Novels

Herland

How would a society composed exclusively of women function? This is the question Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes up in Herland (1915), a tale about three male adventurers who go exploring (and are held captive) in this unique, highly civilized, well-protected country. I chose this title for the Decades Challenge because “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of the most gripping short stories I’ve ever read, and though this novel doesn’t rise to the same level, it proves an intriguing meditation on femininity, masculinity, motherhood, and what it takes to make a healthy society.

Herland is a utopian novel in the same vein as Thomas More’s Utopia, or Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Most of the stories in this tradition, it seems to me, work best as satires – they expose our foibles by poking fun at them. The three young men in this tale are extreme male “types”: the narrator, Vandyck Jennings, is (conveniently) a sociologist; his companion Jeff Margrave is an emotional, artistic doctor; and Terry Nicholson is a hyper-masculine conquistador and chauvinist interested in “facts” and “ologies.”

These three seek out Herland deliberately, compelled by visions of harems and fluttering eyelashes. What they find instead is a tribe of Valkyrie-like women: strong, athletic, stern, kind, nonviolent (which is where my Valkyrie comparison falls apart), and unfailingly patient. Their solidarity is impenetrable. They’re Gilman’s ideal of motherhood, which is the gravitational center of Herland. “You see, they were Mothers,” Vandyck tells us, “not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People. Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere ‘instinct,’ a wholly personal feeling; it was — a religion.”

What does this mean for the kind of femininity they exude? This is a subject of ongoing debate among the three young men. Jeff worships them; Terry despises them, insisting that they’re all old maids; the narrator struggles to make up his mind about this breed of women that never argue (they think in terms of “we”), are never jealous (there are no men to incite competetiveness), and are utterly self-sufficient physically. They’re strong, they’re highly intelligent, and they are “progenetic” – i.e. they reproduce by virgin birth. Population control? They’ve got it covered. Agriculture? Medicine? Philosophy? History? Covered. All of it. They’re even more highly evolved than Stepford – and they operate by a scale of values that couldn’t be more different.

In this country of women, men are not needed for any of the essentials. So what happens to them in Herland? Do they have anything to add? Are they able to appreciate a highly organized, cooperative, brilliantly designed, perfectly cared-for culture created by women? What about sex in a land where it’s neither necessary for reproduction nor part of the relational texture of the culture? Gilman plays with all of these questions, critiquing the attitudes and characteristics of maleness and male-centrism.

I didn’t mind the book, but I wasn’t sorry to finish it. Unlike “The Yellow-Wallpaper,” which is narrated convincingly from within a female point of view, this story’s male narrator never develops into more than a mouthpiece. Herland is so perfect it seems ponderous after awhile. And as someone who adores my children, but doesn’t swoon over idealized Motherhood, I wasn’t enthralled with Gilman’s vision. Though there are a few insights into the tension between male and female that made me chuckle, on the whole the story goes on for too long. I value it as a snapshot of America from an early 20th century feminist lens. But despite having a premise that could make for a fun story, it’s too heavy-handed, and too lacking in true satirical wit, to be very enjoyable to read.

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