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Contradictory Feminism In Herland By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Contradictory Feminism in Herland
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is widely celebrated as a feminist utopia. In the novel, three men, Terry, Jeff, and Van, venture to a fabled country that is theorized to contain only women. They arrive to find a society that is extremely “happy” and “civilized” despite the fact that there are no men, which was a striking picture for 1915. Furthermore, this female-only society proves to be superior to the men’s home country of America in many ways, especially the quality of life the citizens have. The women prove that they can build a society more successful than one with men. While Perkins Gilman succeeds in critiquing the patriarchy with Herland, her female-only utopia still perpetuates many flawed ideologies …show more content…

When describing the women the male narrator, Van, explains, “They had the evenest tempers, the most perfect patience and good nature–one of the things most impressive about them all was the absence of irritability” (Perkins Gilman 46). The general message this sends is that, to be successful the women have to dull themselves down, which is a common narrative in society. This feeds into the stereotype of the agreeable, docile woman that is very appealing to men. Van also states, “With these women the most salient quality in all their institutions was reasonableness” (Perkins Gilman 76). This kind of rhetoric gives the impression that the society the women have created is only successful because the women are so intelligent and reasonable and lack raw emotions such as anger and sadness. It conveys the message that, although the women in the novel are considered valuable, it is only because they are a specific kind of curated women that do not exist outside of Herland. This message is proved further with the themes of eugenics and breeding better people (Perkins Gilman 59). By dulling down the women’s emotions to happy, intelligent, and fair-minded, Perkins Gilman feeds into another stereotype– that women are only valid if they are passive and

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