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Herland—An All-female Women’s Utopia
LIANG Ying
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2013.11.001
Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China
Charlotte Gilman’s utopian masterpiece Herland (1915) dramatizes a confrontation between three men and an all-female society. Gilman not only creates a political vacuum, where the whole patriarchal civilization, including patriarchal system, superstructure, ideology, influence, and consciousness have ceased to exist, but also men are done away with all together. Most reviews claim that Herland criticizes the patriarchal tradition and manifests concern for humanity and some even regard Herland as the first truly feminist work in the American tradition. But this supposedly utopian world is actually static, without possibilities of growth and even inhuman, gothic, and nightmarish. And this is because Gilman constructs the women’s utopia out of the conviction in women’s superiority over men. Herland is a little paradise that is designed too perfect. Women’s utopias still need to promote social change in the real world.
separation tactic, angels in the house, parthenogenesis, reproductive function, motherhood, selective breeding, dystopia
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