Gilman's "Herland"

There are many female characters in literature written by women who can be considered reflections of their creators in that they are attempting to express themselves as artists in a world that is hostile to their efforts. Such characters may show a lack of artistic development that can be attributed to the imposition of certain social traditions and social roles which involve expectations placed on these women, expectations that either excludes artistic expression or that channels it into narrow and designated areas. Presumably the authors of these works have themselves experienced the social pressure to conform that plagues their characters, as Barrett notes with reference to Virginia Woolf's views on the subject:

She argued that the writer was the product of her or his historical circumstances, and that material conditions were of crucial importance. Secondly, she claimed that these material circumstances had a profound effect on the psychological aspects of writing, and that they could be seen to influence the nature of the creative work itself (Barrett 5).

Gilman reflects her own interests and background in her characters in Herland, and in doing so, she develops a contract between what she sees as natural, how this differs from the male view, and how her women put the idea of the natural into operation in their own society.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1860, and she died in 1935. She worked as a commercial artist after studying des

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to gain admiration for their accomplishments, asking how they are different from the women he has known in his own world and why they are different. Jennings first recognizes that his "captors" are intelligent--"for clear reasoning, for real brain scope and power they were A No. 1, but there were a lot of things they did not know" (Gilman 48). The women propose an exchange of information, a dual learning experience, and this is how much of the book emerges. This dual learning experience offers the chance for Gilman to explain her ideas on feminism and socialism, and by the end of the book, Jennings is beginning to accept both as the rightful way of things. In the beginning, he is a social Darwinist and holds that the reason that there is poverty in his own land is because the laws of nature say there must be. The theories of Darwin had been highly influential in the late nineteenth century and had a profound influence on Western society even as it remained controversial and rejected by segments of the population. Another reason for criticism of Darwinism was the uses to which it was put by some, as noted by T. H. Huxley in 1893 with reference to a prevalent fallacy, the idea that Darwin said that plants and animals had evolv

Category: Literature - G