Herland

Charlotte Gilman Perkins (1860-1935)

A leading writer on women's rights in the U.S. She was especially influential on the women's movement in the early 20th century. Her best-known book was Women and Economics (1898). She urged women to work outside the home in order to gain economic independence. She attacked traditional marriage, in which the wife takes care of the home and the husband works outside the home. In Concerning Children (1900) and The Home (1903), she called for the establishment of cooperative apartments where a professional staff could cook, clean, and care for children. Women would then be free to hold jobs. From 1909 to 1916 she wrote and published The Forerunner, a monthly magazine devoted to improving the place of woman in society. Herland (1915), was published serially in the magazine. It describes what happens when three men discover a race of females who have lived without men for 2,000 years. (For a list of SF/Fantasy works about Female-Dominated Societies, see the PDF below.) See below also for a PDF of a slide presentation on Herland.

Here is a very brief Gilman chronology:

• 1860 Born in Hartford, Connecticut.
• 1869 Father and mother divorce.
• 1884 Marries Charles Walter Stetson with misgivings.
• 1885 Gives birth to daughter Katharine, after which she suffers from severe depression. She consults the noted neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, who prescribs his "rest cure" of complete bed rest and limited intellectual activity. Takes a trip to California.
• 1888 Leaves her husband, moving to Pasadena, California with her daughter and destitute mother. She begins writing poetry and short stories.
• 1894 Moves to San Francisco, where she edits feminist publications, assists in the planning of the California Women's Congresses of 1894-95, and helps to found the Women's Peace Party.
• 1895 Meets Jane Addams, an activist. and visits her at Hull House in Chicago.
• 1898 Publishes Women in Economics, a manifesto.
• 1900 Marries George Houghton Gilman, a first cousin who was seven years younger than she, and who is supportive of her intense involvement in social reform. She writes "Concerning Children."
• 1909-16 Publishes a monthly journal, The Forerunner, for which she writes nearly all of the copy that she claimed could fill 28 long books.
• 1911 Writes Moving the Mountain, and "Man-Mad World."
• 1915 Herland is serialized in The Forerunner.
• 1916 Writes second utopian novel: With Her in Ourland.
• 1935 Learns that she has inoperable cancer. She takes her own life on August 17, 1935, in Pasadena, California, at the age of 75.