Herland: Themes | SparkNotes

The Subduing of Women’s Humanity

In Herland and other writings, Gilman shows that her society is unjust to women and does not allow them to achieve their full human potential. Women’s lives, she reveals, are too consumed by difficult, unremunerated “women’s work,” such as childbearing, child rearing, and domestic labor. Because women are limited to this domestic world, they are made out to be less “fully human” than men in their potential for development. Given the chance, Gilman says, women can embrace the whole of life just as much men, and the women of Herland—strong, intelligent, and self-reliant—are the fictional embodiment of this point. All three of the male characters in Herland start out with the assumption of female inferiority, and all three must eventually alter their world views in their dealings with the Herlandian women, to varying degrees of success.

The men’s relationships with Ellador, Celis, and Alima show the difficulties that arise when women demand to be treated as equals in love as well as in society. Terry and Alima end in open conflict, while Jeff and Celis simply fail to understand one another at all. Van eventually relates to Ellador as a full human being, not merely a woman, and Gilman portrays their relationship as the most successful. Gilman suggests that once equality between men and women has been established, romantic partners will achieve a sense of privacy and pleasure in sexual difference. As Van and Ellador begin their journey at the end of the novel, part of their mission is to completely re-imagine the sexual and romantic bond between men and women, with the full humanity of women as part of the equation.

The Rationalism of Herland’s Society

Herland is organized along socialist lines and represents an idealized form of how society should behave. In a socialist economy, the government manages business, industry, and economic activity on behalf of the people. This is the opposite of a “free enterprise” system, in which the central authority may regulate industrial and commercial activity, but not control or direct it. One of socialism’s attractions is that it proposes to replace a social structure based on competition and individualism with one based on community and cooperation. Thanks to Herland’s isolated location and the extreme interdependence of its inhabitants, its members must put the community’s needs before their own. Herland is organized more as a family than as a state, and each member is happy to sacrifice for the greater good. From the communal farming of the forests to the common education of the young, Herland is organized around the principle that work and reward are to be shared by all, to the maximum benefit of the greatest number. Herlandian society is therefore highly rationalized. The entire community deals with internal problems, without favoritism, individual ambition, or family feeling to interfere with reaching the most rational solution.

Perhaps the most striking example of Herland’s rational society is the way the women calmly embrace the population controls required to sustain the population on their isolated plateau. Although many of the women would prefer to have multiple children, they are limited to just one, and some are forbidden to reproduce at all so that bad qualities may be “bred out” of the population. Van is struck by the simplicity of this solution and by the shared sacrifice required of all of the women to make it work. Van comes to see his own society as simply an aggregation of individuals, each in competition with the other, and predicated on the oppression of the female half of the population. Gilman argues that disease, crime, war, pollution, and poverty, all unknown in Herland, would be conquered if they were viewed as issues for the whole society to tackle and if society had the power to remake itself along the most rational lines.

The Rejection of Tradition

The extreme rationalization of Herlandian society is possible in part because of Herland’s complete rejection of tradition. For example, when Jeff mentions that the men’s society is based on traditions thousands of years old, Moadine responds that Herland has no laws over one hundred years old and very few over twenty. Having been created essentially from scratch, the laws and customs of Herland are subject to constant scrutiny and revision. The women see their society and culture as human creations, meant to serve human needs in the present, so neither the institutions nor the practices of the past are sacred. Even the games the children play are new inventions, created for their educational value. Religious tradition is no exception, and the religion of Herland is a rather simple worship of motherhood and nature, in which there is no vested authority or sacred canon and from which all negative or unpleasant aspects have been purged.

Though Van initially views the women’s attitude toward the past as irreverent and disrespectful, Ellador explains that, from the Herlandian perspective, it makes no sense to give the same weight to the opinions of ancestors as to those of the present generation. Knowledge and understanding have increased over the years, and the best way to honor the departed women of Herland is to continue their example of conscious improvement of the land and of themselves. Gilman understands that her project of advancing feminism and moving the United States toward a socialist economy places her in direct opposition to many firmly rooted traditions, especially those regarding the family. Gilman saw traditional Christianity as opposed to many of the changes she was proposing. By subjecting tradition in general, and Christianity in particular, to the reasonable but quite sharp questions of the women of Herland, Gilman hopes to displace tradition from its privileged seat and thereby prepare the way for serious political changes.

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