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The Herland Trilogy #1-3
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Utopian Novels: Moving the Mountain, Herland, and With her in Ourland
Gilman's three utopian novels are made available in one volume for the first time since their original publication. This availability enables the reader to follow the unfolding of Gilman's utopian ideas from their genesis in Moving the Mountain, through their development in her later all-female utopia, Herland, and finally into her satirical critique With Her in Ourland.
389 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1999
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1064 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1,047 books2,236 followersCharlotte 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.
She was the daughter of Frederic B. Perkins.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
July 11, 2019
I read two out of three in the trilogy. The best part of both is realizing that the women's movement has been fighting for all of the same things for literally 100 years.
Wait, maybe that's the worst part.
It is interesting that Gilman presents an all-female society that elevates mothering as the highest valued, when being pinned into those roles in the real world is what holds women (and society as a whole) back from being treated as 100% human.
Read for the ideas and the sarcasm and you'll get through the often awkward writing. Also, somehow a world with only women has no lesbians. Definitely a plot hole for me haha.
Wait, maybe that's the worst part.
It is interesting that Gilman presents an all-female society that elevates mothering as the highest valued, when being pinned into those roles in the real world is what holds women (and society as a whole) back from being treated as 100% human.
Read for the ideas and the sarcasm and you'll get through the often awkward writing. Also, somehow a world with only women has no lesbians. Definitely a plot hole for me haha.
June 11, 2025
There are reviews that describe Gilman's work as "dated." I would argue the opposite, that she was a visionary and far and away a person of the future. Surely, Gilman wrote directly in response to issues that still trouble the world: hunger, poverty, unhappiness, pollution, war.
The end of the entire Herland trilogy by Charlotte Perkins Gilman—so far ahead of her time and with enormous faith in human nature, in the humanity of all faiths and races—expresses great optimism about humanity. The stories offer not a little perplexity about how we got into this place where people suffer unnecessarily from hunger, poverty, conflict, and disease, but she offers hope that all may be remedied, that all people might live happy lives.
She is frequently slammed for proposing eugenics, which was popular in her day, but she is quite clear that both she and her characters oppose use of force of any kind and specifically oppose imposed eugenics. She is also clear that if we set aside selfish ambition, we might be ambitious for everyone and make the lives of all better by that effort. She insists that mothers want the best for all children and that men may join in that goal in each of these novels written and published between 1910 and 1916.
Europe was at war when this third novel was published in The Forerunner, a journal Charlotte Perkins Gilman produced and wrote mostly all by herself for some years. The journal didn't make much money, but money was never a goal for Gilman, who wanted to imagine that the world could be made better for everyone. Industrial waste, air pollution, contaminated food, disease, poverty, exploitation, racial prejudice, and religious prejudice could be eliminated by cooperative effort, by faith that we may choose to improve ourselves. She wanted human beings of all one race (marrying one another and raising their children with the best we are capable of) and one faith in Motherhood and the betterment of the world for the sake of children. Maybe that is naive, but is is also well-intended.
It's important to realize that birth control was illegal in many places at this time (and until many decades later, remained illegal), birth control was available only to wives with the permission of husbands in other places, treatment for STDs was not reliably effective or safe but very toxic, the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) did not yet exist, women were jural minors (having the legal existence and rights of children) under the law in most of America, and domestic violence as a crime did not exist. This was still the time of the Robber Barons, the US had not yet entered The Great War, which only became WW1 when it happened again, and no one had begun insisting that industry clean up its own messes.
Gilman's character Ellador wants women to wake up to their own humanity, and men to allow their humanity to include the other half of the species. Much of this story, like the other two novels, is in dialogue—the Socratic method of question and consideration. In her time, women were largely limited to mothering, housekeeping, and prostitution was an appalling abuse, tacitly acceptable to the ruling classes. Unrevealed sexually transmitted diseases could be brought into a marriage, destroying both wife and children.
These days, Gilman is widely considered to have been Lesbian, I find, though I’m not sure why, not having read her autobiography. The narrator, Van, never has sex with his Herland wife in this novel, but the suggestion is clear that he will. Gilman herself married twice and maintained a lifelong friendship with a woman. Both were widowed by the time Gilman died.
I feel a fool not to have loved Herland when I read it so long ago, and more the fool for not having reread it recently. The other two novels were unknown to me. I taught a couple of her short stories, but I would teach Herland today.
The end of the entire Herland trilogy by Charlotte Perkins Gilman—so far ahead of her time and with enormous faith in human nature, in the humanity of all faiths and races—expresses great optimism about humanity. The stories offer not a little perplexity about how we got into this place where people suffer unnecessarily from hunger, poverty, conflict, and disease, but she offers hope that all may be remedied, that all people might live happy lives.
She is frequently slammed for proposing eugenics, which was popular in her day, but she is quite clear that both she and her characters oppose use of force of any kind and specifically oppose imposed eugenics. She is also clear that if we set aside selfish ambition, we might be ambitious for everyone and make the lives of all better by that effort. She insists that mothers want the best for all children and that men may join in that goal in each of these novels written and published between 1910 and 1916.
Europe was at war when this third novel was published in The Forerunner, a journal Charlotte Perkins Gilman produced and wrote mostly all by herself for some years. The journal didn't make much money, but money was never a goal for Gilman, who wanted to imagine that the world could be made better for everyone. Industrial waste, air pollution, contaminated food, disease, poverty, exploitation, racial prejudice, and religious prejudice could be eliminated by cooperative effort, by faith that we may choose to improve ourselves. She wanted human beings of all one race (marrying one another and raising their children with the best we are capable of) and one faith in Motherhood and the betterment of the world for the sake of children. Maybe that is naive, but is is also well-intended.
It's important to realize that birth control was illegal in many places at this time (and until many decades later, remained illegal), birth control was available only to wives with the permission of husbands in other places, treatment for STDs was not reliably effective or safe but very toxic, the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) did not yet exist, women were jural minors (having the legal existence and rights of children) under the law in most of America, and domestic violence as a crime did not exist. This was still the time of the Robber Barons, the US had not yet entered The Great War, which only became WW1 when it happened again, and no one had begun insisting that industry clean up its own messes.
Gilman's character Ellador wants women to wake up to their own humanity, and men to allow their humanity to include the other half of the species. Much of this story, like the other two novels, is in dialogue—the Socratic method of question and consideration. In her time, women were largely limited to mothering, housekeeping, and prostitution was an appalling abuse, tacitly acceptable to the ruling classes. Unrevealed sexually transmitted diseases could be brought into a marriage, destroying both wife and children.
These days, Gilman is widely considered to have been Lesbian, I find, though I’m not sure why, not having read her autobiography. The narrator, Van, never has sex with his Herland wife in this novel, but the suggestion is clear that he will. Gilman herself married twice and maintained a lifelong friendship with a woman. Both were widowed by the time Gilman died.
I feel a fool not to have loved Herland when I read it so long ago, and more the fool for not having reread it recently. The other two novels were unknown to me. I taught a couple of her short stories, but I would teach Herland today.
April 27, 2016
I read Herland about 10 years ago, and I was delighted with the idea of a woman-only land where women took care of all things and thrived by themselves. Remembering this novel lately, I looked for it again and found this volume of three novels by Gilman, all three novels on the theme of female leadership and influence on their world. I found all three novels, including Herland, dry and textbook-ish. The first novel, Moving the Mountain, was interesting as a new look at how things could be should women have influence equal to or greater than that of men in patriarchy. Herland was more than I remembered, more about the men who found this wonderful land. I must have been especially struck by the idea of a woman-only land the first time around. By the time I got to the third novel, With Her in Ourland, I was over-full of looking at man-woman differences between as they are and as they could be.
August 10, 2014
I wouldn't have finished this unless it had been a group read. It is hard-going in places, especially where it appears to be more of a lecture than a novel. However, I am glad I have read it and am very impressed that such advanced ideas were put forward in the time when this book was written. Thought-proving :)
June 18, 2024
Not worth your time.
These are extremely poorly written works of fiction that would have been better presented as essays.
Moving the Mountain has no story at all. It's just a description of a utopian future. Herland and With Her in Ourland have at least the sketches of a plot, but the characters are cardboard and the dialogue is pandering and facetious.
What makes this all the more disappointing is that it's such an interesting concept. She just doesn't explore the ideas remotely enough, let alone trying to do it in an interesting way.
The only redeeming quality of these books is the time-capsule view of a progressive feminist writing from the perspective of 1915. Some of her ideas and descriptions are really interesting and forward-thinking, but her pro-christian, anti-semitic views really place her in time. Love her socialism, hate her homogeneous "solution" to racism.
And she's got major beef with sleeper cars on trains.
These are extremely poorly written works of fiction that would have been better presented as essays.
Moving the Mountain has no story at all. It's just a description of a utopian future. Herland and With Her in Ourland have at least the sketches of a plot, but the characters are cardboard and the dialogue is pandering and facetious.
What makes this all the more disappointing is that it's such an interesting concept. She just doesn't explore the ideas remotely enough, let alone trying to do it in an interesting way.
The only redeeming quality of these books is the time-capsule view of a progressive feminist writing from the perspective of 1915. Some of her ideas and descriptions are really interesting and forward-thinking, but her pro-christian, anti-semitic views really place her in time. Love her socialism, hate her homogeneous "solution" to racism.
And she's got major beef with sleeper cars on trains.
September 8, 2021
I read this lovely story last year but completely forgot to write a review. Which is a sin, really. I would describe this book as the perfect answer to the question: What would a society of only women look like? and what awful commentary on that society might men have?
The story follows three young lads with a taste for adventure and too much time on their hands, evidently. On their travels, they hear of a legend of a land up the mountains inhabited by only women. Women that have made a bit of a point of isolating from the outside world and who clearly don't wish to be bothered. So of course here come our protagonists to do just that! Our protagonists being a merry band of misogynists, Vandyck "Van" Jennings, Jeff Margrave, and Terry Nicholson.
Each of them exemplifies different flavors of misogyny: Terry and Jeff are like personifications of the madonna-whore complex. Terry is exactly what you imagine when you hear misogynist. He sees women as either sexual or aesthetic objects or as relatively useless. Jeff is more the adorkable misogynist. He views women as virtuous and pure. He's a southern gentleman so naturally, to him, women are meant to be worshipped, worshipped as motherly and nurturing, of course. Finally, Van, our narrator who parrots the prejudices of his culture as well as the others, but with less enthusiasm being in possession of all the groups brain cells he's the least invest in those ideologies.
The story follows the three stooges as they enter Herland underestimating the inhabitants only to have their asses handed to them tactically, emotionally, and philosophically.
They end up each falling in love along the way and attempting some character development to varying degrees of success.
I love how this story handled the nuances of its themes but be warned that with that nuance comes less than morally simple characters and no neat cathartic ending, but still, the little disappointing twinges of reality that slip in don't kill the girl boss mood and definitely add texture to the story.
Also 10/10 for the kick-ass female characters that I sadly can't talk much about without delving into spoiler territory.
The story follows three young lads with a taste for adventure and too much time on their hands, evidently. On their travels, they hear of a legend of a land up the mountains inhabited by only women. Women that have made a bit of a point of isolating from the outside world and who clearly don't wish to be bothered. So of course here come our protagonists to do just that! Our protagonists being a merry band of misogynists, Vandyck "Van" Jennings, Jeff Margrave, and Terry Nicholson.
Each of them exemplifies different flavors of misogyny: Terry and Jeff are like personifications of the madonna-whore complex. Terry is exactly what you imagine when you hear misogynist. He sees women as either sexual or aesthetic objects or as relatively useless. Jeff is more the adorkable misogynist. He views women as virtuous and pure. He's a southern gentleman so naturally, to him, women are meant to be worshipped, worshipped as motherly and nurturing, of course. Finally, Van, our narrator who parrots the prejudices of his culture as well as the others, but with less enthusiasm being in possession of all the groups brain cells he's the least invest in those ideologies.
The story follows the three stooges as they enter Herland underestimating the inhabitants only to have their asses handed to them tactically, emotionally, and philosophically.
They end up each falling in love along the way and attempting some character development to varying degrees of success.
I love how this story handled the nuances of its themes but be warned that with that nuance comes less than morally simple characters and no neat cathartic ending, but still, the little disappointing twinges of reality that slip in don't kill the girl boss mood and definitely add texture to the story.
Also 10/10 for the kick-ass female characters that I sadly can't talk much about without delving into spoiler territory.
January 14, 2025
I read all three books a couple of years ago and completely forgot to add my thoughts, apologies for the brain dump pasted below:
Moving the Mountain:
Very telling of its time, eugenics casually described as a positive method of reaching social utopia. While I saw the vision of reaching equality between genders, there was little justification of how the changes had been achieved beyond ‘people changed their mind’. The book read less like a story and more like a guided tour that never seemed to end. When we eventually reached the end, it felt rushed and unexplained with a quick paragraph about the protagonist marrying his cousin and whisking her away from the traditional farm she’d been kept on her whole life in some odd male saviour moment. We don’t get to see her transformation from the misery of her containment to the potential freedom of seeing the new US, despite being fed 163 pages of a man’s own revelations after his very similar experience
Herland :
The arrogance and sense of superiority the three male protagonists have at the start is amusingly put, if a little on the nose at times ‘[we’ll be] hailed as deliverers’
I do think this land of women would have been a tiny bit better if Charlotte had dared to say introduce the presence of lesbians, but I suppose that’s a lot to ask of a feminist writing in 1915, especially with the Virgin Mary-esque origin story
I do find it funny that the only tamed animal in a country of all women is the domesticated cat - kind of slayed there
I understand why motherhood is such a hugely important thing to the female characters in the book given it saved them from extinction but it does feel a little like Charlotte was pushing a rhetoric that motherhood was the most valuable purpose any woman could serve to the extent of pro-life ideas that don’t really translate well in modern day - quite interesting
The explanation of how they come to conceive and how they know they’re about to is quite funny - the idea that they just will the children into existence feels more magical than scientific
I do love the way Charlotte uplifts village communities though (I.e everyone caring for everyone), it’s especially profound when you remember that she was American so grew up in a country with a painfully individualist culture
To be honest this does give a really good representation of what lesbian culture is like (not that lesbian culture is completely utopic) - the practical and beautiful clothing that doesn’t match the patriarchal standards of femininity in the book, the motherhood that doesn’t match with what the male characters are familiar with, and the natural community. When men are decentered from the narrative, women really thrive in their own self
‘When a man has nothing to give a woman, is dependent wholly on his personal attraction, his courtship is under limitations’
The victim blaming and sympathy for Terry in the second to last chapter is irritating but on point when you remember who/what the narrator is - it’s good to see times haven’t changed there :/
Overall a much better story than moving the mountain, left me mildly excited to read the next book and see Ellador’s reaction to the rest of the world
With Her in Ourland
There seems to be some author bias in the way she depicts Ellador’s horror at the eastern world, despite the self-awareness of American ignorance and centralism
‘We’ll call the white races civilised - and lump the others’ HUH???
The narrator keeps saying that these problems of ‘the patient ignominy in which the women lived’ exists everywhere except America…I’m so desperate for Elladora to reach the US and knock his esteem of that place down a few pegs
Oh good he just told her what they did to the native Americans
Reaching Hawaii, I do like how Charlotte puts us in the perspective of the coloniser who believes the missionaries and murders of native people were both natural and necessary, while using Ellador’s lack of bias and lived experience in ‘Ourland’ to point out the atrocity of the history
Loving the laissez-faire politics slander
Her opinions about race are confusing, they seem pro-equality but also not? It kind of feels like she’s trying to support the respecting of all of America’s immigrant cultures without trying to turn them ‘white American’ but then on the same page says they don’t belong in america, it’s very convoluted
Why are Americans so scared of the word ‘socialism’? I know why but I still find it strange
Chapter 8 feels very much like an essay in disguise…lots of statistics to show how bleak the US is, and yet still the us-supremacy persists
Chapter 12 begins to exhibit a sort of self-righteousness of the writer through Ellador as it describes those women seeking sexual freedom as ‘almost as bad as the antis’. We obviously have to remember that Ellador comes from an environment where motherhood is a privilege and blessing because of how precarious the possibility of children once was, so this is always going to be at the forefront of the character’s mind. But if we’re to assume that Ellador represents Gilman’s own conscience then this traditional adoration and prioritisation of motherhood above women’s enjoyment (and the expectation that women innately aspire to motherhood as an instinct) must be part of that conscience. It is the 1910s so obviously these views are less radical and outdated from a 2023 perspective and were probably outrageous at the time, but still, falls a little flat when free will and freedom of autonomy is at the forefront of feminism now
It feels like a big oversight on the part of the Herlanders to so earnestly plan to save the world from its failures, without ever one considering that the world might not want saving - it’s very innocent and sheltered of them (not a criticism, just an observation)
The ending is quite open-ended: ‘in time a son is born to us’, very prophetic and chosen-one-esque, without confirming if he really does represent a good future
Overall the book is good but very indicative of its time, so some of Gilman’s ideas of what might make a feminist utopia - even if you disregard the fact it’s fiction - are ludicrous and distasteful for the modern reader. The eugenics of moving the mountain are less present in the herland books but still hinted at in the ideas that women who are not suited to motherhood should be denied motherhood, or allowed to birth but not to mother, and that they should be happy with that. Obviously progressives know now that women should have the choice whether or not to have children, and an unwanted child shouldn’t really be born into a world where it might suffer. Ellador herself refuses to have a child in the world as she acknowledges its subpar environment, but she has the freedom of that choice being respected - something that most women don’t get either through poor education on contraceptives, or at the hands of forceful men. So the book’s ideas and nice enough to an extent, but don’t put enough blame on the men for my liking (even going so far as to dismiss Terry’s attempted rape of Alima as inevitable and of his nature because of her rebuttals.
Moving the Mountain:
Very telling of its time, eugenics casually described as a positive method of reaching social utopia. While I saw the vision of reaching equality between genders, there was little justification of how the changes had been achieved beyond ‘people changed their mind’. The book read less like a story and more like a guided tour that never seemed to end. When we eventually reached the end, it felt rushed and unexplained with a quick paragraph about the protagonist marrying his cousin and whisking her away from the traditional farm she’d been kept on her whole life in some odd male saviour moment. We don’t get to see her transformation from the misery of her containment to the potential freedom of seeing the new US, despite being fed 163 pages of a man’s own revelations after his very similar experience
Herland :
The arrogance and sense of superiority the three male protagonists have at the start is amusingly put, if a little on the nose at times ‘[we’ll be] hailed as deliverers’
I do think this land of women would have been a tiny bit better if Charlotte had dared to say introduce the presence of lesbians, but I suppose that’s a lot to ask of a feminist writing in 1915, especially with the Virgin Mary-esque origin story
I do find it funny that the only tamed animal in a country of all women is the domesticated cat - kind of slayed there
I understand why motherhood is such a hugely important thing to the female characters in the book given it saved them from extinction but it does feel a little like Charlotte was pushing a rhetoric that motherhood was the most valuable purpose any woman could serve to the extent of pro-life ideas that don’t really translate well in modern day - quite interesting
The explanation of how they come to conceive and how they know they’re about to is quite funny - the idea that they just will the children into existence feels more magical than scientific
I do love the way Charlotte uplifts village communities though (I.e everyone caring for everyone), it’s especially profound when you remember that she was American so grew up in a country with a painfully individualist culture
To be honest this does give a really good representation of what lesbian culture is like (not that lesbian culture is completely utopic) - the practical and beautiful clothing that doesn’t match the patriarchal standards of femininity in the book, the motherhood that doesn’t match with what the male characters are familiar with, and the natural community. When men are decentered from the narrative, women really thrive in their own self
‘When a man has nothing to give a woman, is dependent wholly on his personal attraction, his courtship is under limitations’
The victim blaming and sympathy for Terry in the second to last chapter is irritating but on point when you remember who/what the narrator is - it’s good to see times haven’t changed there :/
Overall a much better story than moving the mountain, left me mildly excited to read the next book and see Ellador’s reaction to the rest of the world
With Her in Ourland
There seems to be some author bias in the way she depicts Ellador’s horror at the eastern world, despite the self-awareness of American ignorance and centralism
‘We’ll call the white races civilised - and lump the others’ HUH???
The narrator keeps saying that these problems of ‘the patient ignominy in which the women lived’ exists everywhere except America…I’m so desperate for Elladora to reach the US and knock his esteem of that place down a few pegs
Oh good he just told her what they did to the native Americans
Reaching Hawaii, I do like how Charlotte puts us in the perspective of the coloniser who believes the missionaries and murders of native people were both natural and necessary, while using Ellador’s lack of bias and lived experience in ‘Ourland’ to point out the atrocity of the history
Loving the laissez-faire politics slander
Her opinions about race are confusing, they seem pro-equality but also not? It kind of feels like she’s trying to support the respecting of all of America’s immigrant cultures without trying to turn them ‘white American’ but then on the same page says they don’t belong in america, it’s very convoluted
Why are Americans so scared of the word ‘socialism’? I know why but I still find it strange
Chapter 8 feels very much like an essay in disguise…lots of statistics to show how bleak the US is, and yet still the us-supremacy persists
Chapter 12 begins to exhibit a sort of self-righteousness of the writer through Ellador as it describes those women seeking sexual freedom as ‘almost as bad as the antis’. We obviously have to remember that Ellador comes from an environment where motherhood is a privilege and blessing because of how precarious the possibility of children once was, so this is always going to be at the forefront of the character’s mind. But if we’re to assume that Ellador represents Gilman’s own conscience then this traditional adoration and prioritisation of motherhood above women’s enjoyment (and the expectation that women innately aspire to motherhood as an instinct) must be part of that conscience. It is the 1910s so obviously these views are less radical and outdated from a 2023 perspective and were probably outrageous at the time, but still, falls a little flat when free will and freedom of autonomy is at the forefront of feminism now
It feels like a big oversight on the part of the Herlanders to so earnestly plan to save the world from its failures, without ever one considering that the world might not want saving - it’s very innocent and sheltered of them (not a criticism, just an observation)
The ending is quite open-ended: ‘in time a son is born to us’, very prophetic and chosen-one-esque, without confirming if he really does represent a good future
Overall the book is good but very indicative of its time, so some of Gilman’s ideas of what might make a feminist utopia - even if you disregard the fact it’s fiction - are ludicrous and distasteful for the modern reader. The eugenics of moving the mountain are less present in the herland books but still hinted at in the ideas that women who are not suited to motherhood should be denied motherhood, or allowed to birth but not to mother, and that they should be happy with that. Obviously progressives know now that women should have the choice whether or not to have children, and an unwanted child shouldn’t really be born into a world where it might suffer. Ellador herself refuses to have a child in the world as she acknowledges its subpar environment, but she has the freedom of that choice being respected - something that most women don’t get either through poor education on contraceptives, or at the hands of forceful men. So the book’s ideas and nice enough to an extent, but don’t put enough blame on the men for my liking (even going so far as to dismiss Terry’s attempted rape of Alima as inevitable and of his nature because of her rebuttals.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2025
This is billed as a trilogy, but the first and last two novels are related only by theme. That theme is that the world would be a garden and life easy if only women were empowered and people allowed to act sensibly. Gilman's faith in the essential goodness of human nature is unbounded and jaw-droppingly naive. The novels ran as serials in the author's monthly magazine (which consisted of her own writings); only the first came out as a book in her own time. They are really just vehicles for her utopian ideas about how society should be run. Nowadays she'd post her rants on Substack. Nevertheless, I found them a bit engaging to read--I was always looking forward to finding what wonderful-sounding but wholly impractical idea would be advanced next. Maybe the novels give an idea of the utopian ideas that were au courant 120 years ago.
MOVING THE MOUNTAIN: Our hero gets knocked on the head in remote Tibet and spends 30 years in amnesia. He recovers and returns to a transformed America in 1940. Women's emancipation and a strong dose of socialism have made life easy and pleasant. "We make a new kind of people now" (p. 80). Strict eugenics is eradicating hereditary disease. Unlimited immigration is allowed, subject only to a strict medical exam. Good food has much reduced disease. Everything is clean, manicured, and beautiful. Food is prepared communally; it's more efficient that way. Clothes are more comfortable and beautiful because there's no obsession with fashion. Only two hours of work a day are required for everyone to have a good standard of living, though most work four hours because they enjoy work so much. Children spend the day with licensed experts who provide upbring as well as education. As a result, children are happy and well-educated and never timid, sulky, resentful, nervous, whining, foolish, mischievous, giggling, noisy, destructive, or uneasy. Young college men no longer "find pleasure in theft, cruelty, gross practical jokes and destruction of property." Men have mostly given up tobacco because women don't like it; they don't go to bars because there are so many places for wholesome public recreation. There is little crime. Wrongdoers are sent to a "moral sanitorium" where they are talked out of it. Criminals are reformed by "elaborate baths, massage, electric stimulus, perfect food, clean comfortable beds, beautiful clothes, books, music, congenial company, and wonderful instruction" (p.112). Hopeless degenerates, the insane, idiots, and real perverts are killed, or sometimes only sterilized if they aren't too bad. A nebulous new communal religion of universal love has taken hold. The mistakes of the past are blamed on "belated Individualism" (p. 108).
HERLAND: Our heroes stumble on an isolated community of women on an inaccessible plateau. Their ancestors "of Aryan stock" had been trapped there by earthquake two millennia before after all their men and boys had been killed by war and catastrophe. Miraculously, one woman had five daughters parthenogenetically, and her descendants did the same. Freed from the malign influence of men, they built a paradise by diligence and constant improvement. Now three million women live in a well-tended country the size of Holland. Everything is beautiful, well-made, serviceable, clean, verdant, well-tended, parklike. All the women are handsome, dignified, fit, wise, even-tempered, patient, good-natured, and intelligent. All is "Peace, Beauty, Order, Safety, Love, Wisdom, Justice, Patience, and Plenty" (p. 222). There is never any jealousy, bickering, or freeloading. There are no wild beasts and few domesticated ones, except for cats (who never howl and do not kill birds). When the population reached the carrying capacity of the land, they fortunately found that they could inhibit conception by an act of will (they react with horror to the idea of destroying the unborn). Motherhood and the loving communal rearing of children are considered the highest and noblest goal of life. The children never cry. Our heroes are gently but firmly detained, taught the language, history, and customs of Herland, and pumped for information about the outside world. Eventually they fall in love with Herlanders and marry them. The women understand how bisexual reproduction is done, and taken delight in the prospect of restoring it, but they are aghast at the idea of doing it more often than necessary for procreation. They have no libido and no idea at all of wifely submission. This creates difficulties. Finally one of the men attempts to rape his wife and is consequently expelled by the Herlanders, after extracting a vow not to reveal the place's location. A second man (our narrator) goes with him to help on the journey, and brings his wife, who is eager to learn about the world.
WITH HER IN OURLAND: The would-be rapist goes off to fight in WWI, while the couple tours the world. This novel is mostly critiques of world cultures as seen by the Herlander. Why can't everyone be wise, cooperative, intelligent, and healthy like in Herland? She is horrified to the point of nausea by the war. She reacts similarly to foot-binding in China. America is better, but only a little. The treatment of black, yellow, and red races is shameful, hypocritical, and stupid. She delivers a condemnation of Southern color prejudice that has aged quite well. But the author now disfavors unlimited immigration: America is growing "by crowding injections of alien blood, by vast hordes of low-grade laborers . . . ignorant masses" (p. 310), she says. Really, all the world's problems come from an absurd, self-destructive failure to consider everything from a community point of view. The notion of a Father God is deeply malign, as are the focus on individual salvation, the desire for one's own home, the private ownership of land, and national pride. Businessmen who make large profits are vermin. There is too much obscene wealth and too much desperate poverty. Wasted land, polluted water, squalid cities, spoiled food, and poor roads are everywhere. All these problems could be quickly swept away by adopting the Herland outlook--poverty, crime, and disease could be ended in thirty years. A strong government is needed! And a government press to lay facts before the people. Tradition and a foolish adherence to an outdated Constitution inhibit required action. Graft should be exposed, and also "leeches on the public treasury . . . who spin webby masses of special legislation in which to breed more freely" (p. 359). Railroad sleeping cars are outrageously expensive. Meanwhile, our long-suffering narrator has come to reconcile himself to a loving, intellectually stimulating, but sexless marriage, and in fact finally rejoices in it (somewhat improbably, if you ask me). At last they return to Herland, find a bower, and have a son. At last!
MOVING THE MOUNTAIN: Our hero gets knocked on the head in remote Tibet and spends 30 years in amnesia. He recovers and returns to a transformed America in 1940. Women's emancipation and a strong dose of socialism have made life easy and pleasant. "We make a new kind of people now" (p. 80). Strict eugenics is eradicating hereditary disease. Unlimited immigration is allowed, subject only to a strict medical exam. Good food has much reduced disease. Everything is clean, manicured, and beautiful. Food is prepared communally; it's more efficient that way. Clothes are more comfortable and beautiful because there's no obsession with fashion. Only two hours of work a day are required for everyone to have a good standard of living, though most work four hours because they enjoy work so much. Children spend the day with licensed experts who provide upbring as well as education. As a result, children are happy and well-educated and never timid, sulky, resentful, nervous, whining, foolish, mischievous, giggling, noisy, destructive, or uneasy. Young college men no longer "find pleasure in theft, cruelty, gross practical jokes and destruction of property." Men have mostly given up tobacco because women don't like it; they don't go to bars because there are so many places for wholesome public recreation. There is little crime. Wrongdoers are sent to a "moral sanitorium" where they are talked out of it. Criminals are reformed by "elaborate baths, massage, electric stimulus, perfect food, clean comfortable beds, beautiful clothes, books, music, congenial company, and wonderful instruction" (p.112). Hopeless degenerates, the insane, idiots, and real perverts are killed, or sometimes only sterilized if they aren't too bad. A nebulous new communal religion of universal love has taken hold. The mistakes of the past are blamed on "belated Individualism" (p. 108).
HERLAND: Our heroes stumble on an isolated community of women on an inaccessible plateau. Their ancestors "of Aryan stock" had been trapped there by earthquake two millennia before after all their men and boys had been killed by war and catastrophe. Miraculously, one woman had five daughters parthenogenetically, and her descendants did the same. Freed from the malign influence of men, they built a paradise by diligence and constant improvement. Now three million women live in a well-tended country the size of Holland. Everything is beautiful, well-made, serviceable, clean, verdant, well-tended, parklike. All the women are handsome, dignified, fit, wise, even-tempered, patient, good-natured, and intelligent. All is "Peace, Beauty, Order, Safety, Love, Wisdom, Justice, Patience, and Plenty" (p. 222). There is never any jealousy, bickering, or freeloading. There are no wild beasts and few domesticated ones, except for cats (who never howl and do not kill birds). When the population reached the carrying capacity of the land, they fortunately found that they could inhibit conception by an act of will (they react with horror to the idea of destroying the unborn). Motherhood and the loving communal rearing of children are considered the highest and noblest goal of life. The children never cry. Our heroes are gently but firmly detained, taught the language, history, and customs of Herland, and pumped for information about the outside world. Eventually they fall in love with Herlanders and marry them. The women understand how bisexual reproduction is done, and taken delight in the prospect of restoring it, but they are aghast at the idea of doing it more often than necessary for procreation. They have no libido and no idea at all of wifely submission. This creates difficulties. Finally one of the men attempts to rape his wife and is consequently expelled by the Herlanders, after extracting a vow not to reveal the place's location. A second man (our narrator) goes with him to help on the journey, and brings his wife, who is eager to learn about the world.
WITH HER IN OURLAND: The would-be rapist goes off to fight in WWI, while the couple tours the world. This novel is mostly critiques of world cultures as seen by the Herlander. Why can't everyone be wise, cooperative, intelligent, and healthy like in Herland? She is horrified to the point of nausea by the war. She reacts similarly to foot-binding in China. America is better, but only a little. The treatment of black, yellow, and red races is shameful, hypocritical, and stupid. She delivers a condemnation of Southern color prejudice that has aged quite well. But the author now disfavors unlimited immigration: America is growing "by crowding injections of alien blood, by vast hordes of low-grade laborers . . . ignorant masses" (p. 310), she says. Really, all the world's problems come from an absurd, self-destructive failure to consider everything from a community point of view. The notion of a Father God is deeply malign, as are the focus on individual salvation, the desire for one's own home, the private ownership of land, and national pride. Businessmen who make large profits are vermin. There is too much obscene wealth and too much desperate poverty. Wasted land, polluted water, squalid cities, spoiled food, and poor roads are everywhere. All these problems could be quickly swept away by adopting the Herland outlook--poverty, crime, and disease could be ended in thirty years. A strong government is needed! And a government press to lay facts before the people. Tradition and a foolish adherence to an outdated Constitution inhibit required action. Graft should be exposed, and also "leeches on the public treasury . . . who spin webby masses of special legislation in which to breed more freely" (p. 359). Railroad sleeping cars are outrageously expensive. Meanwhile, our long-suffering narrator has come to reconcile himself to a loving, intellectually stimulating, but sexless marriage, and in fact finally rejoices in it (somewhat improbably, if you ask me). At last they return to Herland, find a bower, and have a son. At last!
February 15, 2024
The Herland Trilogy is not an obscure history, but a hopeful future. One in which all people work less and do the work they enjoy, the environment is thriving, and no one is "poor" or going without. It's a philosophical opus by one of America's great writers and thinkers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
I love a good utopia. The idealism and creativity and caring are inspiring. But more than that I love thinking about how we might get there. What steps does it take, what obstacles do we have to overcome, can so many disparate people agree?
Of course, to get to a utopia, we have to know where we're starting from and what we have to work with. As utopia's are often a reaction to the economics of the time, I can't help but think about the economics of our time.
In the early 2000's, when we first started to think Autism might be genetic and a spectrum, there was an article about how people who came to America voluntarily back in the beginning left their hometowns because they didn't fit in - perhaps neurologically. There is evidence now that ADHD is also genetic and tied to trauma. Europe back in the day (from forever until the 4O's?) was hard, violent (aka traumatic). So perhaps many who came voluntarily & were brought as slaves and indentured servants either had or developed ADHD and then passed on the genes...
Read more at Protect Your Nips
I love a good utopia. The idealism and creativity and caring are inspiring. But more than that I love thinking about how we might get there. What steps does it take, what obstacles do we have to overcome, can so many disparate people agree?
Of course, to get to a utopia, we have to know where we're starting from and what we have to work with. As utopia's are often a reaction to the economics of the time, I can't help but think about the economics of our time.
In the early 2000's, when we first started to think Autism might be genetic and a spectrum, there was an article about how people who came to America voluntarily back in the beginning left their hometowns because they didn't fit in - perhaps neurologically. There is evidence now that ADHD is also genetic and tied to trauma. Europe back in the day (from forever until the 4O's?) was hard, violent (aka traumatic). So perhaps many who came voluntarily & were brought as slaves and indentured servants either had or developed ADHD and then passed on the genes...
Read more at Protect Your Nips
December 30, 2020
This was a fascinating collection of novellas. I don't agree with everything Gilman has to say, but there was a lot there to think about and it's definitely one I'm still mulling over and will probably go back to in the future.
Read
January 20, 2020Hard to rate a feminist author (yay!) who is also a xenophobic anti-Semite (no thank you).
December 16, 2025
Ms. Gilman’s works about a new future in which all the world’s ills have been solved come off as a tad creaky. Certainly, her ideas are sound. But today’s current and contradictory combination of cynicism and mass media influx render it difficult to see how her ideas could be implemented, thus making them seem a bit dated with age.
We share more information but often that information is freighted with personal opinions hastily formed by bias and rumor and hostility generated by the fact that people can’t see or reach each other when we Twitter. As people like Bill Maher have caustically pointed out to us, moral outrage fueled by kneejerk reactions to casual faux pas passed off as deep social offenses means we think we’re accomplishing something simply by wagging our fingers at our fellow man. But we’re not being brave heroes; we’re just being nitpickers.
All that aside, the three novels wobble in terms of quality narrative. The first is about a man fallen out of time by two rather inconvenient bumps to the head. In the first, he wakes up with nearly complete amnesia in Tibet where he’s taken care of by the locals. When his sister Nellie accidentally discovers him 30 years later, he passes out from shock and suffers another bump. Rather than getting concussive damage as you’d expect he simply forgets about the previous three decades. He has the mind of a 25-year-old man stuck in that of a 55 year old.
He has trouble assimilating back into the world, since it has changed so drastically from what he knew. The world has been slowly but surely remade, with the roads cleaned, noises cancelled out of trains, women given the vote and terrible diseases eradicated.
John must adjust to this new world and he finds it hard going. But here’s where the novel fails as he’s simply taken from one person to another, in a series of talking-head interviews while everyone shows him the joys and wonders of this brave new world. It becomes rather dragging and tedious after a while, as if we had all been sat down in a classroom while a series of lecturers preached at us from a dais and wrote things on a chalkboard. For John, he gets to see the new life in action, so to speak, while he’s being taken on a tour. But the tale does drag.
Where it gets marginally better is when he takes a trip to see his old uncle in the Allegheny mountains. There life hasn’t changed a bit, probably due to the difficulties in climbing to such remote reaches. But the main obstacle comes from the people themselves. Uncle Jake is a hard-headed, recalcitrant sort, the kind of tightly wound conservative who has a bunch of set ideas in his head and refuses to shift them for anything. He’s racist, sexist, religiously intolerant and finds the altered world with all its newfangled ideas distasteful. You don’t have to guess where he stands on women getting the vote or black people having fair and equal wages.
This novel ends abruptly with John marrying Uncle Jake’s daughter Drusilla. He despairs of finding any modern woman who’ll have him because of his own retrograde feelings and begs her to accept him from pity. This is a terrible reason to get married (and not just because she’s his first cousin). But Drusilla is clearly miserable locked away on her uncle’s farm and marriage to John is her only escape. It’s an…ambiguous ending. He claims that they settled in the changed world, after all. He grew to accept it because Drusilla’s youth and beauty came back to her and she loved it because it freed her of the tyranny of her stubborn uncle.
This is a weak endorsement of the utopia that Ms. Perkins is trying to sell to us—that it enriched the lives of two people, that happiness comes about because of their marriage to each other not assimilation into a society that would wait patiently for them to accept its ways.
Herland is the most famous of the trilogy. It provides more action and the sense of conflict is greater because three men of very different temperaments encounter a world of women who haven’t seen men in 2,000 years. The constant culture clash in terms of sexism, motherhood and religion, et al., is at times almost funny to read. The women are constantly amused by the men and the men are buffaloed by the women. This one remains my favorite among the three novels and I’ve written about it elsewhere so there’s no need to reiterate my opinion.
With Her in Ourland is a sequel of Herland and finds Vandyke Jennings along with the banished Terry O. Nicholson going back to the world of men and women. Terry, sore and furious about being beaten off by his wife Alima after he attempted to rape her, is quick to push away his experiences in the world of all-women to rejoin his former life. When he learns there’s a war going on, he signs up with almost obscene eagerness. He’s the adventurous sort and the lack of any conflict among the women wearied and infuriated his active nature.
Van is eager to have his wife Ellador see America with him. But they travel the long way around and explore the world first. Van tries to lay the groundwork for Ellador for the poverty, disease, armed conflict, selfishness and greed that she will encounter. But his words are no preparation for the actuality of the case.
Ellador’s ways are ones of patient listening, unprejudiced inquiry and constant study of the world around her. She’s presented as almost a paragon of learning, able to pick up foreign languages simply by talking to people and applying herself to well-written language books. She doesn’t bicker, argue or attack people. She merely questions people on their supposed topics of expertise until they find themselves backed into a corner or often contradicting themselves without meaning to do so. She never smirks in triumph against them when she finds a fallacy in their thinking; she merely points out the flaws until they retreat, usually upset or angry that she’s dared to challenge them.
Ellador might come off as being too saintly and somewhat smug. But she’s genuinely trying to understand the world around her and find the good in one that has both men and women in it rather than the neutered single sex that she knew. She does concede that men have done miraculous things in terms of invention and advances in science; her people are rather backward in that sort of thing. But she can’t help but be saddened by all the misery, pain, suffering and starvation she sees around her which she thinks are brought about by bad ideas held on to for far too long.
That is where Ellador shines. She never blames people; she only blames the outdated, nonsensical notions they’ve clung to for so long. She wonders why Americans would come to a new country with a splendid radical plan called democracy and then crowd it with bad, awful traditions like graft that enriches a few at the expense of the many (welcome to the 1%), sexism towards women and slavery, which caused colonials to drag millions of Africans away from their homes and land them in a country that didn’t have enough resources to support them. She doesn’t see much good in religion that promotes peace when it has clearly failed to establish it.
Where Ellador might come off as being a bit snobbish is when she’s talking to women. She finds them tedious, small-minded bores (although she’s too gracious to say so), their minds bent on nothing more edifying than what’s to be done in the household. She sees some hope among the suffragists—she just doesn’t think they take their ideas far enough.
Above all, Ellador states that the main problem with Van’s world is that people simply don’t comport themselves with any kind of unity. Men and women cling tightly to their own households and spend little thought or care about their fellow human beings or neighbors. This insular thinking is what warps people and makes it impossible for them to form any plan that will help their society as a whole.
This novel presents us with more action than the previous two because it takes our couple on a trip around the world. The romance between Van and Ellador deepens, mainly because Ellador’s misery causes her to cling more tightly to Van than she otherwise would. But it two ends in rather an abrupt fashion as the first novel. After a welcome return to Ellador’s home, Van announces proudly that they have a son and the book ends like a curtain dropped on a stage.
Perhaps it would have been something to see their son grow up in Herland and then attempt to take his ideas into the wider world. That would no doubt bring us full circle, as people would be brought into a new utopia due to one family’s energetic passions.
We share more information but often that information is freighted with personal opinions hastily formed by bias and rumor and hostility generated by the fact that people can’t see or reach each other when we Twitter. As people like Bill Maher have caustically pointed out to us, moral outrage fueled by kneejerk reactions to casual faux pas passed off as deep social offenses means we think we’re accomplishing something simply by wagging our fingers at our fellow man. But we’re not being brave heroes; we’re just being nitpickers.
All that aside, the three novels wobble in terms of quality narrative. The first is about a man fallen out of time by two rather inconvenient bumps to the head. In the first, he wakes up with nearly complete amnesia in Tibet where he’s taken care of by the locals. When his sister Nellie accidentally discovers him 30 years later, he passes out from shock and suffers another bump. Rather than getting concussive damage as you’d expect he simply forgets about the previous three decades. He has the mind of a 25-year-old man stuck in that of a 55 year old.
He has trouble assimilating back into the world, since it has changed so drastically from what he knew. The world has been slowly but surely remade, with the roads cleaned, noises cancelled out of trains, women given the vote and terrible diseases eradicated.
John must adjust to this new world and he finds it hard going. But here’s where the novel fails as he’s simply taken from one person to another, in a series of talking-head interviews while everyone shows him the joys and wonders of this brave new world. It becomes rather dragging and tedious after a while, as if we had all been sat down in a classroom while a series of lecturers preached at us from a dais and wrote things on a chalkboard. For John, he gets to see the new life in action, so to speak, while he’s being taken on a tour. But the tale does drag.
Where it gets marginally better is when he takes a trip to see his old uncle in the Allegheny mountains. There life hasn’t changed a bit, probably due to the difficulties in climbing to such remote reaches. But the main obstacle comes from the people themselves. Uncle Jake is a hard-headed, recalcitrant sort, the kind of tightly wound conservative who has a bunch of set ideas in his head and refuses to shift them for anything. He’s racist, sexist, religiously intolerant and finds the altered world with all its newfangled ideas distasteful. You don’t have to guess where he stands on women getting the vote or black people having fair and equal wages.
This novel ends abruptly with John marrying Uncle Jake’s daughter Drusilla. He despairs of finding any modern woman who’ll have him because of his own retrograde feelings and begs her to accept him from pity. This is a terrible reason to get married (and not just because she’s his first cousin). But Drusilla is clearly miserable locked away on her uncle’s farm and marriage to John is her only escape. It’s an…ambiguous ending. He claims that they settled in the changed world, after all. He grew to accept it because Drusilla’s youth and beauty came back to her and she loved it because it freed her of the tyranny of her stubborn uncle.
This is a weak endorsement of the utopia that Ms. Perkins is trying to sell to us—that it enriched the lives of two people, that happiness comes about because of their marriage to each other not assimilation into a society that would wait patiently for them to accept its ways.
Herland is the most famous of the trilogy. It provides more action and the sense of conflict is greater because three men of very different temperaments encounter a world of women who haven’t seen men in 2,000 years. The constant culture clash in terms of sexism, motherhood and religion, et al., is at times almost funny to read. The women are constantly amused by the men and the men are buffaloed by the women. This one remains my favorite among the three novels and I’ve written about it elsewhere so there’s no need to reiterate my opinion.
With Her in Ourland is a sequel of Herland and finds Vandyke Jennings along with the banished Terry O. Nicholson going back to the world of men and women. Terry, sore and furious about being beaten off by his wife Alima after he attempted to rape her, is quick to push away his experiences in the world of all-women to rejoin his former life. When he learns there’s a war going on, he signs up with almost obscene eagerness. He’s the adventurous sort and the lack of any conflict among the women wearied and infuriated his active nature.
Van is eager to have his wife Ellador see America with him. But they travel the long way around and explore the world first. Van tries to lay the groundwork for Ellador for the poverty, disease, armed conflict, selfishness and greed that she will encounter. But his words are no preparation for the actuality of the case.
Ellador’s ways are ones of patient listening, unprejudiced inquiry and constant study of the world around her. She’s presented as almost a paragon of learning, able to pick up foreign languages simply by talking to people and applying herself to well-written language books. She doesn’t bicker, argue or attack people. She merely questions people on their supposed topics of expertise until they find themselves backed into a corner or often contradicting themselves without meaning to do so. She never smirks in triumph against them when she finds a fallacy in their thinking; she merely points out the flaws until they retreat, usually upset or angry that she’s dared to challenge them.
Ellador might come off as being too saintly and somewhat smug. But she’s genuinely trying to understand the world around her and find the good in one that has both men and women in it rather than the neutered single sex that she knew. She does concede that men have done miraculous things in terms of invention and advances in science; her people are rather backward in that sort of thing. But she can’t help but be saddened by all the misery, pain, suffering and starvation she sees around her which she thinks are brought about by bad ideas held on to for far too long.
That is where Ellador shines. She never blames people; she only blames the outdated, nonsensical notions they’ve clung to for so long. She wonders why Americans would come to a new country with a splendid radical plan called democracy and then crowd it with bad, awful traditions like graft that enriches a few at the expense of the many (welcome to the 1%), sexism towards women and slavery, which caused colonials to drag millions of Africans away from their homes and land them in a country that didn’t have enough resources to support them. She doesn’t see much good in religion that promotes peace when it has clearly failed to establish it.
Where Ellador might come off as being a bit snobbish is when she’s talking to women. She finds them tedious, small-minded bores (although she’s too gracious to say so), their minds bent on nothing more edifying than what’s to be done in the household. She sees some hope among the suffragists—she just doesn’t think they take their ideas far enough.
Above all, Ellador states that the main problem with Van’s world is that people simply don’t comport themselves with any kind of unity. Men and women cling tightly to their own households and spend little thought or care about their fellow human beings or neighbors. This insular thinking is what warps people and makes it impossible for them to form any plan that will help their society as a whole.
This novel presents us with more action than the previous two because it takes our couple on a trip around the world. The romance between Van and Ellador deepens, mainly because Ellador’s misery causes her to cling more tightly to Van than she otherwise would. But it two ends in rather an abrupt fashion as the first novel. After a welcome return to Ellador’s home, Van announces proudly that they have a son and the book ends like a curtain dropped on a stage.
Perhaps it would have been something to see their son grow up in Herland and then attempt to take his ideas into the wider world. That would no doubt bring us full circle, as people would be brought into a new utopia due to one family’s energetic passions.
September 21, 2020
São tantas coisas, que nem sei dizer.
Haja ideia controvérsia!
A opção por usar de narradores homens e personagens centrais que são a personificação de tudo que qualquer feminista não tem mais paciência foi estranha. Mas mais estranho é dizer que o veganismo está em alta e não existem mais zoológicos ou animais domésticos, mas eliminaram espécies inteiras (cães e predadores). É não haverem lésbicas no país só de mulheres. E ainda mais estranho é o profundo viés de maternidade e foco total nas crianças como solução para a sociedade, onde aborto é mal visto, mas a forma eugênica de pensar é natural (onde características mentais ou físicas são eliminadas da sociedade para "aperfeiçoar a humanidade") e xenofobica em alguns pontos, e definitivamente americocentrada. Mas isso são só alguns pontos controversos, não é o resumo da obra.
Dos três livros, gostei mais do primeiro, mas se tivesse a opção, leria sem a presença insuportável do narrador personagem principal, o macho escroto, que cansa e torna um exercício a leitura enquanto se revira os olhos.
Haja ideia controvérsia!
A opção por usar de narradores homens e personagens centrais que são a personificação de tudo que qualquer feminista não tem mais paciência foi estranha. Mas mais estranho é dizer que o veganismo está em alta e não existem mais zoológicos ou animais domésticos, mas eliminaram espécies inteiras (cães e predadores). É não haverem lésbicas no país só de mulheres. E ainda mais estranho é o profundo viés de maternidade e foco total nas crianças como solução para a sociedade, onde aborto é mal visto, mas a forma eugênica de pensar é natural (onde características mentais ou físicas são eliminadas da sociedade para "aperfeiçoar a humanidade") e xenofobica em alguns pontos, e definitivamente americocentrada. Mas isso são só alguns pontos controversos, não é o resumo da obra.
Dos três livros, gostei mais do primeiro, mas se tivesse a opção, leria sem a presença insuportável do narrador personagem principal, o macho escroto, que cansa e torna um exercício a leitura enquanto se revira os olhos.
July 28, 2022
I read one of the three novellas, Moving the Mountain, and decided, based on this experience, that I don't care to read the others -- which are actually not intended as a trilogy. I did enjoy the period language, the vision of a communal society, and the ecological balance of the earth in this story. The eugenics made me feel grimy, but I appreciate an academic who reviewed the work suggesting it be read less as fiction and more as an historical work of sociology. Gilman was truly a pioneering woman! Also note: the Wilder Publications edition of these stories is not recommended unless you prefer half a dozen typos per page; someone apparently used a pdf reader and failed to correct it.
February 5, 2025
A feminist friend slipped this book into my backpack in the early 2000's. I think about this book almost every day. Everything in the book makes so much sense - creating a world where we set up the most vulnerable to succeed, means creating a world where everyone has the tools they need to thrive. I have bought so many copies of this book for friends, I think women everywhere should read it. When I had my baby, I wondered about the rooms in the nursery, that were soft and made to fall. I thought about the children being brought into the orchards to see how their food grows and to help, creating a personal relationship with the food they consume. I thought about the respect the women had for each other. This author was ahead of her time.
August 17, 2023
I read this trilogy in 2016 and just revisited it. It is a brilliant novel. The perspective of this author is valuable and was consistently dismissed during her lifetime.
Writing styles have changed over the years, so I can see why some folks have difficulty reading it. I didn’t find these stories bookish or like lecture. Then again, I’ve always enjoyed historical literature.
Many of the concepts described are ones I can relate to. I read Herland first, then Moving the Mountain and, finally, Living with Her in Ourland. I strongly suggest reading them in order. The evolution of thought and practices is fascinating and, possibly, easier to understand when read in order.
Writing styles have changed over the years, so I can see why some folks have difficulty reading it. I didn’t find these stories bookish or like lecture. Then again, I’ve always enjoyed historical literature.
Many of the concepts described are ones I can relate to. I read Herland first, then Moving the Mountain and, finally, Living with Her in Ourland. I strongly suggest reading them in order. The evolution of thought and practices is fascinating and, possibly, easier to understand when read in order.
April 12, 2018
Less evident are the unseemingly sides of Gilman's thinking in Herland, than they are in the other two. Casual racism? Eugenics? Feminism? Yikes!
July 6, 2022
Finished Moving the Mountain. Will return for the other two.
September 17, 2022
didactic and very flimsily veiled as such. interesting to encounter what a feminist utopia might look like to a 19th-century woman’s imagination but girlie was a eugenicist and she did not hold back
September 26, 2024
Interesting but eventually felt sad and eventually a little boring
November 4, 2024
Great book, I listened to the audiobook version on YouTube. I will leave the link below so that everyone can enjoy it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ7gG...
July 30, 2025
The first-ever feminist utopia. It was surprising to find this book so late. I am glad I read it.
July 25, 2021
Interesting, confusing, wrong, right, thought provoking, anger provoking. Racist but considering the times not as bad as it could be. Would be a great book group book.
It definitely makes one think. I tried to keep an open mind and not judge things as being simplistic or silly - because I kept remembering that I really don't know how an all-woman society would work. I have always thought of myself as a person first, then a woman and unusual in that I don't subscribe to a lot of what society puts upon women. I tried hard to not get my back up about how motherhood is talked about as being the one thing women want to be (in Herland) because I think I would be okay with that if the world was like Herland. I think that some woman are good for making babies but not raising them up and some are good at teaching but not having any of their own. I think it takes a village. I think that a lot of what we consider feminine is just something that we take on to be different than men, or in the attempt to attract a man so there was a lot I could agree with here. There were parts that were just so funny because they are true. How clothes in Herland would have a lot of pockets. I adored the sections on how children will learn. I wonder if they would be so even tempered though but not having had children or children around me that were raised in near perfect conditions (basic needs met, freedom) maybe that is possible.
It definitely makes one think. I tried to keep an open mind and not judge things as being simplistic or silly - because I kept remembering that I really don't know how an all-woman society would work. I have always thought of myself as a person first, then a woman and unusual in that I don't subscribe to a lot of what society puts upon women. I tried hard to not get my back up about how motherhood is talked about as being the one thing women want to be (in Herland) because I think I would be okay with that if the world was like Herland. I think that some woman are good for making babies but not raising them up and some are good at teaching but not having any of their own. I think it takes a village. I think that a lot of what we consider feminine is just something that we take on to be different than men, or in the attempt to attract a man so there was a lot I could agree with here. There were parts that were just so funny because they are true. How clothes in Herland would have a lot of pockets. I adored the sections on how children will learn. I wonder if they would be so even tempered though but not having had children or children around me that were raised in near perfect conditions (basic needs met, freedom) maybe that is possible.
May 6, 2008
The first novel of this book, Moving the Mountain, was definitely my favorite, even if Herland is the classic.
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