Jenna Wood

February 17, 2019

"Power is Just Sex": The Power of a Sex-Free Utopia in Gilman's Herland

            One year ago, the word dystopia would have made me think of the young adult novel series The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Now, it makes me think of the short film Janelle Monae produced to accompany her newest album, Dirty Computer. The singer portrays Jane, a woman determined to be a "dirty computer" by a futuristic government and taken to the House of the New Dawn to have her memories of her girlfriend erased. This story, like many modern dystopian fiction narratives, highlights the importance of the freedom to be one's truest self, which didn't seem to be a value Progressive Era utopian fiction paid attention to as I read Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Anthem by Ayn Rand. Anthem touched on individualism in the main character's quest to break away from his state-appointed job as Street Sweeper, but his love interest's lack of agency in her own journey—as well as the protagonist's likelihood of recreating the same system he was attempting to flee from in the end—presented a contradicting moral in my reading of the story. The all-women utopia in Herland, on the other hand, presented little opportunity to discover the individual traits of the characters, and simultaneously felt restricted in the lack of lesbian romance in two thousand years of a woman-only environment.

            Dirty Computer works well in the 2019 American discourse, as same-sex marriage has only recently been legalized and there are still plenty of obstacles and dangers the LGBT community struggles with every day. Comparing it to the early twentieth century's Herland, I asked the question of whether the lack of homosexuality on the island was due to the homophobia of the time period or if there could possibly be another intention for a completely sex-free culture. To answer this question, I decided to look at Gilman's personal life, the discourse on marriage during the Progressive Era, and any other comparisons in discursive purpose Herland and Dirty Computer may share.

            The Progressive Era, according to Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era by Clare Virginia Eby, was a period in which many influential thinkers called for reform in the way marriage was performed, specifically between a man and woman, who at this point had yet to attain a balance in power in the husband and wife roles.  Eby lists five crucial points shared among progressive marital reform theorists, two of which seem more relevant to what the sex-free island of Herland was probably trying to achieve: the attempt to make spouses "class equals" and the change from compulsory monogamy to voluntary monogamy (Eby 37-38). Eby states the theorists believed the root of the marital problem lay in women's economic dependence (Eby 39). Gilman herself is quoted in this book as a major advocate for equal working opportunity for women, believing "that labor is a defining attribute of humanity" (Eby 40). Given how the population of Herland is described as strong and healthy, Gilman was envisioning a utopia of women able to work as hard as they wished in any possible field of labor and do so as well as men (Gilman). The English men are incredulous at the impressive architecture women were able to build without men's strength, as well as how acrobatic and dexterous the women are at several parts of the story (Gilman). Gilman was pushing for equality in jobs not only by painting the impressive fruits of female labor but by ensuring they could not be accredited to any male, which would have been an issue in her time period.

            Thus, it seems most likely that in erasing romance completely from the culture of Herland, Gilman is not attempting to erase homosexuality in particular from her utopia, but rather the struggle between love and work. This is evidenced in her books such as Women and Economics, in which she writes that the idea a woman must marry to find fulfillment is "grossly unjust" and "evil" (Davis 247). "Indicting the double standard," Cynthia J. Davis says of Gilman in her essay "Love and Economics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman on 'The Woman Question,'" "she rails against the reduction of a woman's identity from the full humanity afforded men to a narrowly gendered, heterosexual existence" (Davis 247). Gilman believed that women had to either choose a path of marriage or fulfilling work, as it was nearly impossible to walk both (248).  Interestingly enough, Gilman is recorded to have engaged in an intimate relationship with Adeline "Delle" Knapp, and Davis names Martha Luther Gilman's "first love" (Davis 251). While one must keep in mind internalized homophobia intrinsic in living in the time period she did, the added context of Gilman's homosexual romances renders the interpretation of Herland as merely lesbian-hating not as likely, or at least not as simple in concept.

            In her research post "Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Mother's Advocate," Jan Smith explores Gilman's push for economic equality in the representation of motherhood in Herland. She summarized her own findings on the topic by writing that "Gilman is convinced that restructuring society to where the home is part of the economy and domestic labor is regarded as viable would benefit society as a whole" (Smith). The topic of motherhood was not the focus of my own research, but the subject of women's reproductive rights is crucial when examining Gilman's image of true economic equality. Smith's statement that the pathogenesis in Herland could be seen as Gilman giving women the "full humanity" society had denied them supports the conclusion that the lack of romance in the all-women community was meant to be a statement on how women can be fulfilled without marrying or being limited to the role of motherhood.

            My research on Gilman and the Progressive Era has led me to believe that the lack of romance for the women of Herland was meant to be shocking to the reader in its depiction of unmarried women finding fulfillment."Everything is sex / Except sex, which is power" is a lyric from Monae's album that came to mind when realizing how striking a message the lack of marriage in the novel really was for Gilman's time period. Choosing to completely deny the compulsory heterosexuality of her day was a powerful move. Just like how Janelle Monae "hopes not to destroy the oppressors but to change their minds" through her film and music, which poetically describe her personal experiences as a queer black woman in modern America, the three outsiders were stunned and impressed by the radical differences between a matriarchy and patriarchy in Herland conceived by a queer white woman in early 20th century America (Spanos). Both utopian and dystopian fiction can be utilized by social activists to present marital and economic reforms in societies in almost any given time period.

Works Cited

             Davis, Cynthia J. “Love and Economics: Charlotte Perkins Gilman on ‘The Woman Question.’” ATQ, vol. 19, no. 4, Dec. 2005, pp. 243–258. EBSCOhost, libproxy.uhcl.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hus&AN=509828491&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

             Eby, Clare Virginia. Until Choice Do Us Part: Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era. University of Chicago Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uhcl/detail.action?docID=1573581.

             Gilman, Charlottes Perkins. Herland. Project Gutenberg, 2008. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32/32-h/32-h.htm#link2HCH0006 

             Smith, Jan. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Mother’s Advocate." University of Houston Clear Lake, 21 June 2015. http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5439utopia/models/resposts/rp15/15rp1/rp1Smith.html

             Spanos, Brittany. "Janelle Monáe Frees Herself." Rolling Stone, 26 April 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/janelle-monae-frees-herself-629204/. Accessed 17 Feb. 2019.