Herland (Dover Thrift Editions)

Back in 1915 when HERLAND was written, women were widely considered weak and uncreative and had the sole responsibility of taking care of home, family, and being socialites. So, when 3 young American men in the novel encounter a country comprised entirely of women, they look everywhere to find out where they must have hidden their men. Of course, being emperialist men, they think it should be easy to conquer and subdue a country of women. However, they are looking at these "women" through the eyes of their own culture, not realizing their full potential as "humans". These are women who have such little land to support their people that they've only kept and cultivated food-bearing trees like most people would cultivate a garden and who have learned how to have children without men. Some women! Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this novel after leaving her own husband and home, going off to prove that women are as capable as making a living for themselves as men are. I can only imagine the stir this book must have caused among the feminists of the day. Gilman has written a very interesting book with only one minor flaw. She keeps on building the reader up to this "big thing" that the women of Herland evidently have in store for the men who have dropped by bi-plane into their perfect little world. It turns out to not be such a shocking thing after all and pretty obvious in fact. Despite this slight transgression, the book is superb. HERLAND is a short book that is surprisingly quick-paced and imaginative. It's a gem of a book to add to anyone's collection.

Oh, this ones just all types of insane fun. Written near a century ago, Gilman has her 3 male protagonists crashland an early plane into a secret uptopia where men don't exist.

And what a wonderful world it would be, too. Gentle, highly evolved, all needs met, no pain, entirely communist (you can't even raise your own kids there). No icky sex (babies are born when a woman WISHES super hard for one). The women of Herland ease the men into their blissful way of life, the men come to realize what utter simpleton pigs they are (including realizing sex is awful and subjugating) and likely happiness for all, but Gilman never quite finished it.

Three American explorers stumble upon a small country they dub Herland that's populated totally by women. For about two thousand years, the women have developed an intelligent, productive, perfect society, and with the entrance of the three men, they begin learning about the world outside their realm. The three men find that the women of Herland are ignorant (to their minds) of sexuality and gender roles, but the women are far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of education, child-rearing, population control, and agriculture. To fulfill their own curiosity and learn more, three women of Herland agree to become married to the three men. Unfortunately one of the men has not been able to overcome his own prejudices about how women ought to behave, and with one act he brings their time in Herland to an end. This fascinating story is decades ahead of most feminist, humanist works, and gives every reader an inspiring vision of how the world could be.

Like most utopias, Herland hasn't aged well. What sounds like heaven to one generation seems more like hell to another. What makes this book most interesting is its artifact status in the evolution of feminism.
Most modern-day feminists would, I believe, be horrified to be plunked down in Herland to spend their lives: a world without coitus, where motherhood is the end-all and be-all of a woman's existence. There is no Sapphic hanky-panky going on among the inhabitants of this uterine utopia; the very concept of sexual pleasure is foreign to these ladies. Where feminists once wanted motherhood without sex, today they are more likely to want sex without motherhood.
In addition, Herlanders are unabashedly pro-life and horrified when the idea of abortion is raised. A woman's right to choose is as unthinkable in their world as a topless bar would be.
On the other hand, there is plenty of it-takes-a-village-to-raise-a-child; every inhabitant of Herland is a career woman; and when the men raise the issue of their wives taking their names, the brides-to-be scornfully refuse.
As a political manifesto, Herland cannot be taken seriously in the modern world, yet it maintains its importance both as historical artifact, illuminating the thought of the early 20th century, and as evidence that -isms are not static but constantly evolving.

On the eve of WWI, three American male explorers stumble onto an all-female society somewhere in the distant reaches of the earth. Unable to believe their eyes, they promptly set out to find some men, convinced that since this is a civilized country--so there must be men running it! So begins this creative, fun, and fascinating intelligent utopian novel, a journey through a whole experience of what "masculine" and "feminine" mean - and in many ways as on target today as when it was written 70 years ago.

Well recommended!

A wonderfully entertaining, intelligent and well written utopian work! Herland creates and presents a view of a culture without men. It is amazing to see the religion, laws, norms and ways of life in this all female culture, and how three very different men adapt to it in three very different ways.

I read it due to its utopian genre, but many women will enjoy it for the interesting way the all female world is. Once you have read it, pass it to a female teen for her opinion. Could be an interesting experiment.

Have you ever wondered what our world would be like without testosterone? Herland gives us some insight into such a hypothetical world. What would the crime level be like? How about wars? Rape? All of these terrible things are often initiated by men. Although a female-only society would probably be much less utopian than Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, it is still interesting to speculate. Even the late Dr. Richard Dehann, a doctor and Bible teacher, speculates that original sin is inherited through the father; so maybe Ms. Gilman's land is not so far-fetched. It still makes interesting reading. If you are interested in female-dominated societies, check out Suzie McKee Charna's Holdfast Chronicles, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Free the stores of Darkover, and/or Joanna Russ's Female Man.

A hidden all-female society is discovered by three male explorers who are now forced to re-examine their assumptions about women's roles in society.

Delightfully humorous account of a feminist utopia! An early-20th-century writer's once-unconventional views on male-female behavior, motherhood, individuality, and other topics are presented as a hidden world, and experienced by 3 flabbergasted men!

Very intelligent, funny and well presented, and will be enjoyed by both men and women!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (Dover, 1909)
I always found it odd that Gilman, a prolific writer during her life, had become so obscure less than a century later as to be remembered for only a single short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper." Now, having had the distinct displeasure of having read a second piece of Gilman's writing, I have to wonder if that obscurity isn't well-deserved.
Herland is everything that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is not. It is boring, overly expository, dry as dust, and most importantly, didactic. It is didactic in the same way your history teacher who spoke in a monotone is didactic; you end up hating the delivery so much that whatever's being said gets tuned out along with the noise. It doesn't help that Herland is a vastly inferior knockoff of such nineteenth-century fantastic-journey novels as Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, James DeMille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, or Doyle's The Lost World. All three of those novels had the same generally socially conscious bent as does Herland, and held up a dystopian land to our own to show us where our own civilization is lacking. But all three of them (even Poe, who despised the novel form and never wrote in it again) had a basic understanding of the structure of the adventure novel and how to keep things moving while passing along their message about what's wrong with society. Gilman lacks this facility, and what's worse, she's of that strip of author who feels that, in order to make sure the message is clearly heard by the reader, she must go out of her way and add a clarifying sentence. After all, the reader is far too stupid to pick up on inferences.
The popularity of The Yellow Wallpaper and the obscurity of Gilman's other work cannot, of course, be dismissed as understood after reading only one of her other works. But Herland certainly doesn't have me straining at the leash to go looking for anything else Gilman wrote. Uniformly awful. (zero)

The stunning dichotemy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Herland" exists in Gilman's attempt to present her fictional civilization as a type of Utopia, while instead creating a civilization founded on such loathsome aspects of humanity as pursuit of one "Superior Race", justifying imprisonment for selfish purposes, ecological tampering and perpetuated stereotypes regarding men and women.
Herland, a civilization of only women and girl-children, who reproduce through immaculate conception and produce only female children, reflects Adolph Hitler's belief in societal "cleansing" and pursuit of a superior race. Women in Herland, a place where women are stereotypically all longing for no more in life than to reproduce and pop out babies, are expected to produce no more than one baby each, due to limited resources and land. Any woman who posesses personality traits that do not fit the rigid framework of Herland society, are point blank asked not to reproduce. It is made clear that any personality trait outside of the societally-desired norm of unrealistic goddess-like calm, reserve and mommy-ism is undesirable. Therefore, they "weed out" any differentiation and individualism, establishing a clone-like state of "We're so pure we float" women.
The narrator of Herland is Van. He and his two buddies have gone exploring the myth of Herland and landed by plane just there. Exercising a stereotype that doesn't seem to fit, three beautiful, young women are sent out to act as sirens, and lure the men. The problem with this part of Gilman's story, is that supposedly the society has not had any knowledge of or contact with men for thousands of years. How then would they know that men would be so attracted and play chump to this lure? --Be that as it may, again, we see Gilman using women and basing this on the stereotype that young women are to be used as jezebels, temptresses, while the older women are naturally the wise ones, described as "the colonels" by the men in jest. Second female stereotype: A mature woman is a crone. She is not attractive to men, but does have wisdom and authority. Of course there are no young, attractive women on the council of "colonels". Young, pretty women are of course, flighty and stupid and not in positions requiring wisdom and authority (read: sarcasm).
Van and his two fellow-explorers, Jeff and Terry, are apprehended by being rushed by women and anesthetized with ether. Does this say "Peaceful Utopia" ? I didn't read it that way. The men are imprisoned and guarded. They are forced to tutor the "colonels" in English and to learn the parlance of Herland, so that they might better communicated with the colonels and be of more use to their self-concerned purposes. It is apparent that the men want to leave and go home. They attempt to escape. The women spy on them from the treetops, unknown to the men, almost toying with them this way. They observe them, hungry and desperate and wanting to go home. When the women's curiosity in observation is satiated, they drag the men back and double up on the guards. The men are held prisoner in Herland for about a year. This imprisonment of human beings for personal experiment/education in sociology circumvents Gilman's attempt to paint a picture of a superior society.
In closing, getting through Herland was a labor, not of love, but of college course assingment. I found these women to reflect stereotypes about women (all women love cats, all women want to be mommies, young women are temptress-sirens, mature women are wise old crones) and other unlikable traits: eliminating indigenous animal and plant life that they made judgements about, tampering with ecology. I also thought the three men were very narrow-minded-ly created compilations of male stereotypes. It was all I could do to even finish reading this book.

I know that "Herland" receives quite a bit of praise and is highly regarded. In my opinion, the work doesn't bear up under these accolades. The story is down right boring, which is disappointing considering how engaging Gilman's short stories and other works are. The plot is odd and the message that Gilman is trying to convey is lost. I saw another reviewer call this work a satire, but I would strongly disagree. Gilman did not intend "Herland" to be a satire. She was attempting to show that women were more adept at "social housekeeping" than men were.

Unless you have to read it, there are many other and better Gilman pieces to absorb your attention with.

I enjoyed Herland and found it to be a representation of what an only women centered culture would be like. The male characters were men with different ideas about women so naturally the most chauvinistic man had the hardest time adapting. The book emphasizes the imperfections of 20th century life. The contrasts are stark. The books ending is frustrating.

A beautiful and thorough examination of utopia populated entirely by women, through the prism of an intelligent and educated young man. The writing is engaging and entertaining while managing to present the philosophy of the author convincingly. The only shortcoming to the ideas presented in the book is that no reason is given as to why such a utopian civilization would develop simply due to the lack of any men.
Most entertaining is the behavior of the women of Ms. Gilman's utopia. In stark and glaring contrast to contemporary feminism, the women of Herland deify motherhood, adore children, and are shocked to horror at the very idea of abortion; androcide is unthinkable, even as punishment for a crime. Indeed, an important book to history and philosophy.

I came across this work while researching Utopian and Dystopia Lit in college and it was love at first read. It's rare to find a piece of utopian lit, much less feminist utopian lit written in this period. Yes, some have problems the the lack of modern feminist thought found in Herland, but for me, it was refreshing to find a work in which women are portrayed as intelligent, level-headed and, well, portrayed at all. And the added bonus for me was seeing a "lighter, happier" side to Gilman's writing. It is a must read for all fans of utopian lit.

'Herland' is hardly a cracking read, but it's interesting as a feminist-historical text. It's worth reading, but for the love of Mike get a different edition. This cover is utterly hideous and completely at odds with the ethos of the story. Why would a female-only society, where dress is utilitarian and reproduction asexual, tart themselves up in pink eyeshadow and mascara that would make even an overly-flamboyant drag queen quail?

My husband and I both have degrees in literature so we are avid readers. Combined we’ve already read most of the classics, but reread this after watching the beginning of the remake of “Wonder Woman.” This is a quintessential piece in Feminist Literature and is intriguing as it is profound....