Examples Of Motherhood In Herland

We soon grew to see that mother-love has more than one channel of expression. I think the reason our children are so—so fully loved, by all of us, is that we never—any of us—have enough of our own. (93)

Somel, one of the tutors of country says these words to Van toward the end of Chapter 6, during one of their long discussions about the idea of motherhood in Herland. Gilman wants to show that even though the women have lived without men for so long, they are not less feminine than other women and not unnatural in their feelings. These women experience a desire for motherhood as great as any woman’s, but it is a desire likely bound to go unfulfilled to some extent. The majority of the women of Herland are allowed only one child, even though

‘But we did work it out. You see, before a child comes to one of us there is a period of utter exaltation—the whole being is uplifted and filled with a concentrated desire for that child. We learned to look forward to that period with the greatest caution. Often our young women, those to whom motherhood had not yet come, would voluntarily defer it. When that deep inner demand for a child began to be felt she would deliberately engage in the most active work, physical and mental; and even more important, would solace her longing by the direct care and service of the babies we already had.’(93)

In Herland, the centrality of motherhood leads to a different philosophy of child care and education. As Vandyck Jennings came to discover, ‘You see, children were the--the raison d’etre in this country’ (68) and all Herlanders shared child-raising duties. Children were not considered private property, but rather, the responsibility of the community. “As children grew, they were taught Peace, Beauty, Order, Safety, Love, Wisdom, Justice, Patience, and

was that whereas our children grow up in private homes and families, with every effort made to protect and seclude them from a dangerous world, here they grew up in a wide, friendly world, and knew it for theirs, from the first. Herland babies stayed with their mothers for the first year, but were thereafter cared for by the rest of the community. Herland spaces were also designed to be safe for infants and children. “The houses and gardens, planned for babies, had in them nothing to hurt--no stairs, no corners, no small loose objects to swallow, no fire--just a babies paradise.”(143) In her writing, she argues that marriage impairs the mental and physical development of women, and that motherhood is not a ‘natural’ endowment for which all women are equally suited.

Therefore, Gilman’s novel, Herland, projects alternative societal models and possibilities for women, and men, in a changing society. As Lane states, “in her utopia, Charlotte Perkins Gilman transforms the private world of mother-child, isolated in the individual home, into a community of mothers and children in a socialized world... in the interest of us all (1979: xxvii). What this means is that Gilman expands the importance of the feminine such as motherhood and childcare from the domestic domain to a larger societal significance without falling into the simplistic opinion that only women are