Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

Denise Knight (SUNY, Cortland)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1915

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Romance
Utopian / Dystopian

Cultural Identities

Feminist

Resources

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First serialized in Gilman's self-published magazine,

The Forerunner

Herland

has been praised as an important feminist utopian romance since its recovery and republication in 1979.

The novel begins with three male explorers discovering a lost civilization inhabited only by women who reproduce parthenogenetically. The men hold traditional views about the inferiority of women, opining that “there must be men” in Herland since it becomes apparent that they have arrived in a “civilized country”. Their conventional assumptions are quickly put to the test when they are captured and arrested by a group of Herlander women, who subdue the men with chloroform, undress them, and put them to bed. Since gender roles are nonexistent in Herland, the frame of reference through which the men have

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312 words

Citation: Knight, Denise. "Herland". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4817, accessed 24 November 2024.]