Herland

Summary

“As I learned more and more to appreciate what these women had accomplished, the less proud I was of what we, with all our manhood, had done.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland is a thought-provoking work of utopian fiction and a time capsule of early twentieth-century feminism.

On the eve of the First World War, sociology student Vandyck Jennings goes on an expedition with two of his friends to search for a society rumored to consist only of women. On the way to what they will name “Herland,” Van and his friends ponder the type of women they hope or expect to see when they get there … but they find no fantasies when they arrive.

Herland is an all-female, community-driven utopia. Van and his friends are skeptical of a society that doesn’t even need men to procreate, but women and girls who live there have all been raised in a world entirely removed from the patriarchy of the wider world. To them, Herland is a paradise; there are no wars, no conflicts, and no oppressive concepts of gender. These young men, however, are not easily brought into the fold. During their time in Herland, Van and his friends must decide whether they will remain entrenched in their own views of women and society, or if they will open their minds to a way of living they could scarcely have ever imagined.