Gilman's Herland as Suffragist Argument
Herland was written during a time of apparent struggle for women across America. The 1910's were filled with inequality between the sexes. Women had already been trying desperately to gain the right to vote for over 50 years, and still only several stated had given women suffrage. It was still overwhelmingly believed that women were best seen and not heard. From this political turmoil, emerged Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland.
Gilman was born in 1860, when the suffragist movement had already been going on for a decade.
Her father Frederick Beecher Perkins, a magazine editor frequently left the family for long periods of time. Charlotte would often spend time with her greataunts, Catherine Beecher, advocate of "domestic feminism", Isabella Beecher Hooker, an ardent suffragist, who was a supporter of women's right to vote, and Harriet Beecher Stower, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (DeGrazia).
Thus, from the beginning of her life, Gilman was surrounded by strong feminist influences that affected her personality and her future as a feminist writer deeply. This influence is seen to an interminable degree in Herland.
Herland, narrated from a male point of view, describes a society feared by all menùin the story, and in the society of the 1910's. That is, a society ruled completely by women. Gilman is careful in this novel to distinguish that the society is defined by the presence of only women, rather than the absence of men, and even more careful to express that men's fears of such an unknown place.
And as we got farther and farther upstream, in a dark tangle of rivers, lakes, morasses, and dense forests, with here and there an unexpected long spur running out from the big mountains beyond, I noticed that more and more of these savages had a story about a strange and terrible Woman Land in the high distance (Gilman, 2)
Herland is certainly a place of legend for t
...