Herland and Other Works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

HERLAND AND OTHER WORKS contains seven works by feminist writer and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, including her utopian novel HERLAND and her semi-autobiographical short story THE YELLOW WALLPAPER.

In HERLAND, Gilman describes an isolated society composed entirely of women who reproduce via parthenogenesis. The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination. Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.

• Herland
• The Yellow Wallpaper
• If I Were a Man
• The Giant Wistaria
• Our Androcentric Culture
• The Crux
• What Diantha Did

Nook

Published May 25, 2011

About the author

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), also known as Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she wrote after a severe bout of post-partum depression.

She was the daughter of Frederic B. Perkins.

Reviews

[Jonna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this to kick off my Classics 2013 challenge after finding it on 3 different lists, and realizing the only thing of Gilman's I'd ever read was 'The Yellow Wallpaper.' That is included in this collection, and as it always has, creeped me out! (A few years ago, a friend asked me to help her chose wallpaper for her home; her favorite was a pseudo-jungly print in shades of saffron that brought this story to mind. I sat her down and made her read the story. She went with the blue stripe.)
The title story of this collection, 'Herland,' is the real winner here. Three American men, upon hearing that somewhere in the the South American jungle, there exists a land populated entirely with women, decide to find this place, and conquer. What they find is not the girlish frivolity and back-biting they expected, but a flourishing, peaceful civilization of self-renewing women. Not only have the women created their own systems of education, medicine, government, they make the most of their environment, planting the forests with only fruit and nut-bearing trees in order that no one goes hungry. There is no crime, or very little, and it is a clean place.
A testament to feminism, some would say. I simply saw it as an interesting story; women, given the chance, and no interference, are much more practical, and might create a better system.

[Janejellyroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

The highlight of this collection is the title novella. Originally published in 1915, the story is about three relatively typical men of their time who discover a country where women began reproducing via parthogenesis when all the men died. Over generations, they created a utopia which shocks the men who assumed that women wouldn't be able to survive independently, let alone create a society that in many ways is better than what the men are used to. It's an intriguing book, mostly to see the things that Gilman thinks wouldn't exist in a society made up of women and the things that would. While she often challenges conventional wisdom, there's also evidence of Gilman's own biases and blind spots (the novel is heavily eugenicist and she assumes that sex wouldn't exist without men). It's obviously didatic, but still an interesting read.