Herland 1

In class, we have begun reading and discussing Charlotte Perkins Gilman's (wow, that’s a mouthful) Herland, and it might have been written one hundred years ago (1915), but it somehow still applies. Herland is a utopia, isolated and full of only women and female children. It is an ideal society without violence and conflict. The women are not what is commonly thought of as pretty, and they are physically strong. Three men hear about this country through rumors, folktales that people only half believed. So, the trio embarks on a journey to find this land, all with slightly different expectations of what it will be like, but when they get there, they’re basically all just like, “wtf.” It is narrated by one of the travelers, a man, which is a statement in and of itself, Vandyck “Van” Jennings. Having a man narrate makes people interested. If a woman was talking about this cool land of ladies and commenting on how impressive it was, no one would bat an eye. She’s a girl, of course she thinks and all girls country is cool. But a man saying it’s cool? Well then, it really must be something. It’s the same effect as a white person wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt. Of course black people think that black lives matter, because they are a member of the group. It’s when you get someone that is not a member of the group, a white person in the BLM community, that can really make a statement, because they are not what you expected. Gilman definitely did this purposefully. When she wrote this novel, she was not simply writing for entertainment. She wanted to make a political statement. After reading five chapters, I am hooked on Herland. There are some things that I agree with, others that I completely disagree with, but it is a good and very interesting read no matter how you feel about the ideas within it.