the absence of men. Herland was published in 1915 and then largely forgotten until it was republished in the 1970s.
Gilman herself was a socialist with unconventional views. She struggled in her own life with memories of her childhood desertion and with poverty and recurring depression (odin.english.udel.edu/timmons.html). Her socialism is an important element in the society she creates, a society answering the fact that in Gilman's own world, women are dependent and ignored by the power structure. Gilman herself held that human beings have a need to
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