Robin J. Hall

Who Built “Herland”?

I am always interested in finding out “where books come from.” Because Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland seems to be radically feminist for 1915, the year it was published, I was particularly curious about how Gilman developed the ideas that went into it. In reading utopias, you can learn what the authors thought would make a “perfect” society, and also, with a little regressive analysis, what social issues were being talked about at the time they were written. This is easier when reading a novel by someone like Gilman, who was not just a novelist but also, and perhaps primarily, a sociologist. It’s not difficult to learn her sociological theories because she wrote prolifically about them in books like Women and Economics, first published in 1898. However, as we discussed in class, some of those theories seem pretty radical, and they may not necessarily represent the sociology of her time. To find out where her ideas came from, I researched a few contemporary sociologists who played significant roles in her intellectual life to see how their ideas may have influenced Herland.

Gilman was an admirer and sometime student of Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913), a prominent sociologist and feminist thinker (Finlay 252). Gilman and Ward frequently corresponded, and she received much of her early education in sociological theories through his recommended readings and copies of his articles (Allen 62, 70).  Ward believed that sex differences and the subordination of women were highly relevant to the way society developed, which tended to make him unpopular with many conservative American sociologists (Finlay 253).  Ward was a “reform Darwinist” and a “neo-Lamarckian.” Lamarckians believed that humans inherited aspects of their culture and behavior, as well as physical traits (Allen 65). Ward noted how relationships between males and females varied widely between cultures, suggesting that gender roles were cultural phenomena (Finlay 255). He developed a theory of gynaecocracy, which generally held that humankind was originally dominated by women, who selected their mates based on the evolutionary needs of the human race, much like females of other species (Allen 64; Finlay 254). Consistent with their role as “fertilizers,” males desired constant rather than periodic sex, and they eventually violently subjugated women and started picking their own permanent mates, using sex-based criteria, to get it (Allen 60).  Marriage developed as a way of formalizing male “ownership” of women and children as an economic relationship based on the sex relation (Allen 66-7; Finlay 256). Men developed negative stereotypes of women and valued them less in order to justify their subjugation (Finlay 257). Ward also wrote about the spread of misogyny through the major religions (Finlay 257-8). In Dynamic Sociology, which he wrote in 1902, he envisioned what an egalitarian society would look like, including full integration in the fields of politics, work, and leisure activities (Finlay 258). He suggested less variation in clothing styles, less focus on “sexual attractiveness,” equal access to education, and equal part in making and enforcing the laws (Finlay 259).

Ward’s idea that early humanity had placed women in a better position than modern society did shows up in Gilman’s poem “Proem,” published as an introduction to Women and Economics (Finlay 255, Gilman, Women 5). Many of Ward’s ideas from Dynamic Sociology make an appearance in Herland. The women had sensible, androgynous modes of dress “They all wore short hair, some few inches at most; some curly, some not; all light and clean and fresh-looking.” (Gilman, Herland Ch. 3) “[T]he clothes...  were quite as comfortable as our own-in some ways more so-and undeniably better looking. As to pockets, they left nothing to be desired.” (Gilman, Herland Ch. 7).  Women participated in all fields of work, recreation, and education “We were now well used to seeing women not as females but as people; people of all sorts, doing every kind of work.” (Gilman, Herland Ch. 12). In contrast to the men, the women demonstrated no apparent interest in sexual relations outside of procreation: "’You mean—that with you—love between man and woman expresses itself in that way-without regard to motherhood? To parentage, I mean,’ she added carefully. ‘Yes, surely. It is love we think of-the deep sweet love between two. Of course we want children, and children come—but that is not what we think about.’ ‘But—but—it seems so against nature!’ she said” (Gilman, Herland Ch. 12).

Echoes of Ward’s critiques of religion can also be found in Women and Economics (Gilman, Women 46) and in the religion of Herland. “[W]here they went far beyond us was in the special application of religious feeling to every field of life. They had no ritual, no little set of performances called ‘divine service,’ save those religious pageants I have spoken of, and those were as much educational as religious, and as much social as either. But they had a clear established connection between everything they did—and God. Their cleanliness, their health, their exquisite order, the rich peaceful beauty of the whole land, the happiness of the children, and above all the constant progress they made-all this was their religion. They applied their minds to the thought of God, and worked out the theory that such an inner power demanded outward expression. They lived as if God was real and at work within them.” (Gilman, Herland Ch. 10).

One of Gilman’s earliest mentors and influences was Helen Stuart Campbell (1839-1918), a 19^th century feminist and economist.  Campbell’s focus was on women wage-earners and the gender pay gap. She was also an advocate of labor and consumer unions. She earned an award from the American Economics Association in 1891 for her study of the gender pay gap. Campbell and Gilman first met in 1894 while working on the feminist journal Impress, and in 1896, they ran a Hull-House settlement house in Chicago together (Dimand 482). Campbell and her peers were also interested in the restriction of employment opportunities for women and how it adversely affected their economic well being. They opined that this restriction of possibilities led to wage depression in those fields in which women were allowed to work.  They campaigned for reform in laws pertaining to women’s property rights as well as the gender gap in wages and women’s employment rights. Campbell’s theories about inefficient household economics can be seen in Gilman’s theories about gender economics, or “sexuo-economic relations” within society (Dimand 483). Gilman argued that the low economic value placed on the domestic services provided by homemakers contributed to household inefficiencies that would be better served by economies of scale, such as cooperative nurseries and cooperative kitchens (Dimand 483). Herland generally reflects women’s ability to perform any jobs that men can perform, and shows “domestic” services such as cooking, cleaning and child care being valued equally to other work.  Both of these concepts are found in Herland.

“For food we either went to any convenient eating-house, ordered a meal brought in, or took it with us to the woods, always and equally good.” (Gilman, Herland Ch. 11). "’The care of babies involves education, and is entrusted only to the most fit.’ …‘Those of us who are the most highly competent fulfill that office; and a majority of our girls eagerly try for it-I assure you we have the very best.’…’[The mother] is not the only one to care for it. There are others whom she knows to be wiser. She knows it because she has studied as they did, practiced as they did, and honors their real superiority. For the child's sake, she is glad to have for it this highest care.’" (Herland Ch. 7).

Gilman and Campbell together ran one of the Hull House settlement houses in Chicago in 1896.  The Hull House movement was started by Jane Addams (1860-1935) after touring a male-oriented settlement project in London called Toynbee Hall. She and Ellen Starr started the original Hull-House as a social welfare project in 1889, providing education for children and adults, care for the sick, and meeting space for social clubs in a poor area, later branching into social activism (Biographical web page). The settlement house was itself a utopic vision of intellectual equality and social services transcending economics. Hull House brought together educated women of some means with poor women, primarily immigrants, in a communal environment. The educated women Addams attracted to help run her program studied labor and sanitary conditions, gathered statistics, provided health examinations, investigated industry, and lobbied for political and social reforms. She worked with social reform activists like Ida B. Wells and Clara Cahill Park, and with labor leaders like Eugene Debs (Deegan 251-2). The movement had its roots in a reaction to the male-dominated “pragmatist” school of sociology at the University of Chicago. While there were also women sociologists at the University of Chicago, they were fewer and less celebrated than the men. Addams taught there through the Extension Division. These women developed a “feminist pragmatism,” which focused on issues primarily affecting women, such as the problems of the disenfranchised, everyday problems with democracy, and elitism in education. They encouraged the study of social class and labor relations (Deegan 252). Addams was dedicated to nonviolence and social cooperation (Deegan 252), and she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 (Biographical web site). Addams encouraged Gilman in writing her book Women and Economics (Dimand 482) and her social justice ideas are reflected in both Women and Economics and Herland.  

The influence of the Hull-House movement and Gilman’s experience with it is reflected generally in Gilman’s overarching illustration of a female-only society with an emphasis on education for all and social equality within that society. Examples of these ideals are illustrated through the depiction of Herland as a place of wisdom, peace, and cooperation: “When one settles too close in one kind of work there is a tendency to atrophy in the disused portions of the brain. We like to keep on learning, always." (Gilman, Herland Ch. 9). The male narrator states “We had expected them to be given over to what we called ‘feminine vanity’-'frills and furbelows,’ and we found they had evolved a costume more perfect than the Chinese dress, richly beautiful when so desired, always useful, of unfailing dignity and good taste. We had expected a dull submissive monotony, and found a daring social inventiveness far beyond our own, and a mechanical and scientific development fully equal to ours. We had expected pettiness, and found a social consciousness besides which our nations looked like quarreling children-feebleminded ones at that. We had expected jealousy, and found a broad sisterly affection, a fair-minded intelligence, to which we could produce no parallel. We had expected hysteria, and found a standard of health and vigor, a calmness of temper, to which the habit of profanity, for instance, was impossible to explain-we tried it.” (Herland Ch. 7).

Although I was able to discuss only a few of the turn-of-the-century sociologists who influenced Gilman’s work, it is clear that she was far from alone in her views about women’s proper place in society. Ward’s reform Darwinism and neo-Lamarckian ideas contributed to her ideas about the male-female relationship, particularly with regard to sex. Helen Campbell’s interest in wage discrimination and the economic value of domestic labor is reflected in Women and Economics and in Gilman’s emphasis on women’s capabilities in Herland. Jane Addams and the Hull House movement may have inspired the whole idea of a “Herland” after having seen firsthand how a female settlement house operated to raise women out of poverty and ignorance. Herland was not simply a creation of Gilman’s imagination but was instead a careful compilation of answers to a number of widely studied and discussed social questions. While some of her ideas seem quaint, ridiculous, or even offensive to the 21^st century reader, they were based on mainstream, or at least widely held, academic theories of her time, some of which remain popular today.

References

Allen, Judith A. “The Overthrow of Gynaecocentric Culture: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Lester Frank Ward.” In Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries, eds. Cynthia J. Davis and Denise D. Knight, 59-86. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2004.

Deegan, Mary Jo. “Jane Addams, the Hull-House School of Sociology, and Social Justice, 1892 to 1935.” Humanity and Society 37, no. 3. Keynote Address by Mary Jo Deegan to the 2011 AHS Annual Meeting (Aug. 2013): 248-258. doi:10.1177/0160597613493730

Dimand, Robert. “Nineteenth-Century American Feminist Economics: From Caroline Dell to Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” The American Economic Review 90, no. 2. Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May 2000): 480-484. https://jstor.org/stable/117273

Finlay, Barbara. “Lester Frank Ward as a Sociologist of Gender: A New Look at His Sociological Work.” Gender and Society 13, no. 2 (April 1999): 251-265.  doi:10.1177/089124399013002006.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998. NOOK.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics. OPU, 2018. NOOK.

Nobel Prize (website). “Jane Addams Biographical.” Accessed Feb. 15, 2019.  https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1931/addams/biographical/ 

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