Herland Blog 2

     Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in her book Herland, depicts a community that consists of only women that has succeeded for many years without the requirement of men. In this community of women, Gilman portrays a sense of rationalism among the women and their society. Because Herland is isolated from other communities and the members have an extreme codependence of each other, the people of Herland are willing to put the needs of the community as a whole ahead of one member. Herland’s organization differs from that of a place with government managing business, industry, and economic activity for the people because it is organized more like a family.Every member of this community shares the idea that hard work and sacrifice benefit not just one person but the entire group and reward is shared by all people in the community. Therefore Herland is a rationalized society that is able to work peacefully and also able to reach the most rational decisions about problems inside the community. 

     Perhaps the most striking example of Herland’s rational society is the way the women calmly embrace the population controls needed to keep the population on their isolated plateau. Although many of the women would prefer to have multiple children, they are limited to just one, and some are forbidden to reproduce at all so that bad qualities may be “bred out” of the population. This idea has influence from natural selection, which was and still is a popular scientific theory about the survival of the fittest in society. Van is struck by the simplicity of this solution and by the shared sacrifice required of all of the women to make it work. Van comes to see his own society as simply an collection of individuals, each in competition with the other, and dependent on the oppression of the female half of the population. Gilman argues that disease, crime, war, pollution, and poverty, all unknown in Herland, would be conquered if they were viewed as issues for the whole society to tackle and if society had the power to remake itself along the most rational lines. Gilman uses the rationalistic ideas in Herland as a way to show the men, particularly Van, the cooperation that is found with rational and logical rules.