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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 design. Her great-aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Gilman shared with her illustrious relative a concern for social justice and the plight of women. In her lengthy essay Herland, Gilman creates a utopian society made up entirely of women, depicting around this homosocial (or onesex) society a culture, political system, and familial arrangement that was shaped by the fact that this was a society of women, rather than simply from...

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Gilman's "Herland". (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 03:44, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1684036.html