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Herland Research Paper

1321 Words6 Pages

Alexis Butterline
Professor Prickett
Interdisciplinary Research & Writing
23 February 2018
Women and the workplace
We live in a crazy world of violence, starvation, poverty, and inequality. Many authors imagine a world in which these problems do not exist. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of Herland, is one example of an author who is imagining a perfect utopian world. In this Utopia, there is no violence, no starvation, and all the citizens get along. Gilman eliminated men from this society because she believed that they are the reason for these problems. The purpose of Herland was to challenge the gender norms. Gilman wrote Herland to lash out against the way women were and still are view in society.
Women's economic dependence …show more content…

“At a certain level, Gilman's fantasy takes Miller at its word: Herland is a society of mothers. However, because there are no men in the society, all the women are also full economic and political participants in the society”. In Herland, these women will grow fruits/vegetables and give them to one another if they need it. This society fully functions by women and is ran very smoothly. They live in more of a socialist economy. In the novel, Jeff, one of the male explorers, says to Celis “A woman should not carry anything” talking about the fruit basket, (Herland, 79) when she asked why he replied that women were not built for heavy work. Having a man offer help in Herland was shocking to them because this wasn’t the “norm” or expected in their society. These women can provide for themselves and help one another without even having a …show more content…

De. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Feminization of Education.” Scholarly Communication Department, Research & Informatics, Virginia Tech Libraries, Digital Library and Archives of the Virginia Tech University Libraries, scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/old-WILLA/fall95/DeSimone.html.
Fusco, Katherine. "SYSTEMS, NOT MEN: PRODUCING PEOPLE IN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN'S HERLAND." Studies in the Novel 41.4 (2009): 418-34. ProQuest. Web. 7 Feb. 2018. Jennifer Hudak. “The Social Inventor : Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the (Re) Production of Perfection.” Women’s Studies 32.4 (0): 455–477. Web.
Lipin, Lawrence. “Muller v. Oregon (1908).” The Oregon Encyclopedia, 7 July 2017, doi:10.3897/bdj.4.e7720.figure2f.
“Lives of Women.” Lives of Women - Conner Prairie, www.connerprairie.org/education-research/indiana-history-1860-1900/lives-of-women.
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. Herland. Dover Publications,

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