Herland : A Science Fiction Novel by Charlotte Gilman Annotated

In Herland and other writings, Gilman shows that her society is unjust to women and does not allow them to achieve their full human potential.

Women's lives, she reveals, are too consumed by difficult, unremunerated "women's work," such as childbearing, child rearing, and domestic labor. Because women are limited to this domestic world, they are made out to be less "fully human" than men in their potential for development.

Given the chance, Gilman says, women can embrace the whole of life just as much men, and the women of Herland-strong, intelligent, and self-reliant-are the fictional embodiment of this point.

All three of the male characters in Herland start out with the assumption of female inferiority, and all three must eventually alter their world views in their dealings with the Herlandian women, to varying degrees of success.The men's relationships with Ellador, Celis, and Alima show the difficulties that arise when women demand to be treated as equals in love as well as in society.

Terry and Alima end in open conflict, while Jeff and Celis simply fail to understand one another at all.

Van eventually relates to Ellador as a full human being, not merely a woman, and Gilman portrays their relationship as the most successful.

Gilman suggests that once equality between men and women has been established, romantic partners will achieve a sense of privacy and pleasure in sexual difference.

As Van and Ellador begin their journey at the end of the novel, part of their mission is to completely re-imagine the sexual and romantic bond between men and women, with the full humanity of women as part of the equation.