HERLAND

"Herland" is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The novel is a feminist fantasy about a world without men, a radical utopia in which mothering is socialized. Gilman envisions a society that lacks domination by the masculine traits of aggressiveness and combativeness. Three American men stumble on a community of women and are at first convinced that such a superior society presupposes men, whom they believe to be hiding...

Gilman creates a world valuing privacy and genuine community and eliminating the family. There are no men or families, only individuals. Children are reared by a community of women in a radical, alternative vision of collective motherhood. The women of Herland have no knowledge of sexuality; reproduction is by pathogenesis. Patriarchal culture is contrasted to the innocence and common sense of the Herlanders, who ridicule the way in which men define gender roles.