Herland (novel)
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 Recent paperback edition by "Signet" |
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| Author | Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Utopian, Feminist novel |
| Publisher | The Forerunner (serial) & Pantheon Books (in book form) |
| Released | 1915 (in serial) & 1979 (in book form) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 147 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | NA & ISBN 0-394-50388-0 (first edition, hardback) |
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society comprised entirely of Aryan women who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination. It first appeared as a serial in Perkin's monthly magazine Forerunner.
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[edit] Plot summary
Herland was written from 1909 to 1916 and originally published in "The Forerunner", a magazine edited and written by Perkins. This was a time when women were fighting for equal rights, and the novel's core message is that of social reform. The utopian nation of Herland is used as a symbol to show the capabilities, greatness, and potential of womankind and, just as the three male leads (Jeff, Van and Terry), the reader by the novel's end realizes that women are not inferior to their male counterparts. All three of the male characters learn over time that Herland greatly surpasses their own male-built civilization. It is void of poverty, war, and even garbage. At first, all three men are suspicious of Herland and its women, and think they will find a society wracked by chaos and disorder, since they believe that women are not intelligent and organized, or capable of surviving without their male-halves. Jeff, Van, and Terry, then, represent the achievements of our civilization, which has been constructed and defined by men, and is therefore imperfect, full of suffering, war, disease, and other terrible atrocities. The fact that the female inhabitants of Herland can reproduce asexually, and that their utopia far surpasses anything men have built, satirizes the male gender by implying that women do not really need men, and that they can do everything men can do, perhaps even better. At the novel's end, Jeff and Van do not want to leave this perfect utopia for their own male-constructed civilization, and even seem repulsed with where they have come from. These two characters grow to realize that Herland is an ideal place, and, because they deride their own civilization, it implies that womenhood is greater than manhood (this, however, does not mean that Gilman herself believes that women are in every way better than men, simply that, to make her statement of social reform in favor of women, she must present them in as favorable a light as possible).
It is interesting to note that Jeff and Terry are each at different "ends" of the male gender. Jeff is almost feminine at times and is not afraid to show his emotions. Terry is hyper-masculine and has the male instinct of the desire to dominate (hence his attempt at rape). The protagonist, Van, however, is strangely at the middle of the divide between the male and female sex, and has the attributes of both. Because he is the half-way point between the male and female, Van is an ideal narrator since he has insight (or at least develops it as the novel progresses) into both genders and thus presents a less biased view than one of the others would if he was the narrator of the story.
[edit] Major themes
Of course, gender and defining it is a central theme in Herland, and Gilman seems to be saying that gender is socially constructed rather than something definitive and unchangeable. For instance, the women of Herland are loving mothers, yet are also strong, independent, and, in some ways, have masculine qualities, such as having short hair. Jeff is in some ways feminine, as stated before, and out of the three male leads, seems least afraid of speaking his mind and showing his feelings. It is not unintentional that, when the three male characters are imprisoned by the Herlanders, their hair grows long, which Gilman does to symbolically link them to women kind. Gender reversal is used throughout the novel: the women have short hair, the men have long hair; the women teach while the men learn; the women are physically stronger than the men, etc.
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
Because Herland depicts Aryan separatism as a component of Gilman's ideal society, it has been characterized by some as a work of racism. Also, since her arguments are not always well-defined and her portrayal of the men in the story is slanted, it has been characterized by some as a work of sexism, perhaps even of misandry.
Gilman followed Herland with a sequel, With Her in Ourland.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Herland Electronic Text
- Herland, available at Project Gutenberg.
