HERLAND BY GILMAN

Challenging Cultures Influence and Stereotypes Against Women

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Feminist critic and author, born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut.
Her father abandoned their family, forcing his wife and daughter to live in poverty and
move frequently
Charlotte was a voracious reader and self taught
Separated from husband in 1888 and moved to CA; left child with husband
This was scandalous at the time
Advocated economic independence for women in writings
Became feminist lecturer, magazine publisher, writer, economist, social reformer
Ahead of her time
Committed suicide after she learned she had breast cancer in 1935.
Her works were rediscovered during the Feminist movements of the 60s

UTOPIC VISION OF HERLAND

A society free of womens exploitation and poverty where all individuals
are equal regardless of their sex and they have no desire to excel
individually but contribute for the greater good of the community.
We were now well used to seeing women not as females but as people;
people of all sorts, doing every kind of work (Gilman, 337).

MAIN ARGUMENT
Jeff, Terry and Vans cultures influence and stereotypes against women,
such as that women are inferior to men, and consequently that they
deserve no rights and opportunity within a society are challenged after
their interaction with a well advanced society inhabited only by women.
Gilman believes that widely held societal conventions enforced the
patriarchal status, and that these conventions were all the more insidious
because they encouraged women to accept their subordination (Mock).

THE QUESTIONS THE

HERLANDERS ASK
Why should there be surnames?
Why should a woman lose her name and identity after marriage?
Why is long hair considered feminine by men when only male lions in the animal
kingdom have manes and only men in China wear queues?
What, they ask, do women in the other world do all day if they do not work outside
the domestic sphere?
Why should that god be personalized as a manlike figure? (Mock)

THE FIRST ALL-WOMENS

VILLAGE IN KENYA
To escape:
domestic violence
rape
child marriage
female genital mutilation

SOURCES
Lane, Ann J. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman." American National Biography (From
Oxford University Press) (2010): Research Starters. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

Lane, Ann J. "Reviews Of Books: United States." American Historical Review
101.4 (1996): 1292-1293. History Reference Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.

SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Herland. SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes
LLC. 2006. Web. 07 Oct. 2015.
Mock, Michele L. "Herland." Masterplots, Fourth Edition (2010): 1-3. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/08/21/kenya-womens-village-umoja

 Erskine, Thomas L. "To Herland And Beyond." MagillS Literary Annual

1991 (1991): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.