Herland

About the book

Vandyck Jennings and his companions enter an isolated country inhabited entirely by women, expecting discoveries that fit their own ideas about gender and civilization. Instead, their hosts' education, cooperation, child-rearing, and organization of daily life repeatedly make those expectations difficult to defend. The visitors respond differently, so the experiment tests not only a theory of society but the temperament of the person asked to reconsider it. Gilman uses conversations and practical observations to turn familiar customs into questions that require explanation. The imagined community carries limitations and assumptions of its own, including its strong emphasis on collective motherhood. The novel's satirical force comes from reversing who must justify themselves, allowing readers to watch supposedly obvious truths become uncertain when spoken before an audience that has never needed them.

• Gender and society
• Education
• Unexamined assumptions

Why read it

For a social thought experiment whose visitors discover that the hardest unfamiliar territory may be their own inherited beliefs.

Utopian novel · English text