Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Herland is a utopian novel written by a feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). Gilman was a feminist writer. I think she was a pioneer in the realm of feminism, and needs to be remembered with a great deal of respect for that reason. This is supposed to be #2 of a trilogy. Unfortunately, Gutenberg.org does not have the first or third of the series. Fortunately, they might not be necessary, as the story is fairly well contained. I did not feel like I missed anything in the beginning, but I found myself wanting more at the end. I felt like there was an untold story, and apparently there is, and I cannot have it it would appear. Herland can be found here at Gutenberg.org.

I have already read Gilman's famous short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," which was decent, and somewhat comparable to the weird fiction that one might expect from Franz Kafka (a favorite short story writer of mine, so that is a compliment). This story is not really at that level, in my opinion, but is important as a voice for the rights and value of women. I didn't fly through this story. It had its moments, but it was largely a dull piece, like other true Utopian works (as opposed to Utopias formulated into Dystopias). It has a few serious flaws, which I will get to later. For now, these are my impressions as I read through the story.

The story's setting is contemporary to Gilman's era of the early 20th century. Technology is in its infancy. Somewhere in the world there is an island of isolated women. There is little connection between the Amazonian women of Greek legend and the women of Herland. They are warriors, and tough, despite the fact that they do not have any kind of competition.

Three men set out in search of the mythical society which has swallowed a few men who have sought it out. Later, however, it becomes clear that their expedition is the first to actually reach these women, and that whatever men there were before simply did not make it to the culture.

They are isolated by geography. They are surrounded by insurmountable mountains, on a plateau high above a jungle where a primitive culture thrives. They have lived excluded from the rest of the world for about 2,000 years. While Amazonian women would kidnap their men to have babies, and treated them like slaves, there are no men in this society at all. They are able to reproduce asexually, and when they give birth they have baby girls, and no baby boys.

When the three men get to the plateau via an airplane, they cannot believe that the area is populated exclusively by women. Women cannot build heavy or complicated things, goes the sentiment. However, when they walk into the village, thinking that they will have no problem dominating the women whom they preconceived would be as submissive as the women of their own societies, are easily overpowered by powerful women and imprisoned.

One might expect terrible treatment in the prison that they are put in. However, they are treated more like naughty children, and guests. They are well fed and treated very well at every turn. The narrator writes, "...we were free of the garden, but not wholly alone in it. There was always a string of those uncomfortably strong women sitting about..."

There are three male characters, each a representative of a degree of common males: there's the one who loves and worships women, the centrist, and the ego-macho-male. It is Terry who cannot seem to understand that women can or should be powerful. The prison in which they are held, he says, "This thing is a regular fortress--and no women built it, I can tell you that."


One of the chief objections I have to the story is the racism which appears in a few sections of the novel. This race of women is referred to as Aryan, and that is an explanation as to why there is little or no criminality within this female race. This is the reason why it is a strong and intelligent race.

The contrasts between the two societies are not as important as the points that Gilman makes about how women are viewed and treated then, and much of the criticism remains valid a century later. Women who work are viewed in a negative light. Those who do work, earn a fraction of what men do. About a third of women are working poor according to the narrator. Jeff, the most sympathetic and supportive of women mentions that poorer women tend to have more children, and that they live harder lives. This also remains true today.

Sexuality here is also brought up. In the old days (and in some cultures today), husbands have the right to 'master' their wives. That is a roundabout way of saying that they may rape their wives. The three men end up marrying their three women, but none of them are able to engage in sex. Terry attempts to rape his wife, and consequently, gets banned from the country.

But this brings up the other major point that I take issue with of this novel: the asexuality of this race. These women do not have sex. It is not just about not having sex with men, they also do not seem to masturbate or have sex with the other women. There is no sex at all. Perhaps the hymen itself is broken when they give birth, I wonder. This virginity of all sexuality is a serious point that is missed or avoided by Gilman and is a deep flaw in the book. Did she believe that she would tarnish the reputation of her fictitious race? Perhaps this is the case, and it would have tarnished in those closed minds of her own day (and our day). Certainly, in women's prisons, women engage in sexual activity with each other. There is a clitoris which gives women pleasure.

There are some other minor issues with the culture or race: there is no real opposition. There is nothing to fight for or to survive which is not overcome. There is no power struggle. Everything is appointed and accepted. But, these things are not as important as the statements about how women deserve better in the cultures in which they exist with men. That is the main message of this story, and makes the book worth reading. Come on Gutenberg, et al! Please publish the next story, With Her in Ourland.

The Salvaging of Civilization - H. G. Wells

Cover via AmazonIntroduction

As a fan of science fiction, the name H. G. Wells is awe striking. While Jules Verne definitely predated H. G. Wells with his marvellous A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) vs. The Time Machine (1895), he is nonetheless seen as the co-father of the genre.The Salvaging of Civilization (1921) is the first nonfiction work that I have read. It is available for free at Gutenberg.org.

It is a coincidence that much of what was written in this book echoes many of the ideas from More's Utopia, which I very recently reviewed. Also, I was teaching an essay class today which featured the topic and concept of 'groupthink.' Basically, the theory behind groupthink is that a strong leader or individual leads either a group of yes-men, or individuals who all share the same or a similar point-of-view. So these three things are going through my mind as I prepare for my review.

Politics

A brief, and perhaps unnecessary note, is that his essay was published not too long after the cessation of WWI. The terror and destructive power of which Europe, and perhaps the world, had never seen from man's wars up to that point. It wouldn't be long before his prophecy of there being much worse weapons brought about by technology coming to bear on civilization. He believed in a world government which would rule other lesser governments when these lesser governments came into conflict. "The true history of mankind and of the possibilities of this vision of a single world state that history opens out to us." And yet this contrasts stiffly with his declaration that men ought to judge whether a government is right enough to warrant following: "This is the plain duty of every honest man to-day, to judge his magistrate before he obeys him, and to render unto Caesar nothing that he owes to God and mankind." Are we to be individuals with individual states, or are we not?

Religion

A contention that More and Wells most certainly would have had would have been over the place of religion within a civilized society. Where Wells declares, "The most popular religions are those which hold out the widest hopes of damnation," More contended that permissive and tolerant religion would rule the perfect society, and that the atheist is the bane of a peaceful and law-abiding culture.


Wells talks deeply about the idea of a new type of Bible. He points out that in the distant past, the Bible as we know it today was a living document: the authors thereof would cut and paste segments of the book. I suspect that it wasn't until John's Revelations that the act of doing so was considered problematic.

Wells points out that many parts of the Bible were basically designed to educate its readers/listeners with history, offer suggestions of survival, but he does not dwell on the moral aspects therein.

Several sections he suggests would be cut would be found in Job (a great literary work, but unnecessary) and Leviticus. Of Leviticus he writes, "So far as redundancy goes, a great deal of the Book of Leviticus, for example, seems not vitally necessary for the ordinary citizen of to-day." Certainly the context of the Bible is not necessarily applicable to the vast populations of Christendom today. Survival in a desert is not necessarily the same as survival in a concrete and glass jungle today.

He would add historical events that have occurred since the last addendum to the Bible. Also, wisdom, and in particular, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; I think he would have also included Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream had he heard it.

A primary and secondary list of books he believed ought to exist in an apocryphal collection of compulsory literature to be read followed by a collection of non-compulsory literature which would also be highly regarded.

Education 


He also calls for extensive educational reform. He decries the inadequacy of education in his day, and promotes the idea of using technology to improve the delivery of the variety of school subjects: "Instead of the teacher having to pretend, as he usually pretends now, to a complete knowledge of the foreign language he can really only smatter, he would become the honest assistant of the real teaching instrument—the gramophone." Later he refers to a 'cinematograph' which I believe is either a television or a projector. The lack of talent in the live teacher would be made up for by the skill and genius of the teacher in some central hub who would produce and have manufactured the records to play the content.

Finally, he also mentions that education should be a life-long exercise. This is an echo of More's position which suggests that in Utopia, Everyman continues his studies past the completion of regular studies.

Conclusion

I do not support everything he has stated. A lot of it, in particular his suggestions for educational reform, have come about. I am referencing his suggested use of technology in the classroom. I cannot understate the usefulness of the Internet with such tools as YouTube, the image collection from Google, Google Earth, Google's translator, etc., to the effectiveness of my lessons. However, I feel that there is a great deal of room left for improvement.

While I appreciate there is a need for the elimination of war, I don't believe in homogenizing the world. While I believe in education becoming a universal right, I also find myself against the idea of universal education. Also, watching experiments on a TV cannot substitute for hands-on experimenting.

Thomas More's "Utopia"

Cover of Utopia (Penguin Classics)Thomas More's Utopia has been on my reading list for quite some time. Being particularly interested in dystopic fiction (Zamyatin's We, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Orwell's 1984 as examples), it was of course of interest to me to go to the original source of dystopia and go directly to the author and text known as Utopia. Utopia can be found at Gutenberg.org for free!

Utopia is said to be derived from Plato's Republic. It has been a long time since I read the Republic, so I'll have to take the general consensus for granted, as I won't be reading it again in the near future. It is basically a one sided conversation where someone relates a description of this Utopian civilization to More. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for this is so that none of the religious nut-wings could burn him as a heretic for writing this.

The most interesting part of Utopia was the religious organization of the Utopians. They had temples, and at the temple every religious sect of the society would go to worship. The temples themselves lacked any sort of decoration, symbols, or other indications that would be pertinent to a particular belief. It is said that the worshippers of the planets were allowed to pray alongside those who worshipped Jesus. However, it can be said that More put down atheist leanings when he said that those who lacked faith had no sense of morality and would do all manner of bad things. Nonetheless, there is a fairly heavy push to suggest that the Utopians were very accepting and even enthusiastic about the adoption of Christianity.

However, for the most part, it sounded very dystopian to me. The fashion of the day is that everyone wears exactly the same clothing as the next. The value of gold is flipped around so that it becomes the substance which encumbers the slave class. Diamonds and other gems are the playthings of young children that are later forgotten as they mature.

A strong link could be made between the ideals of Communism and the ideals portrayed in Utopia. That is not to confused the communism of the former USSR or any other rendition of the ideal. For, the prince himself of Utopia wears the same clothing as every Utopian. His home is the same as any other. Every home is virtually the same. Every four years, there is a rotation where everyone moves into a different home. Of course, in the USSR, leaders lived quite well. Even eating is generally done socially. People eat in some kind of communal dining room. The food is prepared by women who are on rotating shifts, as well as they're responsible for the cleaning.

Basic labour is divided equally among almost all. Each member of the society must help with agriculture. Nearly everyone is required to work for two years on the farms which nourish the cities.

Negative aspects include that in order for one to travel between cities, one must first obtain permission from the prince. The few offences are often severely punished with slavery. Some offences would include adultery and travelling without papers. There also seems to be a lot for the feminist to be desired. Women have their place, and it's not on equal footing with men.

I would not want to live in this Utopian society. In fact, I would have to say that everyone's version of Utopia is likely another's dystopia.