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Reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland: A Lost Feminist Utopian Novel allowed me to experience uncomfortable internal conflicts. Through Herland, Gilman presents us with what she believes a world without male-dominated ideas would look like and shows us the possible heights women could reach if they were not confronted with the interference of male oppression and western society’s notions of gender roles. The mythical society Gilman creates in Herland is everything that western society is not with regard to how it views and treats women. Though Herland was written almost 100 years ago it still manages to make a 21st century reader scrutinize how women are raised and valued in western society. While much of Gilman’s feminism takes on the tone of “girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice,” Herland ultimately supports, in unassuming style, the author’s unstated premise that western society does not encourage women to reach their full potential.
As I read this novel, part of myself could not help wanting to live in Herland, for it would not be just a utopia for women, it would be Valhalla to liberals as well. What left-winger wouldn’t want to reside in a place where the inhabitants live in harmony with nature, nurture one another with love, kindness, and cleanliness, and never allows a class-conscious society to develop? ... But while Herland may have successfully appealed to some of my more liberal sensitivities, the more I grasped Gilman’s purpose in writing Herland, the more it made me cringe inside.
Feminist philosophy holds that social forces, not abilities, determine the positions of men and women in a society. While written in 1915, Gilman’s Herland “depicts a utopian vision that successfully incorporates [this] feminist philosophy and critique; it is still a relevant and powerful model of feminist thought and community” (Clemmons, 1999).
Approximate Word count = 1542
Approximate Pages = 6.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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