On Herland, Utopian Racism, and the Analysis of Patriarchy

The women of Herland have no fear of men. Why should they have? They are not timid in any sense. They are not weak; and they all have strong trained athletic bodies. Othello could not have extinguished Alima with a pillow, as if she were a mouse.

Terry put in practice his pet conviction that a woman loves to be mastered, and by sheer brute force, in all the pride and passion of his intense masculinity, he tried to master this woman.

It did not work. I got a pretty clear account of it later from Ellador, but what we heard at the time was the noise of a tremendous struggle, and Alima calling to Moadine. Moadine was close by and came at once; one or two more strong grave women followed.

Terry dashed about like a madman; he would cheerfully have killed them—he told me that, himself—but he couldn’t. When he swung a chair over his head one sprang in the air and caught it, two threw themselves bodily upon him and forced him to the floor; it was only the work of a few moments to have him tied hand and foot, and then, in sheer pity for his futile rage, to anesthetize him.

Alima was in a cold fury. She wanted him killed—actually.--From: Charlotte Perkins  Gillman (1915) Herland, chapter 11 (p. 142 in the penguin edition).

That the women of Herland lack fear is key to the overall argument of Herland. The point is not that the absence of men in Herland creates a society incapable of generating fear. For, these women are quite capable, like the Amazonian of old, to inspire justified fear in others. They are introduced as a rumor by locals, who keep their distance from the "strange and terrible Woman Land in the high distance." (ch. 1; p. 4) And they keep their distance for a good reason because all the local men who tried to visit do not return and disappear without a trace. Because these locals are understood as 'savage' and 'uncivilized' by the women of Herland and the three male American visitors to Herland, they are dispensable. The three American men -- we're in the age of explicitly racialized, imperialism -- openly speculate about "about penetrating those vast forests and civilizing—or exterminating—the dangerous savages." (ch. 12; p. 154).

The women of Herland are more discrete than these Americans, but the observant reader learns not just that no savage men returns, but also that the explicit reason why the Americans are spared is that their advanced technology (a bi-plane) indicates their civilization, and that in virtue of this they may be suitable candidates for re-creating a dual sexed state. (ch. 8; p. 96)* In addition, the women of Herland have culled most animals from their society (see the passage about dogs and horses (ch. 4; p. 53)), and we learn they are not averse to breeding the remaining ones (and plants). Finally, note that in the passage quoted above, one of the women of Herland, the one subject to intended marital rape, wishes to kill her assailant. 

That the women of Herland lack fear is noteworthy to the American visitors. (It's commented on in their initial encounters with the women of Herland.) And so we obliquely learn that American women are expected to be afraid of men. We also learn that, in part through the scene above, that this does not end at marriage because violent marital rape is treated as something inherent in true American masculinity.+ (Wikipedia has useful references to wider discussion among nineteenth century feminists.) In fact, the pervasiveness of violence in American life is a theme that surfaces throughout, obliquely, and it is discussed (somewhat comically) in terms of how Americans treat the dogs as pets (especially ch. 5).

Recall that I label a certain kind of comparative institutional analysis -- within the Utopian genre -- Socratic political theory (recall; but see, especially, this post on Ursula Le Guin and this one on Thomas More.; and this one on Spinoza). In addition, I have noted before that utopian fiction can have multiple uses. Many assume that utopias are primarily about imagining a possible future, even provide a blue-print for them. But one of my best past students, Hannah Lingier, taught me (recall) that utopian narratives often have another function function (by way of idealization) in isolating and revealing (in image and speech) how non-trivial existing social mechanisms work or might work.

What makes Herland facinating is that it reveals obliquely how a system of patriarchy functions by way of subtraction (men are absent) and through the interactions of the American visitors and the women of Herland, and the mutual reactions among them. And so, while one is shown the institutions, norms, and practices of Herland in which patriarchy is absent (except in historical and carefully curated memory), one thereby learns to discern the really existing patriarchy in civilized countries. And so it practices Socratic political theory in a distinctive way.

I do not mean to suggest that pervasive fear and laws and norms that permit toxic masculinity and violent marital rape are the only features of patriarchy revealed in Herland. There are set-pieces on how American Christianity promotes violent patriarchy, how the way property is conceptualized promotes patriarchal norms, how sexual jealousy among women is an effect of a society in which man you marry is the main ticket to social and economic advancement, and quite a number of observations on how gender or 'femininity' is structured and used as a way to control women.++

I mention the latter because while it seems to be true that the distinction between sex and gender derives from the middle of the twentieth twentieth century, Perkins Gilman deploys an analogous distinction in sophisticated fashion. (Mandeville had already noted that socialization gendered girls feminine (see here also for an extensive quote).) And she applies the distinction in the context of analyzing patriarchy and the neo-Darwinian evolution of social norms. But about that before long soon.

*“From another country. Probably men. Evidently highly civilized. Doubtless possessed of much valuable knowledge. May be dangerous. Catch them if possible; tame and train them if necessary. This may be a chance to re-establish a bi-sexual state for our people.” (ch. 8. p. 96) It is unclear how the women infer that there are men in the plane. The racism of the three American men is undisguised, they assume that in virtue of being clearly civilized, the women of Herland must be of "Aryan stock." (ch. 5.; p. 60) This is taken for granted by the narrator-sociologist of the three.

Interestingly enough, while it's pretty clear that Herland is a critique of patriarchy, and it also reveals the tight link between patriarchy and militarist/violent imperialism -- the Herland women are isolationist and, when they discover the existence of other civilizations eager to join in pacific communality with these [this is a racialized community of civilizes nations] --, but it is by no means obvious it's criticizing the racialist imperialism of the Americans or women of Herland. If one reads Perkins Gilman's Women and Economics, it's pretty clear that the racism is a feature not a bug. (This makes me suspect that Othello is not an innocent example either.)

+Herland makes clear that the entitlement may not be common to all men, but it is common to wealthy, high status American men.

**This partial list was developed by my students in my Utopia & Dystopia seminar.