Herland (4 page)

However, Gilman’s
Herland
does not quite fit any category, and it may be profitable to look briefly at some of the qualities—aside from her feminism—that distinguish her Utopian aims. The mission of a utopia is to provide a speculative vision of the desired goal of human existence. Most utopias create new social structures to embody those ends. Gilman’s concern, however, is primarily with human consciousness—what the people will look like and do, how and why they are different and better. The physical world is a natural creation of these new people.

Utopias often suffer from what Lewis Mumford calls “externalism,”
⁵
the idea that human institutions are “so many straight-jackets that cunning rulers” had devised to control their communities. Utopian works often assume that these institutions can be changed without explaining how it is possible—not literally possible but humanly comprehensible—to change the habits and create the people by whom and for whom these institutions had been formed.
Herland
and
Moving the Mountain
offer an answer, and that makes them unusual. Gilman’s transition rests with marginal people—women. Because women are nurturers of the young and bearers of the cultural values of love and cooperation, and because women have been excluded from the sources of power, they are in an ideal position to create an alternative social vision. By the early twentieth century, women also had decades of sophisticated collective action and a trained leadership to call upon. Most utopias neglect the central role of education in reconstructing their worlds. In Gilman’s work education—not formal education but the process by which values permeate an entire social fabric—evolves as a natural device in the creation of new people, especially the young.

Since Gilman’s concern is with changing consciousness, she is free to create a material world that encompasses science and technology, on the one hand, and the beauty and simplicity of a pastoral life, on the other, and to avoid the major errors of both. Her technology does not dominate; it serves human needs. In addition, artificial wants are not created by scientific elites, for there are no elites, scientific or otherwise. The pastoral qualities are not linked to a pre-industrial world; nor is man—in this case, woman—re-created in a state of innocence, because to Gilman innocence is the first chain women must discard if they are to be free. Women’s innocence has served only men’s needs.

Two thirds of all utopias were written in the nineteenth century, when the world was, indeed, in the process of visible and enormous change. Utopias created in the wake of capitalist growth and disorder were often seen as a call to action, both by their creators and their followers. Not only were readers of Theodor Hertzka’s
Freeland
and Etienne Cabet’s
Voyage to Icaria
inspired to establish Utopian settlements, but Cabet himself traveled to the swamps of Missouri in a vain effort to find Icaria in America. Numbers of other visionaries tried to translate the Utopian ideas of Charles Fourier and Robert Owen into communal realities. When the American dream did not work, there was a desperate effort to find the earthly paradise.

But the roots of utopia are in the literary, not the political, imagination; and it is a strength of
Herland
, and even of the “realistic”
Moving the Mountain
, that they cannot be seen as blueprints. Still, the “ideal of desirable quality”
⁶
must be recognizable to the reader. The society to be transformed must first be known. In Gilman’s work it is not the scientist, the warrior, the priest, or the craftsman, but the mother, who is the connecting point from present to future. In her utopia, Charlotte Perkins Gilman transforms the private world of mother-child, isolated in the individual home, into a community of mothers and children in a socialized world. It is a world in which humane social values have been achieved by women in the interest of us all.

—A
NN
J. L
ANE
November 1978

1.
I benefitted, as I always do, from the perceptive and informed comments and criticisms of Barbara Haber, Curator of Printed Books, The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College.

2.
Gilman published a short story in
The Forerunner
concerning two women, friends from childhood, who were never able to locate each other as adults because they had assumed their husbands’ names upon marriage and lost their original identities. Gilman herself demonstrates the confusion that arises when a woman’s name changes with her marital status. The simplest solution is to use the name she had at the time she is being described.

3.
See Ellene Ransom, “Utopus Discovers America, or Critical Realism in Utopian Fiction, 1798-1900” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1946), for a discussion of the books referred to on the following pages.

4.
For a discussion of the contemporary feminist literature, see Carol Pearson, “Women’s Fantasies and Feminist Utopias,”
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
II, no. 3 (1977): 50-61.

5.
Lewia Mumford,
The Story of Utopias
(New York: Boni and Live-right, 1922), especially chapter 11.

6.
For a valuable examination of the subject, see
“Utopias” and Utopian Thought
, edited by Frank E. Manuel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966). The phrase quoted above is from Northrop Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias,” in
“Utopias” and Utopian Thought
, p. 38.

This is written from memory, unfortunately. If I could have brought with me the material I so carefully prepared, this would be a very different story. Whole books full of notes, carefully copied records, firsthand descriptions, and the pictures—that’s the worst loss. We had some bird’s-eyes of the cities and parks; a lot of lovely views of streets, of buildings, outside and in, and some of those gorgeous gardens, and, most important of all, of the women themselves.

Nobody will ever believe how they looked. Descriptions aren’t any good when it comes to women, and I never was good at descriptions anyhow. But it’s got to be done somehow; the rest of the world needs to know about that country.

I haven’t said where it was for fear some self-appointed missionaries, or traders, or land-greedy expansionists, will take it upon themselves to push in. They will not be wanted, I can tell them that, and will fare worse than we did if they do find it.

It began this way. There were three of us, classmates and friends—Terry O. Nicholson (we used to call him the Old Nick, with good reason), Jeff Margrave, and I, Vandyck Jennings.

We had known each other years and years, and in spite of our differences we had a good deal in common. All of us were interested in science.

Terry was rich enough to do as he pleased. His great aim was exploration. He used to make all kinds of a row because there
was nothing left to explore now, only patchwork and filling in, he said. He filled in well enough—he had a lot of talents—great on mechanics and electricity. Had all kinds of boats and motorcars, and was one of the best of our airmen.

We never could have done the thing at all without Terry.

Jeff Margrave was born to be a poet, a botanist—or both—but his folks persuaded him to be a doctor instead. He was a good one, for his age, but his real interest was in what he loved to call “the wonders of science.”

As for me, sociology’s my major. You have to back that up with a lot of other sciences, of course. I’m interested in them all.

Terry was strong on facts—geography and meteorology and those; Jeff could beat him any time on biology, and I didn’t care what it was they talked about, so long as it connected with human life, somehow. There are few things that don’t.

We three had a chance to join a big scientific expedition. They needed a doctor, and that gave Jeff an excuse for dropping his just opening practice; they needed Terry’s experience, his machine, and his money; and as for me, I got in through Terry’s influence.

The expedition was up among the thousand tributaries and enormous hinterland of a great river, up where the maps had to be made, savage dialects studied, and all manner of strange flora and fauna expected.

But this story is not about that expedition. That was only the merest starter for ours.

My interest was first roused by talk among our guides. I’m quick at languages, know a good many, and pick them up readily. What with that and a really good interpreter we took with us, I made out quite a few legends and folk myths of these scattered tribes.

And as we got farther and farther upstream, in a dark tangle of rivers, lakes, morasses, and dense forests, with here and there an unexpected long spur running out from the big mountains beyond, I noticed that more and more of these savages had a story about a strange and terrible Woman Land in the high distance.

“Up yonder,” “Over there,” “Way up”—was all the direction they could offer, but their legends all agreed on the main point—that there was this strange country where no men lived—only women and girl children.

None of them had ever seen it. It was dangerous, deadly, they said, for any man to go there. But there were tales of long ago, when some brave investigator had seen it—a Big Country, Big Houses, Plenty People—All Women.

Had no one else gone? Yes—a good many—but they never came back. It was no place for men—of that they seemed sure.

I told the boys about these stories, and they laughed at them. Naturally I did myself. I knew the stuff that savage dreams are made of.

But when we had reached our farthest point, just the day before we all had to turn around and start for home again, as the best of expeditions must in time, we three made a discovery.

The main encampment was on a spit of land running out into the main stream, or what we thought was the main stream. It had the same muddy color we had been seeing for weeks past, the same taste.

I happened to speak of that river to our last guide, a rather superior fellow with quick, bright eyes.

He told me that there was another river—“over there, short river, sweet water, red and blue.”

I was interested in this and anxious to see if I had understood, so I showed him a red and blue pencil I carried, and asked again.

Yes, he pointed to the river, and then to the southwestward. “River—good water—red and blue.”

Terry was close by and interested in the fellow’s pointing.

“What does he say, Van?”

I told him.

Terry blazed up at once.

“Ask him how far it is.”

The man indicated a short journey; I judged about two hours, maybe three.

“Let’s go,” urged Terry. “Just us three. Maybe we can really find something. May be cinnabar in it.”

“May be indigo,” Jeff suggested, with his lazy smile.

It was early yet; we had just breakfasted; and leaving word that we’d be back before night, we got away quietly, not wishing to be thought too gullible if we failed, and secretly hoping to have some nice little discovery all to ourselves.

It was a long two hours, nearer three. I fancy the savage could have done it alone much quicker. There was a desperate tangle of wood and water and a swampy patch we never should have
found our way across alone. But there was one, and I could see Terry, with compass and notebook, marking directions and trying to place landmarks.

We came after a while to a sort of marshy lake, very big, so that the circling forest looked quite low and dim across it. Our guide told us that boats could go from there to our camp—but “long way—all day.”

This water was somewhat clearer than that we had left, but we could not judge well from the margin. We skirted it for another half hour or so, the ground growing firmer as we advanced, and presently we turned the corner of a wooded promontory and saw a quite different country—a sudden view of mountains, steep and bare.

“One of those long easterly spurs,” Terry said appraisingly. “May be hundreds of miles from the range. They crop out like that.”

Suddenly we left the lake and struck directly toward the cliffs. We heard running water before we reached it, and the guide pointed proudly to his river.

It was short. We could see where it poured down a narrow vertical cataract from an opening in the face of the cliff. It was sweet water. The guide drank eagerly and so did we.

“That’s snow water,” Terry announced. “Must come from way back in the hills.”

But as to being red and blue—it was greenish in tint. The guide seemed not at all surprised. He hunted about a little and showed us a quiet marginal pool where there were smears of red along the border; yes, and of blue.

Terry got out his magnifying glass and squatted down to investigate.

“Chemicals of some sort—I can’t tell on the spot. Look to me like dyestuffs. Let’s get nearer,” he urged, “up there by the fall.”

We scrambled along the steep banks and got close to the pool that foamed and boiled beneath the falling water. Here we searched the border and found traces of color beyond dispute. More—Jeff suddenly held up an unlooked-for trophy.

It was only a rag, a long, raveled fragment of cloth. But it was a well-woven fabric, with a pattern, and of a clear scarlet that the water had not faded. No savage tribe that we had heard of made such fabrics.

The guide stood serenely on the bank, well pleased with our excitement.

“One day blue—one day red—one day green,” he told us, and pulled from his pouch another strip of bright-hued cloth.

“Come down,” he said, pointing to the cataract. “Woman Country—up there.”

Then we were interested. We had our rest and lunch right there and pumped the man for further information. He could tell us only what the others had—a land of women—no men—babies, but all girls. No place for men—dangerous. Some had gone to see—none had come back.

I could see Terry’s jaw set at that. No place for men? Dangerous? He looked as if he might shin up the waterfall on the spot. But the guide would not hear of going up, even if there had been any possible method of scaling that sheer cliff, and we had to get back to our party before night.