Hannah Wells     

June 12, 2013

Every Womb is Sacred: Herland in Historical Context

In the land of utopia, no woman is destroyed by sex. Authors like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a proponent of improvement for women, created utopias like Herland, whose peaceful, unified, matriarchal society makes “the worse, patriarchal America” deeply unsettling (Lant 292). In Gilman’s utopia, one problem that the women have solved is the devastation caused by unwanted pregnancies. Without men, parthenogenesis is the only way to procreate. I find myself wondering what reproductive problems the women of Gilman’s era faced that influenced her to create a world of virgin births. What is the situation like for women in America and is it bad enough to warrant this kind of comment? A young Gilman commented that she wanted to “’improve the world’” (Salinas 129). What, in Herland, is she saving it from?

          While researching the era in which Gilman wrote and published Herland, I found important milestones in the fight for women. One interesting piece that I found is the biography of the life of Margaret Sanger. In 1892, Margaret Sanger’s mother died of tuberculosis and exhaustion after a life marked by eighteen pregnancies (eleven children and seven miscarriages) in thirty years (Baker 10). With her mother as inspiration, Sanger went on to devote her life to providing contraception, health care and information for the women of New York. Sanger’s work, which included founding the organization that would become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, occurred during the Progressive Era in the U.S., which spanned from the 1890’s to the 1920’s. This era, marked by increased immigration, poverty, disease and poor living conditions brought on the rise of feminism as women fought for basic rights and the survival of their children. Sanger’s mother, whose entire life was defined by pregnancy and motherhood, is not the exception but the norm for women in the Progressive Era. After reading about Margaret Sanger and the problems she attempted to solve, I find a few good reasons for Gilman’s creation of a world of virgin births.

          In the article, “A Sociological Analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and With Her in Ourland,” the author presents the idea that Gilman’s utopia was written to show how “the American system had failed in terms of allowing women full humanity” (Salinas 129). The author describes how Gilman created a sociological book of theory (disguised as novel) in a time when women were not encouraged to write serious works of sociology or science. I looked further into this article to find out if its author discussed the idea that Gilman specifically wanted to address the problems of reproduction faced by the women of the Progressive Era. To this end, Salinas made a very interesting point about how the only man who did not force himself on his wife is  “Gilman’s idyllic character” (Salinas 130). The realistic male character is rewarded for not forcing himself on and impregnating his wife. The ideal relationship between husband and wife is connected “with minds and souls,” not necessarily based on bodily urges (Salinas 131). It seems that Gilman, who understood the problems with American culture, saw, like Margaret Sanger, a solution in the protecting of women’s reproductive rights.

          The article “Herland and Hisland: Illness and ‘Health’ in the Writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” approaches my question from the angle of women’s mental health as it relates to reproductive rights. The author of the article spends quite a bit of time discussing “The Yellow Wallpaper” as it is a very famous story by Gilman that criticizes the mental health treatments for women in the Progressive Era. Later, though, the author delves into Herland and argues that in a feminist utopia, “there is no female hysteria because there is no oppressive bourgeois motherhood” (Hoeller 35). Gilman, herself a sufferer of “hysteria” and product of terrible rest cures, surely was presenting a way to stop this awful, female illness by controlling and regulating the pressures of childbirth and motherhood. The women of Herland are mentally strong and healthy because their lives are not rocked by barrenness or illness or death in their children. After reading this article, I feel like Gilman truly believed that women’s lives could be saved if reproductive health mattered to the society of the Progressive Era.

          Lastly, in a very interesting book, author Alice E. Adams explains that Gilman created a world where women have “perfect control over their reproductive bodies” which provides them with a “biosocial advantage” (71). My question as to whether Gilman’s extreme solution of virgin births is a reaction to her America’s state for women is also discussed in this book. Adams claims that social and economic influences damage the “biological aspects of women’s mothering” (177). In the world of Gilman and Margaret Sanger, women commonly had five or more children, could not find a job to support them and battled starvation and disease. The women of Herland faced none of these problems because they had choice and control.

          After reading many articles on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and the Progressive Era, I can conclude that one of Gilman’s goals in the novel was to comment on the lack of care for women and the damaging effects of unwanted pregnancies. I would like to continue researching this topic and see how other novels reflect their own eras’ current approach to women’s reproductive health. I also really enjoyed reading about the Progressive Era and will definitely present it more thoroughly when I return to teaching. This research went hand in hand with objective three for our class, which is a helpful teaching point as it makes utopian literature relevant as social and historical study.  

Works Cited

Adams, Alice E. Reproducing the Womb: Images of Childbirth in Science, Feminist Theory and Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994. Print.

Baker, Jean H. Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011. Online.

Hoeller, Hildegard. “Herland and Hisland: Illness and 'Health' in the Writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Theodore Dreiser.” Dreiser Studies 34.2 (2003) 24- 43. Online.

Lant, Kathleen Margaret. “The Rape of the Text: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Violation of Herland.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 9.2 (1990). 291-308. Online.

Salinas, Haley. “ A Sociological Analysis of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and With Her in Ourland.” The Discourse of Sociological Practice 6.2 (2004). 127-135. Online.