Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

        In Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, three men go on an exploratory mission to a remote part of the world where natives insist that there is a country comprised solely of women that is inaccessible to outsiders. The three explorers, a doctor (Jeff), a rich hobbyist (Terry), and a sociologist (Vandyck, our narrator), disbelieve the rumors that an all-female society could exist, given the necessity of men to reproduce the race, but are determined to find out the truth. The men go into this adventure with different assumptions of what an all-female society will be like, each according to their dispositions. Terry, a man who thinks that all women yearn to be mastered, believes that there either must be men hidden somewhere, or that these women will be in need of rescue. Jeff, who idealizes women as all things feminine and peaceful, imagines that this society must be perfect (and is very nearly right). Vandyck, whose views of women are somewhere between Terry’s and Jeff’s, makes few assumptions and cherishes the idea of studying such a society.

        When the men arrive in what Van calls Herland, they are taken captive by women who are athletic, intelligent, and utterly unafraid of them. These women assign the men guards and tutors who teach them the language so that the women can eventually interrogate the men about the outside world. But the more that Van discovers how utterly advanced the Herland society is, the more he has trouble justifying the cultural practices of his own society.

        In Herland, there is no disease, no crime, and no drama. This is the result of 2,000 years of deliberate cultural advancement. After a natural disaster and a social uprising eliminated all of the men from a society hemmed in by cliffs, the remaining women believed that they would die out until the great miracle occurred: a single woman gave virgin birth (parthenogenesis). She gave birth five times, and each of her five daughters gave birth in turn to five daughters, starting a race of New Women. This gave rise to a new religion devoted to the concept of Motherhood, which defines all of the goals and values in Herland. The highest goal for all women of Herland is to serve the future generations. The end result is a utopia of sisterhood and Motherhood where there is no concept of shame, danger, or evil.

        The women of Herland have deep, penetrating minds and are able to observe the logical fallacies inherent in many customs of patriarchal society, as well as the numerous moral failings of human society outside of their utopia. Van finds himself reconsidering the sense of moral superiority he feels about other societies as an American when faced with their ideal society. Terry, on the other hand, cannot get over his expectations of how women ought to behave—namely, as the possessions of men. These women do not display any of the qualities that Terry believes are feminine, such as modesty, submissiveness, and coquettishness. He also expects that all women are prone to vanity, pettiness, jealousy, and hysteria, but finds that the women of Herland are instead pragmatic, socially conscious, full of the spirit of sisterhood, and remarkably calm-tempered. This leads Van to conclude that “feminine charms” are not inherently feminine, but rather are “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.” I wholly agree with this sentiment, and think that, like Terry does, many men in contemporary society are responding with aggression to the changes in modern gender expression as both men AND women realize that gender is a social construct that only serves to harm individuals who do not adhere to societal expectations.

        One thing I found especially interesting and thought provoking was how the men try to defend the benefits of competition as a boost to industry, but the women’s questions expose the underlying ideology of industry, which is that one must have an incentive to work, or contribute, to society. This poses a strong contrast to the women of Herland, who are united in Motherhood to invest in the future. The men admit that it is true that their women are motivated by motherhood as well, but insist that men need competition to motivate them. This is obviously reductive, but still points out the deficiency of a society motivated by competition when contrasted with the vision of what a united society could accomplish. The women of Herland have a unanimity of purpose, that of coordinating to further the race with each successive generation. The mothers are not invested only in their own child, but in all. In fact, in Herland, mothers only give birth and breastfeed their children; the education of children is reserved only for specialists. Terry insists that their version of motherhood is not “motherly” at all, as he assumes women should be absorbed in their own baby and value it more than others’. But what could be more motherly, the women of Herland insist, than ensuring that a child is raised by those most qualified to do so?

        This and several other concepts in Gilman’s utopia are controversial. Another example of controversial ideology is how the women of Herland actively practice eugenics in the form of not allowing substandard specimens of their race to propagate. They also practice population control by only allowing each woman to have a single child, with exceptions for women who produce "high quality" children.

        It is clear that this is a book with an agenda: Gilman insinuates that social reform led by feminist ideals will rid the world of conflict and social ills such as poverty. Jeff is clearly Gilman’s idea of an ideal, feminist man. He sides with the women of Herland in all things. To use the sociology term, Jeff “goes native” in Herland and adopts all of their beliefs and customs. Van also acclimates well to Herland society, but encounters difficulties in his marriage to Ellador when she insists that sex is for procreation only, which she and the women of Herland consider a holy sacrament. One thought that I had when reading about the Herland women’s opposition to sex for pleasure rather than recreation was that Gilman did her characters a disservice by insinuating that women are not sexual creatures. It made the all-female utopia less sympathetic to the male characters, and less sympathetic to me as a reader. There is even an implication that women who had sexual desire were bred out of the society for being unmotherly in the Herland sense of the term.

        Overall, I absolutely delighted in reading this book. It reads almost like an ethnology, which I found fascinating. The book was endlessly thought provoking, and made me reconsider aspects of gender and culture that I took for granted. I find it really impressive that this book was written in the early 1900s. There are certainly problematic elements in the book, but that need not discount the many thoughtful points that Gilman makes about the sometimes distorted values of patriarchal society. I liked it so much that I plan to read the sequel, which covers what happens when Van takes his wife into the outside world.