of her death none of her works remained in print. In the 1970s, however, the rise of second-wave feminism and its influence on literary scholarship revived her reputation, bringing her work back into publication.

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Herland

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

With an introduction by Alex Goody

flametreepublishing.com

FLAME TREE 451

London & New York

Introduction

Herland was first serialised by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in The Forerunner, the monthly journal that she wrote and edited, in 1915. But this fascinating story of a lost world, populated only by women, received scant attention until it was reclaimed as a feminist utopia in the 1970s.

Ostensibly framed as an adventure story, Gilman’s novel addresses the feminist ideas that she explored in her other fiction and non-fiction work including patriarchal attitudes to women, the structure and economics of the family, marriage and the public role of women. Herland has also garnered attention from critics interested in environmental and ecological issues.

The recovery and critical analysis of Herland brought rightful recognition to this important contribution to the canon of feminist fiction. It has also demonstrated the contemporary relevance of Gilman’s ideas. However, the limits of Gilman’s feminist utopia (her endorsement of eugenics and her ideas about race and class) should temper any uncomplicated celebration of Herland as a feminist vision for our age.

The Plot of Herland

Herland follows three American men, Terry O. Nicholson, Jeff Margrave and Vandyck Jennings (Van). Abroad on a ‘big scientific expedition’, they encounter legends of a ‘strange and terrible Woman Land’ in some high mountains. Resolving to find and explore this land, the men return with supplies and fly a biplane over the mountain range. Landing in a well-cultivated and obviously civilised realm, they encounter first three young women (Alima, Celis and Ellador) and then the other inhabitants of Herland. The men are quite quickly disabused of their assumption that there are men somewhere in charge, and are captured, confined and educated by the senior women of Herland. Much of the novel relates, through Van’s point of view, what they are taught about the woman-only nation.

The men make a foiled attempt to escape Herland, after which their studies continue. They learn of the events that led to Herland being sealed off from the world, and of the miraculous process of parthenogenesis through which Herland has been populated for two thousand years. Eventually the men are matched to women in marriage (in fact the three women they met on first arriving). At the end of the novel Jeff is happily married to Celis, who is expecting the first child of ‘dual-parentage’ to be born in Herland, while Terry, Van and Ellador depart for the outside world.

Herland is a story in which not much happens. Writing in the journal Science Fiction Studies, Cameron Awkward-Rich describes Herland as ‘a remarkably bounded novel, with minimal conflict, direction, and character development’. But this does not make it a failure as utopian fiction. Herland the place is a feminist utopia because it is devoid of the conflict and suffering that mark the outside world. Herland the novel is a feminist utopian work because it prioritises the narrative of this place (and the ideas and systems that organise it) over a story of adventure, action and triumph.

Gilman’s Feminist Writing

Gilman was a prolific writer who began her career when she moved to California in 1888 after separating from her husband. Initially writing poems, essays and short stories, she went on to publish a succession of longer non-fiction sociological works that explored the position of women. These included Women and Economics – A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution (1898), The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903) and The Man-Made World or the Androcentric Culture (1911).

Gilman’s feminist politics are in evidence in both her poetry and fiction. Her first published poem, ‘One Girl Amongst Many’ (1884), describes the double-standard that condemns the prostitute but not the male desire that exploits them. In 1911 Gilman published Suffrage Songs and Verses, a collection that explicitly advocates for women’s social and political rights. Her fiction also explores women’s social and economic freedom, as well as the restrictions of traditional ideas of femininity and women’s roles. Her novella ‘The Yellow-Wallpaper’, published in the New England Magazine in 1892, examines femininity, domesticity and madness; in What Dinatha Did (1910) Gilman depicts a woman heroine who establishes a successful professional housekeeping business.

Women and Economics

Gilman’s Women and Economics was greeted with international acclaim when first published in 1898. In this volume Gilman examines what she sees as a primary problem – women’s economic dependence on men – and argues that middle-class women should be free to undertake productive work outside the home. This would mean both a personal and social transformation as women would not only bring their own particular abilities to the public sphere, but would also be able to develop, individually, beyond the narrow confines allotted to them. She proposes professionalising domestic work (including childcare) to replace women’s responsibilities as mothers and housekeepers. Crucially, women would no longer need to exaggerate their femininity and sexual attributes as they have had to, in order to secure their position as a wife and mother. What Gilman terms the ‘sexu-economic relation’ has, she argues, impeded the intellectual and moral capacities of women. For Gilman all ‘human life is…open to improvement’; her vision in Women and Economics is one of ‘social evolution’, not merely the individual liberation of women. She sees the relations of men and women as capable of great transformation and imagines a future for marriage in which ‘men and women…will be able at last to meet on a plane of pure and perfect love’.

The ideas discussed in Women and Economics become a reality in Gilman’s Herland. Here there is no ‘sexu-economic’ imperative for women because there are no men and no forms of marriage; although all women experience ‘mother-love’, children are raised communally and by professionals, giving women the freedom to choose their vocation and be active in all aspects of society and the economy. Moreover, Van and Ellador do seem to achieve a version of the ‘perfect love’ that Gilman predicts in Women and Economics for men and women liberated from their assumed gender roles.

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is Gilman’s best-known fiction text and one of her earliest publications. It has become a feminist fiction classic, dealing as it does with significant issues around motherhood, postpartum depression, late nineteenth-century assumptions about women’s roles and women’s struggles against male oppression. The protagonist-narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ epitomises the idea of the ‘madwoman in the attic’ – a figure that feminist critics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar have seen as central to nineteenth-century women’s writing. They link Gilman’s protagonist to the fictional Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre (1847) and to the poet Emily Dickinson, for example, perceiving this motif to be an expression of the rage and frustration of women under patriarchal control.

Gilman’s madwoman is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ as a result of a ‘temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency’ that she has experienced after the birth of her daughter. Like Gilman, this narrator is a writer – but she is forbidden to work and forced to spend her days resting in an upstairs room, in what used to be the nursery of a large country house. Becoming gradually more obsessed with the ‘hideous’, ‘infuriating’, ‘torturing’ pattern of the yellow wallpaper in this room, the narrator eventually begins to see a woman trapped in the wallpaper, crawling around behind it and shaking the pattern as if in an attempt to escape.

Nature in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Herland

Gilman was clearly drawing on her own life in this novella, in particular her own experience of postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter Katherine. Placed under the care of Dr. Silas Mitchell Weir, she was prescribed strict bed rest, allowed no intellectual or creative work and advised to live as domestic a life as possible. Gilman’s own recovery was greatly aided by a trip she took to California in 1885. In her autobiography The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography (1935) she describes the comforts and beauty of California and its natural landscapes that had a restorative effect on her; ‘life was bright again’, she explains.

Gilman’s positive experience of the natural world and bright open spaces of California could account for some of the sharp contrasts between the ‘madwoman’ of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and the inhabitants of Herland. Whereas the narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is trapped indoors and sees a creeping woman also imprisoned in the horrible vegetative patterns on her wall, the women of Herland live healthy outdoor lives; exercise and activity, both intellectual and physical, are an integral part of their existence. The first three women that Van, Jeff and Terry encounter in Herland are as agile as ‘wild antelopes’ and easily outpace the three men who pursue them.

The narrator of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ eventually loses herself and her sanity in the ‘florid arabesque’ and the ‘interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions’ on her walls. The women of Herland live in what Van himself describes as a ‘heavenly country’ where even the older women are ‘in full bloom of rosy health, erect, serene, standing sure-footed and light as any pugilist’. In Herland, therefore, Gilman imagines a utopian world in which women, instead of being denied a free enjoyment of the natural world and intellectual and physical activities, grow up ‘as naturally as young trees’. In Herland they live off their cultivated landscape and are free to choose the vocation that best suits them.

Moving the Mountain

Herland is actually the second work in a utopian trilogy, written by Gilman and serialised in The Forerunner. The first title in the series, Moving the Mountain (1911), was described by its author in the Preface as a ‘short-distance Utopia, a baby Utopia’. Herland was followed by the final title, With Her in Ourland (1916).

Both the first and the third books of the trilogy, in contrast to the lost world setting of Herland, take place mostly in America. Moving the Mountain brings the protagonist John Robertson back from Tibet after a 30-year absence to a 1940s USA that has undergone radical reform and renovation. This near-future America has economic, political and gender equality, and has eradicated disease and poverty. In Moving the Mountain Gilman was inspired, in part, to redress the shortcomings of Edward Bellamy’s famous utopian science fiction Looking Backwards (1888). In Bellamy’s utopian future of the year 2000 women’s key roles are still as wives and mothers. In Moving the Mountain childcare has become a professional undertaking for those who have studied the new science of ‘Humaniculture’; this means that getting married and having children no longer limits women’s participation in society, politics and the economy.

With Her in Ourland

With Her in Ourland takes Van and Ellador to the male-dominated contemporary world where, on their journey back to the USA, they encounter the First World War in Europe. Ellador is horrified by the hospitals and trenches of France, and by what she describes as the ‘man nature’ that produces war. As their journey continues she is inspired by the ‘historic womanhood’ that she finds in ‘ancient Egypt’ and appalled by the Chinese practice of footbinding. Arriving in California, she delights in the ‘boundless loveliness’ of the natural landscape (much as Gilman did on her trip in 1885). But Ellador’s stay in America only confirms that, even here, old ideas have undermined the lofty ideals behind the founding of this nation.

Ellador articulates the feminist critiques of Gilman’s non-fiction writing about the position of women, economic inequality, political corruption, the institution of the home and domestic labour. Yet some of her other ideas (about the integration of immigrants, Jewish people and the position of Black Americans) also reflect the reprehensible notions of ethnicity and racial relations found elsewhere in Gilman’s work. Turning from the ‘ugliness’ of contemporary America, Van and Ellador finally, and gratefully, return to Herland, where Ellador gives birth to a son.

Eugenics in Gilman’s Utopian Trilogy

Herland is the best-known and most widely read work in Gilman’s utopian trilogy, and the only one that focuses on a fully functional society devoid of men. However, the two other volumes offer a useful framing for Herland, illustrating that this novel too, despite its fantastical setting, also offers a direct commentary on the contemporary position of women and the problems of what Gilman describes (in her 1911 nonfiction volume) as the ‘Man-Made World’. All three novels also share Edward Bellamy’s investment in eugenicist ideas about women’s moral responsibility to improve the future of the human race through selective reproduction. This is a very awkward aspect to Gilman’s feminism for modern readers, but it was something that featured centrally in the political and social ideas of the Progressive Era.

Eugenicist ideas are a substantial concern of Gilman’s 1911 novel The Crux, whose central protagonist Vivian Lane falls in love with a man infected with syphilis and gonorrhoea. These eugenicist elements illustrate some of the limitations of Gilman’s feminist utopian writing. As recent critics have pointed out, they also intersect with other problematic assumptions about race and class that inform her vision of women’s economic and social freedom.

Progressive Era America

In the 1890s Gilman became involved in Nationalism – an American social reform movement inspired by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards. She published poems and short pieces in Nationalist periodicals in the first years of this decade. For Gilman, however, women’s independence was a necessary part of the socialism promoted by Nationalist Clubs, and her involvement in reform extended beyond the remit of this particular movement. However, she retained her commitment to the imminent realisation of a utopian America of economic and social equality that chimed with Bellamy’s work.

Gilman’s feminist and reformist ideas developed within the context of the Progressive Era in America, a period that lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s, and included social activism and movements for reform on both local and national levels. Progressives supported improved child labour laws, urban reform, the elimination of corruption, minimum wage legislation, worker compensation and women’s suffrage. As Judith A. Allen describes in The Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (2009), Gilman was the ‘preeminent feminist intellectual of America’ who ‘embraced many Progressive Era initiatives such as pacifism, birth-control, anti-vice campaigns and sanitation’.

The New Woman

The figure of the New Woman was a ubiquitous archetype in literature and media of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She was associated with the generations of women engaged in defining new forms of femininity and taking on new roles in work, leisure, education, art and politics. From the fashionable, single, sporty Gibson Girl of the 1890s to famous suffragettes such as Inez Milholland, and on to the post-war flapper, with bobbed hair and streamlined silhouette, the New Woman of the era embodied a particular vision of progress, modernity and individual liberation that challenged traditional ideas of femininity.

Though the women of Herland are not directly modelled on popular images of the New Woman, they do have cropped hair; the fashion for bobbed hair was sparked by the short hairstyle that social dance star Irene Castle adopted in 1914. The women are also unencumbered by the nineteenth-century conventions of feminine beauty, modesty and delicacy that the New Woman overturned, and they wear lightweight, practical and non-gendered tunics with plenty of pockets (and certainly no corsets).

Narrative Perspective

If Gilman’s Herland is an attempt to imagine a new society of women – a society indeed of ‘New Women’ reborn at the beginning of the twentieth century – it initially seems paradoxical that she would choose a man as her narrator. After all, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ only works as a compelling account of a woman trapped by patriarchal expectations because of the first-person narrative perspective that gives the reader a vivid, direct access to her state of mind. Van, the narrator of Herland, is perhaps the most appealing of the three men of the story, being neither the hopelessly romantic Jeff nor the sexually predatory Terry. Yet even he admits to having ‘a great deal in common’ with the other men and begins the narrative with scientific assumptions about the ‘psychological limitations’ of women. At heart he is, like them, a man formed by the patriarchal world that expects men to be powerful, forceful and in control. But as his narrative progresses it becomes clear that, instead of being in control, Van is ‘tamed and trained’ into the utopian possibility that Herland represents. With this Gilman successfully shows that it is the women of Herland who control their story, and not the male narrator.

A Feminist Lost World: Herland as ‘No Place’

In her book-length essay The Man-Made World Gilman observed that all fiction is restricted to two main ‘branches’, ‘the Story of Adventure, and the Love Story’ – both of which are about masculine action, pursuit and triumph. Gilman makes Van the narrator of Herland, but her novel refutes masculine forms of fiction, giving in their place a careful, detailed account of the history, systems and ideas of a world of women. Moreover, by the end of the novel the reader realises that we have never discovered the ‘real’ name of Herland; this is merely the name that Terry has coined. The world itself remains an actual ‘no place’ (Thomas More coined the term ‘utopia’ from the Greek ou-topos, meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’, for his 1516 book Utopia), so ‘Herland’ is, quite literally, a utopia

Male Adventurers in Herland

Herland is discovered by three American men; tantalised by the legend of a ‘Woman Land’, they embark on an adventure to explore it. Terry even imagines Herland to be a sort of ‘national harem’ and anticipates that he will become ‘king of Ladyland,’ while all three men share the excitement of encountering an ‘undiscovered country of strictly Amazonian nature’. Gilman writes very disparagingly about the ‘Story of Adventure’ that emphasises struggle, excitement and dominance, and in Herland she confronts a particular late nineteenth-century version of the adventure tale. Susan Gubar has argued in ‘She in Herland: Feminism as Fantasy’ that Gilman was directly addressing the gendered imperial-colonial fantasies of writers such as H. Rider Haggard. Haggard’s novel She (1887) epitomises what Gubar terms the ‘misogyny implicit in the imperialist romance’.

Haggard’s She served to establish many of the conventions of the ‘Lost World’ genre. In it two male explorers discover an all-powerful white queen reigning over an indigenous people in the heart of Africa. The mysterious, despotic, eroticised femme fatale of She is finally defeated in her attempt to entice one of the adventurers to become the reincarnation of her dead lover. Gubar proposes that She fictionalises a colonial ‘heart of female darkness’ that Herland ‘rename[s] and reclaim[s] in a utopian feminist revision of Haggard’s romance’. The practical, vigorous, egalitarian and notably non-sexual Herlanders do indeed confound the vivid fantasies and expectations of the male adventurers, both Terry’s vision of ‘a sort of sublimated summer resort – Just Girls and Girl and Girls’ and Jeff’s expectation that it will be ‘like a nunnery under an abbess’. Instead of conquering a strange land of women, the three men end up as ‘schoolboys’ – students of the history and society of the utopian Herland – and enter marriages that are not based on sexual desire.

Jeff Margrave

Jeff is introduced by Van as a man ‘born to be a poet, a botanist – or both’ and, though his parents have ensured he becomes a doctor, Jeff retains a romantic and poetic outlook. Van comments that Jeff ‘idealized women in the best Southern style…full of chivalry and sentiment’; his conception of women as ‘clinging-vines’ and a ‘sacrament’ means that he fails to comprehend fully what the women of Herland have achieved. His desire to protect and serve women is meaningless; when he offers to carry a fruit basket for Celis, viewing her as the ‘weaker’ sex, she is puzzled and amazed. The Herlanders have built their own towns and work their own agriculture and industry; they are physically robust and capable far into their older years. Jeff recognises Herland as a utopia, but in a misguided way; he worships his wife Celis and sees Herland as paradise of angelic femininity and sisterhood. In contrast to Van’s search for understanding and for

Reviews for Herland

[mialro_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A trio of male dumdums with varying levels of sexism find a country that has been populated entirely by women for centuries. The women reproduce asexually and have bred and engineered everything to be as perfect and useful as possible. This utopia is fascinating to read. It's so interesting how the author points out that a lot of what we consider gender or how women naturally are is a result of the patriarchy and its gender roles (this was written in 1915!). However, upon rereading this I noticed how eugenics-y the book is: the Herland women are all white, despite being in a hidden part of South America or something, and they've deliberately bred themselves to be strong and tall and good at stuff and resist disease and smart, etc. I didn't really realize it until I read a quote from CPG that said that white men and women need to come together to improve the lower races, or something. All the great 19th and 20th century white feminists were all racist as hell, unfortunately. Anyway, I do like this book, but be aware of the racism and eugenics-y ways of thinking. It's critical of capitalism, the patriarchy, and Christianity (but rightfully so, imo). Loved the misandry though.

[threadnsong · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic of early feminist literature which pits late-Victorian-era men against a land full of women. These women have their own 2,000 year old history through parthenogenesis and seem to have solved all of society's problems.The basic premise is a team of three "buddies" intentionally crash-land their bi-plane near an undiscovered country, and each is a typical male: Terry the philanderer who sees all women as passive conquests; Jeff the anthropologist who worships all women; and the narrator who, well, is a narrator.The women they encounter are strong, agile, and full of questions about the culture and customs of the world outside Herland. What are the Mothers like in their world? How are children brought up? What are pets, and why are animals kept in the first place? How is food grown and distributed? Each man is given a teacher, whom he eventually marries in a ceremony that is more for the men's benefit than for the women's. Alima chooses to marry Terry, Ellador the narrator, and Celis for Jeff. Which I suppose is an inevitable plotline of this book.The impact that this book had on my worldview during my mid-20s is still ongoing. The idea that some women are better at raising children than a mother, a woman's body being strong along with her mind being inquisitive, and marriage being a bond between two equals are part of my adult foundations.

[edwinbcn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was published in 1915. The setting of a lost matriarchal society, stumbled upon by a small expedition is strongly reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The lost world, published just three years earlier in 1912.Herland doesn't present much of a story or description of the environs. It is more of a social science fiction novel contrasting our world with a possible alternative reality, but as such the story is a bit boring.

[sinki-456888 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Speculative fiction from the early 1900s, in which three men find an all-female utopia where all social ills have been eliminated. This novella is more an allegory than a story - its characters are broad archetypes and the plot is very straightforward.Some of the ideas here are so quaint and of-their-time that it comes across as naive: that in the absence of men there would be no conflict, no-one would experience sexual desire, and women would be obsessively devoted to Motherhood. Also worth noting, there are some nasty 'race purity' and 'civilisation v savages' undertones that crop up a few times. But the broadly feminist message that women are humans, as capable and valuable as men, is well elaborated, and it's an interesting illustration of early feminist thought.

[fence_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Imagine a world without men. A world where women are able to reproduce without men, where the only children born are female, and where motherhood is all important. Now imagine that you are a young man in the early 1900s who hears about legends of such a community. Terry, Van and Jeff are those young explorers who cannot believe that such a land as Herland could possibly exist.

But exist it does, and they are taken in and learn all about this community that has been cut off from the rest of the world for over two thousand years.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, unfortunately it just didn’t quite do it for me. First of all the idealised Herland was just too perfect. I don’t believe that women are that perfect. And it was more of an anthropological study than a story. We spent the entire book learning about how Herland operated, and came into being.

Also I thought that Terry was just too horrible to be real. Even though I know that he isn’t, and that men who think like him still exist and most definitely did exist back in the 1900s. I just, well, I guess part of me doesn’t want to think that people can be so sexist.

I also objected to the prominence given to motherhood, as though that is all a woman should be interested in.

But a lot of my objections have more to do with the time it was written, and I have to be thankful for how far we have come. Of course we still have a long way to go, but better than we were, that’s for sure.

[muddyboy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A feminist utopian novel written at the turn of the twentieth century. The book follows an expedition of three men who stumble upon a hidden land with only women. All the women/girls come from a single mother. The men find a land of milk and honey with no war, poverty, crime or violence. They wonder how this can be without the traditional "male characteristics" they feel would be essential to a perfect society. They try their hand at love (which the Herlanders are not averse to) but the women (and vice versa) lack some of the qualities they desire in a mate. Unique premise done well.

[sonorandreamer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting view into a world with only women in it. This is a utopia world where everything revolves around nurturing children and each other. I'd like to live in a world like this. There are some problematic topics though, such as racism and the idea that eating only plants as an ideal diet. I do suspect that if women ruled the world it would look something like this.

[theokester · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Herland is an early 20th century piece of adventure fiction showcasing feminism and gender roles in an interesting way. The book tells the story of three male explorers who hear rumors of a hidden city populated entirely by women. Intrigued by the idea they set off on an expedition to discover this hidden society and learn the truth of how such a thing is possible.The writing style is simple and easy to follow. This is especially nice when it includes extensive exposition and detailed description. The story is told in first person which gives it a conversational narrative style and keeps it approachable. By making the narrator a sociologist we are given thoughtful contemplation into the interactions between the characters in the newly discovered culture.The book starts out simply enough by introducing us to the characters and the plot. Our three male characters each have different views/stereotypes towards women and they span the spectrum from end to end. Jeff is at the end that views women as treasures that should be served, protected and idolized. Terry is at the end that sees them as things to be conquered and made to submit and fit into their 'appropriate place' in the world. Our narrator, Van, sits in the middle of the spectrum trying to piece together his viewpoint. He acknowledges a disagreement with Terry's perspective of women as objects to be conquered but he also somewhat pities Jeff's perspective of women as beings to be worshiped. The banter between the three characters as they begin their expedition illustrates the nature of each character and also brings up the big question of "how can a society with only women survive for generations...how does the population continue?"When our "heroes" first arrive in Herland, they admit that they do not see any men but they are still skeptical that such a thing is possible. After some misadventures and some struggle to learn the language the men eventually learn the history of the land. Gilman ads a bit of fantasy/religion and explains how the females are miraculously impregnated without any interaction with males. This is presented as a sort of religious miracle but not in the sense of the Biblical Virgin birth but as a different sort of miracle that evolved a physiological/biological change on the women to allow them to survive in a situation that came upon them when their men were all lost to them. The skepticism of our male explorers continues for a bit but eventually they relent and acknowledge that the women have indeed changed in a way to allow birth without being impregnated by men.Once the men have learned the language of the people they have daily discussions with the women to learn about their society and to answer questions about the outside dual-gender world. In addition to discussions and studies the men also gradually explore the country and see the physical and social and cultural distinctions of Herland.In terms of a story, the plot is somewhat generic and not terribly gripping. In terms of literature, the writing is fairly simple and not especially noteworthy. The merit and interest of the book comes in the commentary that Gilman presents on feminism, gender relations and the place of women in the world. Early in the book, Terry vehemently protests that a society with only women would not be able to survive or that if it did survive it would be backwards and barbaric with constant jealousy and infighting. The culture of Herland is so far from Terry's prediction that it drives him to outrage that gets him in trouble numerous times. The women of Herland have the strong feminine characteristics of compassion and empathy but they also excel in the characteristics that are stereotypically considered masculine such as confidence, ambition, intelligent and physical strength and prowess. The commentary goes on to show that because they lack the competitive 'one-upmanship' that comes in a male society, the culture of Herland has excelled because every member of the society is focused on the overall betterment of their civilization. Generally speaking they do not praise one woman over another because of some given achievement or skill nor do they have any concept of elitism or poverty. They do have added respect for mothers and for some of the most wise members of their society but they do not do so at the expense of any other citizens.The book turns gender roles on their head by having our three male adventurers thrust into a land in which they are essentially neutered (or perhaps effeminized) while the women of the land take on roles normally associated with men (teachers, captors, leaders, hunters, etc.). While a lot of the commentary of the book focusses on the very personal relations between men and women it also takes the argument a step higher and seems to suggest that the problems of society are all due to the masculine viewpoint and can be resolved by removing it. The land of Herland has no poverty, no crime, no illness. They have achieved amazing advances in education, innovation and technology (of the time). While I found the commentary to be interesting, much of the book failed to age very well (it's over 100 years old now) and as such I found many of the arguments to be overly simplistic. And yet there is definitely some merit to be found in the concepts. I agree that many of the problems in our modern world are either caused by or exacerbated by traits that are often considered to be masculine (and many of these problematic traits are praised or encouraged). That's not to say that we need to do away with men or masculinity but we need to look at the positive and negative impact of each trait and action. Our culture can be too self-centered and focused on a single individual/family/group getting ahead and this advancement too often comes at the expense of others. As a culture we do need to cultivate a better sense of respect, concern and understanding while we minimize our notions of greed, prejudice and judgment. Overall this is an interesting book in terms of the gender concepts and social observations it presents. While not every argument is convincing, the commentary provides food for thought and works as a good starting point for social discussions to try and improve society as a whole.***3 out of 5 stars

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was taken by surprise to find that this feminist classic is told from the point of view of a man! However, the approach of 3 men experiencing this all-female society (and of course, the women are experiencing their first men!) worked very well. The book itself is an easy & fast read.

[scolgo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A short book that took me a while to finish. Unfortunately, too much exposition reduced this to an average read at best. I'm glad to have experienced this classic of feminist fiction but I hope my next book features a bit more excitement.

[missizicks · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Herland was a curious read. Perhaps if you're making a study of feminist literature over the past 100 years it might be something worth reading. As something fun to read, I'd say don't bother. Part treatise for Charlotte Perkins Gilman's vision for a feminist utopia, where for various reasons men no longer exist and women have evolved to reproduce by parthenogenesis, and part Boy's Own Adventure with a bizarre fixation on the usefulness of garments with many pockets, I was bored by most of it. I didn't share Gilman's ideal, particularly not one where there exists a form of eugenics that prevents those deemed 'unfit' from bearing children or, if they are permitted to reproduce, from raising their offspring in order to prevent their 'unfit' traits being normalised. In some ways the writing was quite clumsy and I had to remind myself of when it was written, how different women's lives were 100 years ago, and the broader point Gilman was trying to hammer home. In other ways, it was clever - the switch in perspective so that the three adventuring men who try to enter the matriarchal society have a similar experience to that of the women trying to break down the gender barriers of American patriarchal society at the time Gilman was writing, and the way they become increasingly fixed on their appearance as a way of asserting their masculinity, having been robbed, as they see it, of their natural male authority. Gilman did a reasonable job of inhabiting the minds of the male characters, even if they were a little broadly sketched. Terry is utterly unlikeable, a misogynist pig of the highest order. Van, the narrator, is a social scientist and therefore tries to approach everything rationally. Jeff is the eager to please, optimistic one, always looking for the good in everything, always trying to give people what he thinks they want. The men are like something out of a Ripping Yarn, though, and I wonder whether Gilman tried to create male characters that men would want to read, in the hope that her allegorical tale would then open their eyes to the lot of women. Some things left a bad taste - the eugenics I've mentioned, but also the attitude to people of different racial heritage, all described as savages, all portrayed as simple and child-like. I read up on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Yeah. Bit of a white supremacist. It both horrifies and confuses me that people who see themselves as a minority in terms of gender or sexuality can still view the colour of their skin as a symbol of superiority. Even setting those misgivings aside, the book was preachy, blinkered and not to my taste. I am a feminist. I believe that all humans are equal and therefore women should have equal rights and equal access to the same opportunities in life as men, and should be judged on ability and not on looks or some twisted idea of what is or isn't feminine behaviour. I think Gilman believed that, too. Where she loses me in this book is in advocating for a world where equality is achieved by eliminating everyone who doesn't fit a central idea of perfection.

[amymacevilly · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this for the Readercon Book Club, which I *finally* attended. I was surprised to find that another friend had read this in a Utopia/Dystopia class, but it is a utopia. The discussion pointed to the "lost world" genre as the form that Gilman was following/satirizing, esp. H. Rider Hagard's _She_. The discussion also drew a lot of connections between Gilman's own life and that in her Utopia. As with any utopia, the narrative is limited: it's really a work of ideas, and there are *a lot*. Gilman's Socialist, racist, sexual, and eugenic ideas are all present along with her feminist ones. It's intriguing that the culture that she imagines for Herland is centered around motherhood: instead of rejecting this role that women are limited to in our world, she amplifies it there. At the same time, she does away with sex and marriage: this is not a lesbian paradise. While she rejects some stereotypes of women, she engages in others. There are some really interesting critiques that are still relevant to contemporary American culture: the narrator describing our standard idea of feminity as simply "reflected masculinity" because it is defined by what appeals to the male is really intriguing.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Three male sexists discover an isolated country where only women live and have their assumptions about women challenged.Herland is a utopia, and like all utopias, it is much more about ideas than plot. The three guys do make a pathetic attempt to escape at one point, but when that is foiled, they settle down to learn about the religion, philosophy and other ideas espoused in Herland, and also to eventually get married. There are a lot of interesting ideas here, especially for the time in which it was written, such as on controlling reproduction and the place of religion in society. And sure, there are plenty of times I've daydreamed of living in a world without men. But there are problems with the all-female utopia that Gilman fails to address. For instance, in Herland the women all seem asexual, which seems to ignore a fundamental aspect of our nature in favor of combatting the sexual objectification of women. Also, there seems to be no conflict, which is difficult to imagine of any group of human beings living together, no matter what their gender. Finally, and most importantly, it's not practical. We must imagine ways women can achieve equality while still keeping men around, if only for the very practical reason that we are all one species who are all in this together--or at least, we should be. Still, I'd recommend Herland, a quick read, just for its historical value as an early work of feminism, even if does end avoid some of the more difficult questions and then ends rather abruptly.Read in 2015 for the SFFCat Challenge.

[kraysaulis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Herland" is, in a way, timeless. Considering how long ago it was written the language and situations can be applied to the modern world quite easily. I've read a lot of reviews on here saying that it isn't relevent to today's world and I think anyone who feels that way isn't really understanding of the feminist movement and the rights women are still fighting for. We may no longer feel we belong to men, but there are most definitely still men on this planet who feel we do. The character of Terry - the womanizing, dominant male - can be found in every bar, club and office in the world. I tutor in my college and the treatment I recieved last week from a male I was tutoring was definitely reflective of the gender bias and discrimination that still exists, and the power of the male ego.

The ending:

I took away a star because this book definitely could have been better. The language, though beautiful, was excessive at points. The foreshadowing suggested a much more climactic ending, and that just didn't happen.

[csweder · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is a lot to like about this book. First, it focuses on a society where women have been living together for thousands of years without war, poverty, jealousy, or disease. (And they somehow worked out the whole birth thing.)

What's more to love is how Gillman did it. The narrator is a man. A man who is recounting his beautiful year in Herland.

The only thing I feel this book is missing is what Ellador felt when introduced to our 'civilized' world. That would be a good book, but strays from the points Gillman was trying to make about our society: boo paternalism, question religion, equal rights, war is bad, use your brain, capitalism is bad/socialism is good.

With all of those themes: me gusta.

[sbloom42 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I gave up on this book 3/4 of the way through it. It was far too didactic. Maybe it was enlightening for the time it was written, but from a 21st century perspective it just reads as condescending.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"If they were only younger," he muttered between his teeth. "What on earth is a fellow to say to a regiment of old Colonels like this?"In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy."Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother.We looked for nervousness—there was none.For terror, perhaps—there was none.For uneasiness, for curiosity, for excitement—and all we saw was what might have been a vigilance committee of women doctors, as cool as cucumbers, and evidently meaning to take us to task for being there.Herland could have been quite dull if the dreadful Terry hadn't been there to provide some humour.

[stuart10er_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book grew on me slightly as I picked it into different levels. There is good work here - and a message to ponder. However, I find other elements in it that are horrifying - eugenics, superiourity of the Aryan race, 2 dimensional characters on all fronts. Basically this is a novel length political pamphlet. Three men discover a country entirely made up of women cut off from the rest of "civilization" for the last 2,000 years. They have a utopian (dystopian viewed now) society run and peopled entirely by women. Hilarity ensues. Not really - mostly staggeringly Rand-like soapboxing. Still the message has value, even if the vehicle is flawed.

[jami_leigh · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The only other Charlotte Perkins Gilman story I'd read was "The Yellow Wallpaper", which at least had a nice creep factor to it. This one is interesting in the same manner you might read a textbook. Which is to say, there are interesting bits in it, but it's not pleasurable. There was just no tension what so ever. Slogger.

[librarybrandy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've loved Charlotte Perkins Gilman since the first time I read The Yellow Wallpaper, but this was actually the first work of hers I've read besides that. (My love was somewhat shallow.)

In light of The Yellow Wallpaper, and in particular Gilman's own time spent subjected to the "rest cure" favored by patriarchal, early-twentieth-century society (no surprise she left her doctor-husband who forced it on her, is it?), Herland is a pretty complicated book, examining gender roles and assumptions of what femininity is, through the eyes of three men. (The three men who found Herland are sort of a Goldilocks trio: this one is too brutish, this one is too sentimental/worshiping, and this one--the narrator--is Just Right, as he's the sociologist who sees the women as People, not Potential Conquests of Goddesses.) It does run to the preachy sometimes, with long passages of anthropological fascination with the women's culture, but overall, I really enjoyed this. I would have liked to see what happens once they leave Herland, but for that I need to track down the sequel.

[the_hibernator · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

On an exploratory trip in "savage" lands, three young American men find a country composed entirely of women. As these men learn about the history and culture of Herland, they are at first dismayed but later impressed at the asexuality and absolute social perfection of these women. For the first time, they notice the flaws in their own society and feel ashamed. I'm having a really hard time deciding what to think about Herland. I tend to prefer plot-driven novels, or at the very least character-driven novels. Herland was neither plot- nor character-driven...it was concept driven. Gilman was trying to convey a set of principles using an allegorical dialog. Gilman felt that women are subjugated by their sexuality. Because their economic happiness depends on their ability to attract men, they resort to jealousies and obsessions with fripperies. In Herland, there are no men...therefore they do not depend upon their sexuality to land them a desirable place in life--they depend only upon hard work and virtue. Since there are no men, they have no reason to be jealous, catty, gossipy, or hysterical. Thus, they are perfect. For the most part, I did not enjoy reading Herland. I found the dialog grating due to the sickening perfection of the women and the irksome sexism of the men. The men's characters were very flat--their purpose was simply to present a contrast to the perfection of Herland. The three men came in three stereotypical varieties: gentlemanly to the point of sexism, brutishly sexist, and imperfect-but-somewhat-objective observer. Other than these characteristics, the men had no personality at all. The women also lacked character partly due to their obnoxious perfection, but also due to their nature as a social "we" instead of being unique individuals. In other words, the perfection and socialism merged them into one character with many names (with the slight exception of Alima who brought Terry's brutish behavior on herself by having a "far-descended atavistic trace of the more marked femaleness, never apparent till Terry called it out.")I think Herland was an interesting thought experiment, but I personally didn't enjoy reading it. If your'e interested in concept-driven allegories, especially feminist and socialist allegories, then this is the book for you.

[drachenbraut23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I read the book I tried to keep in mind that this book was written by a radical feminist , at a time where women still were considered something like "second class". She saw that if society was to allow women the right of full "humanity", that the changes had to start at the root of society. These wishes (demands) have been, IMO, well reflected in Herland.The story starts with three man trying to discover a society run entirely by woman. The first one is Terry, a rich womanizer, macho who truly believes women have to be subservient to man, and definately would never accept a woman as his equal. Still, a very strong general opinion of men during that time period. The second man is Jeff, the dreamer, very poetic, who idolizes women to the point, that he thinks women should not perform any physical or mental labor, and require to be sheltered at all times. The last guy in the lot is Vandyck a sociologist only interested in human activities.Arriving in Herland they find nothing the way they expect it, they thought they will find a society of women who need to be civilized - in their opinion women can't be civilized without men showing them how to do it. But what do they find? A highly civilized world, run by well educated women, who managed to achieve a thriving all-female society through parthenogenic birth. A perfect world, where everyone is happy, everyone is educated at the same standard, no disease, a community with equal opportunies. Terry finds it impossible to adjust to this world and tries at every turn to dominate the women, he feels they are not women, they are to masculine, they have no right to be as they are, views them as objects without any substance to them, and that the Herland women are abnormal. Jeff settles in well and adores the women and sort of views them like prized goddesses. Vandyck is the only one of the three who enjoys this world and tries to learn as much as he can.All in all, this was a very interesting read which explores the differences between a patriarchal and matriarchal society, trying to show the need for a balanced gender performance, demonstrating the importance of accepting women as equals. Considering that this is a very short book Perkins managed to get quite a few points across, aside from it being about feminism, it also discusses religion, the importance of democracy and socialism.What I didn't like in the book was that some parts were very racist, for example the Herlander women developed a breeding programme to further the purity of their race. So, what does that say - was that her opinion? Or just something, she wanted to address racism with?

[tronella_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So these three guys are exploring and hear rumours of a land entirely populated by women. They go there, learn that it is some kind of amazing utopia, and are sexist and creepy in a variety of ways! It was interesting to read, especially how the narrator seems to think of himself as being the most enlightened of the three guys and not being too sexist, but actually still being an idiot about pretty much everything. There isn't a whole lot of plot, and the whole miraculous parthenogenesis thing was a bit strange. I enjoyed it, though, I suppose.

[nocto_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This was written in 1915 and is an account of three male explorers discovering a land entirely composed of women. With no plot to speak of, and some dreadful writing, it's pretty much just an exposition of how lovely an all female world would be. I'd give it a miss if I were you!

[kaelirenee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A rare modern Utopian novel in a world of dystopias. An interesting conversation on women's and men's roles at the turn of the century, especially considering it was written pre-Suffrage.

[wandering_star_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Early (Victorian) feminist sci-fi, in which three Victorian males discover a land which has been all-female for two thousand years. The three men have different preconceptions about women (one is a Lothario, another has an exaltedly idealistic view of the feminine), but none of them are expecting what they find. I found this very amusing to start with. For example, the men are surprised when they meet large numbers of women who are in their forties - none of them had pictured anything but young and attractive women. I think that would probably be the same today.But as the men discover more about the land, it becomes apparent that it is a place where everything is perfect - a paradise on earth. And then it started to get kind of boring. I was waiting for the moment when the dark side of it all was revealed... but it turned out there wasn't one.So I would say this was an interesting historical document, but it was too overstated. Part of what Gilman was trying to say was that if women were allowed to, they could be full members of humanity and not just fluffy creatures who are only interested in flirtation and later children. I'd have been happy with that.

[chellerystick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is a little wooden and strange, not high fiction. However, there are two good reasons to read it: her view on what women were not allowed to do, and her development of three different kinds of men. Indeed, her description makes clear that gender norms limit men as well as women, although on average they still had more power and choices.

[the_awesome_opossum · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Herland is a small, inaccessible utopia of about three million women, who live without men entirely. They have children by parthenogenesis, and devote themselves to making a perfect environment for these beloved children. Unfortunately, one day their society is disrupted by three British students, who heard about the society second-hand and had to see it for themselves.Herland is filled with strong and capable women, and the men from our own society, full of chivalrous but patronizing notions of women, have a difficult time acclimating. Gilman discusses women's roles in society, contrasting the utopia of Herland to our own rather shameful existence in comparison. And although this book was written nearly a century ago, some of it still struck a bit too close to home for how we perceive and act out gender differences. It's a very small and unassuming book, but full of a lot of thoughtful and still-relevant ideas on feminism

[book58lover · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Although fiction, I used this book in my class when discussing utopias to point out how societies construct themselves and how members and outsiders react. Instead of falling apart like most utopian societies this one actually worked. It worked so well that outsiders couldn't understand it, couldn't break through their own ideas and experiences to truely experience it.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Oh, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, if we were in Herland with six doughty Herlandians (Herlandettes? Herlanderinnen?) to help us, I never would have missed connecting with my friend tonight and waited around in the cold, or had a gun pulled on me on Friday, or fought with my girlfriend on the Great Wall, or developed a stomach problem, would I?No, I mean, you can't review this like a proper book, just because it's lived on in such a way that its reputation precedes it and you're unlikely to be approaching it without some foreknowledge of how silly it really is - Aristasia with less sexy times and consumerism and more weird big love for eugenics. But it is less devoid of literary merit than "The Sun Grows Cold," (which I think is still my lowest-rated book on this thing) and of course it's interesting to see the weird different way this eternal trope gets expressed by a WWI-era suffraggette as opposed to Thucydides or whoever first wrote about the Amazons - or, as mentioned above, the Aristasians (if I put it in twice maybe you'll google it and be as happy knowing these things exist as me). It was also somehow gratifying to know that Gilman's 1915 take on women as a whole, their development and destiny, was just as reductive as - indeed, identical to - mine at 19, in 1999. We truly have come a long way, baby.