Delightfully humorous account of a feminist utopia in which 3 male explorers stumble upon an all-female society. An early-20th-century writer's once-unconventional views on male-female behaviour, motherhood, individuality, other topics. A prominent turn-of-the-century social critic and lecturer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is perhaps best known for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," a chilling study of a woman's descent into insanity, and Women and Economics, a classic of feminist theory that analyses the destructive effects of women's economic reliance on men. In Herland, a vision of a feminist utopia, Gilman employs humor to engaging effect in a story about three male explorers who stumble upon an all-female society isolated somewhere in South America. Noting the advanced state of the civilization they've encountered, the visitors set out to find some males, assuming that since the country is so civilized, "there must be men." A delightful fantasy, the story enables Gilman to articulate her then-unconventional views of male-female roles and capabilities, motherhood, individuality, privacy, the sense of community, sexuality, and many other topics. Decades ahead of her time in evolving a humanistic, feminist perspective, Gilman has been rediscovered and warmly embraced by contemporary feminists. An articulate voice for both women and men oppressed by the social order of the day, she adeptly made her points with a wittiness often missing from polemical writings. This inexpensive edition of Herland will charm readers with the tale's mischievous, ironic outlook.
Industry Reviews
It should be time for a full-scale biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose contributions to feminist and socialist thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries now regularly come to light in even the most desultory women's studies programs. She is best known for the novel The Yellow Wallpaper (a work of pioneering insight into the relationship between male-dominated psychotherapy and women's emotional disorders) and the still-challenging Women and Economics. Herland, we are informed in Ann J. Lane's introduction, was serialized in 1915 in Gilman's monthly magazine The Forerunner and followed by the sequel With Her in Ourland. As Utopian fantasies go, it is decidedly third-rate, but it does afford a fascinating glimpse into her particular blend of feminist and socialist ideas. Three American explorers discover a hidden kingdom of women, who have known nothing but parthenogenesis and peace for two thousand years. Ignorant alike of competition, libido, or patriotism, they live by an ethos they call "Motherhood" - not a private instinct "thwarted by conditions" or "concentrated in personal devotion to a few," but a national answer to the question of "how to make the best kind of people." The concept of private gain is as unknown as that of psychosis, and the community has merely to understand the best course of action - for example, limitations of population - to pursue it. Worthy though these notions are, it would take a novelist of powers far more remarkable than Gilman's to make this sort of fictional embodiment sound anything but goody-goody. And notwithstanding Lane's loud insistence on the hilarity of the attempt to comment on prevailing social mores, the satire is for the most part both thin and monotonous ("And do no men wear feathers in their hats?" "Do your women have no names before they are married?"). So this is a document for which rather large allowances have to be made, but it may well stimulate a demand for the reissue of more of Gilman's writings. (Kirkus Reviews)
