Herland: Experiements in Cultivation

So much of what we accept as natural is cultivated. It is cultivated over such a long period of time that we no longer think about it and cannot imagine it any other way. I think Gilman's point in Herland is that we need to examine and interrogate what we think is natural, to discover if it is actually cultivated. If it is cultivated, then we  can cultivate it in a different way, just like Gilman's women of Herland did.

In U.S. society, the types of things that have been cultivated in the past are gender roles. Kerri gives a neat summary as to how this can play out in her March 22 post on this blog. In addition, there are the obvious statistics, such as, the United States has only ever had male presidents; corporate boards continue to be dominated by males (2020 Women); males also continue to dominate the U.S. Congress (Manning and Shogan). It is easy to continue to ignore these statistics because, as Van suggests in Gilman's novel (68), "Some...things we have grown to accept as perfectly natural, or as belonging to our human limitations...."

Gilman presents an alternative to the cultivated order of U.S. society as it stood at the beginning of the twentieth century, and in some respects, continues to persist to this day. The education of women  was carefully developed and implemented (55), along population control through "negative eugenics" (59), health and hygiene practices virtually eradicated sickness (61), and the sense of community, which was described by Van (67) as "a unit, a conscious group...." was highly developed. Van adds (61) that "...they did not seem "cultivated" at all - it had become a natural condition." All of this was achieved by the women of Herland over a 1500 year time frame.

http://agriorissa.blogspot.com/2012/01/carrot-cultivation.html

As a society, we need to continue to do as Gilman suggests, through Van (68), and shine a light on those "things we have grown to accept as perfectly natural." We need to challenge these ideas that seem perfectly natural and come up with our own way to address a cultivated situation that has grown out of control. As a result, hopefully we can cultivate our own, healthier, society.




Works cited:

2020 Women on Boards. 2020 Women on Boards, 2011. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1998. Print.

Manning, Jennifer E. and Shogan, Colleen, J. Women in the United States congress: 1917-2012. Congressional Research Service. RL30261. 26 Nov. 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.

I Am Me

Herland is by far my favorite reading we’ve been assigned all semester.  Perhaps it’s the three fold perspective given to the reader or the fact that it is simply a revolutionary piece for its time; but either way, I enjoyed it. 

It’s never easy for me to be able to pinpoint my favorite line or scene in a book, but for Herland there is no question.  In chapter nine (page 88), when Van speaks about the “perfect system of child-rearing,” he makes a very important observation, one that changes the meaning of the book entirely.

“It was all theirs, waiting for them to learn, to love, to use, to serve; as our own little boys plan to be ‘a big soldier,’ or ‘a cowboy,’ or whatever pleases their fancy; and our little girls plan for the kind of home they mean to have, or how many children; these [Herland children] planned, freely and gaily with much happy chattering, of what they would do for the country when they were grown.

It was the eager happiness of the children and the young people which first made me see the folly of that common notion of ours…”

This one passage is what changed the whole course of the novel for me.  Herland isn’t simply the idea of an all-woman society.  It goes so much deeper than that; challenging the reader to think about our society and the way in which we assign gender roles. 

It’s so easy for us to look back at our childhood and see the blatant significance of gender in our daily lives.  In kindergarten, the boys would be off running around the playground imagining themselves to be cops, cowboys, Indians, pirates, anything that showed itself to have a masculine identity.  The girls would then be off cradling their baby dolls, playing house or dress up, fighting over who gets to play the mother role, essentially preparing themselves for a future responsibility that they think they must conform to. 

Our society has made gender such an apparent obsession, that we begin to lose sight of who we are as people in the midst of conformity.  That is exactly the point that Charlotte Perkins Gilman is trying to make.

In a society comprised of only women, the children aren’t faced with the assignment of gender roles.  Instead they grow up with the encouraged principle that they are all simply people, not women.  Instead of playing house, they play games that spark independent thinking and inspire them to be whoever they want to be and to strive to one day make a difference in their country.

It is a revolutionary thought for its time, a thought that Gilman wanted to plant in her reader’s head.  Herland isn’t considered Utopian because it’s run by women.  It’s Utopian because Herland citizens are freed from a gender role that has forced women into submission for centuries.  Herland is Gilman’s demand for change in America.

There's a Reason Why It's Not Called *Myland*

     I have to admit, I am pretty disappointed with Herland. While I expected the classic Amazon, shining warrior-woman society, we read about a society of female philosophers and scientists. And to be totally truthful, some of those women weren't even good philosophers.

      I should probably stop now and remind all of you that I'm not a sexist (at least, I wasn't the last time I checked).

I think my biggest problem with Herland is that it's so BORING!

 I don't often encounter a book that makes me long for its ending or my death (whichever comes first), but sometimes there is that one...

      For me, Herland is also too perfect. It seems like Charolotte Perkins Gilman tries to create a sort of heaven-on-earth scenario with a wholly female society. This whole heaven-on-earth idea has been done before, except Gilman tries a different strategy than the others: she doesn't change the inhabitants for the better in order to fit the society (although she does change them).

      Let's examine the classic example of a heaven-on-earth scenario: the idea of “New Heaven” and “New Earth” from the book of Revelation. There's not a whole lot of detail given in the description of New Heaven, but in what little is given a massive shining city of gold, gems, perfect people, and a perfect God is revealed. There's no description of what the details of society will look like, so a lot is left to speculation.

      What will people do for eternity? Won't they get bored eventually? Those are valid questions, but elsewhere scripture reveals that the inhabitants of New Heaven will be both physically and spiritually changed to be perfect. Only the good emotions shall remain, pain shall be gone, eternal joy shall abound, etc. In other words, the people change to resemble more perfectly the flawless society in which they live, so it is quite possible they will not become bored.

      Herland, however, doesn't do that. The women are different from regular women in that they have lost most of their emotion. How, then, can their “perfect utopian society” exist without an abundance of the good emotions? Without an abundance of such goodness, their society really doesn't seem utopian at all.

(Image of the dreadfully bored fellow courtesy of google.com.)

Herland is not for Me

I was absolutely annoyed by Herland. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for female empowerment ,but this book was really frustrating. I feel as if the details that would have made the writing of this book better were very vague, such as the description of the women of herland. All that was said about them was that they did not look like girls but they did not look like women either nor did they look like men. What does that even mean! What do these women look like then?! I thought that this book was more boring than the other Utopias that we have read so far because I felt like it was just way to easy to refute everything in this book.

With the other Utopian novels, the author would present a solution for a societal problem and I could argue both sides with them and see whether or not their proposals would fit in our society and the ideas that they would present are reasonable and are a possibility and some of the other ideas  might make one skeptical but with this novel, I felt as if none of the ideas in here were even plausible.  All of these ideas were so farfetched that it was immediately obvious that none of this would work.  A land where there are all women and girls, (but no way for them to reproduce sexually) NO? A land in which they could breed out the unwanted qualities in cats? NO. Throughout the entire time that I was reading this novel the only word that I kept repeating in my head was NO. 

Based off of our class discussion, I think that the women of Herland are completely selfish.  Their whole world centers on motherhood and being a mother and babies. There has to be more to life. My goodness it was so boring! What really got under my skin was the women’s response to everything that the men would ask them. It was always “because we are mothers,” each woman doesn’t need her own baby because we are all mothers” Nobody has to worry about anything in our land because we take care of each other because we are mothers” I hated that because it seemed to be that that was their answer for EVERYTHING!!!  (See clip below).And most of the time, I just thought to myself “okay that doesn’t even answer the question! ” and I know that most people agreed Terry was the jerk in this novel, he was actually my favorite character because when he got frustrated with some of the responses and practices of the women he confronted them about it and he seemed to be annoyed with their repetitive type responses as well, so for me, I liked Terry because it was as if he was a stand in for my voice while I was reading this, he asked all of the questions that I asked, he had some of the same responses that I had, he was just as  frustrated as I was.

I understand that this novel was written in opposition to the restrictions of women during history so this book was written as a way to sort of say “Yaayyy women” and empower them, But I think this was a really bad way to do that because while it satirizes the thought that the only thing that a woman could do was be a mother and raise her children it kind of dwelled on that a little too much. In conclusion, I was not a fan of Herland but I do agree with the idea that the one thing that I could take away from this novel was that when it all comes down to it, it shouldn’t matter if we are men or women and at the end of the day, we are all just people.

 

clip from the movie Coming to America with Eddie Murphy. For those who have never seen the movie, basically he is african prince who has just had an aranged marriage and takes a few minutes to get to know his bride before making the marriage official. Her responses to his questions reminded me alot of the women of Herland's responses whenever the men would ask them questions. You'll see why I f you read the earlier part of this post.

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. 

Not for the feint of heart (There's sex in this post! *gasp*)

^ You have been warned. 

So.... I feel the need to get real about something here.

There were many things in Herland that bothered me. It bugged me that the women there are nothing like women in reality. It bothered me more to think of a race of people with practically no faults and by extension missing many virtues. It bothered me even more that they had no passions beyond inclinations and motherly love, and that affection and intimacy between adults was unknown to them. But I draw the freaking line in the sand over SEX.

            Ok.... so they are bizarre asexual dual gender ex-women, but I just can't let them represent female kind. 

 As most posts of mine, this is 'something of great personal irritation to me' (which is totally becoming my battle cry here. *does Tarzan impression*). Frankly, I've never been able to accept that men and women are that different. Lets break it down though, just for me to be clear. In a physical sense, there are some differences. There are the obvious sexual organ differences. Men tend to be larger in limb and body frame then women. Women tend to have broader hips and are CAPABLE (not saying that they actually possess it) of greater flexibility and agility then men. Men on the other hand tend to have broader shoulders and are CAPABLE (re-previous statement) of greater muscular strength. Women have more estrogen, men have more testosterone. Women mature sooner than men in body and brains- but men catch up after a few years.

Do girlies have to like pink and flowers and sugar and spice and niceness? Nope

Do 'dudes' have to like cars and explosions and videogames with both those things in them? Nope.
.

Do WOMEN exist who like video games? You're reading the rant of one.

Do MEN exist who like a nice flower garden as much as the next girlie? Yeah, they are actually out there, and no, they don't have to be gay!

But what does that actually change about our intellectual lives? Or even our instinctual lives? Do we actually want different things out of life? Are our thought patterns really that different? Do we actually have different 'needs'? OOOORRR could it be all that  'society' nonsense that we keep perpetuating for no reason through out all our history just because some idiots had some nasty ideas way back when and convinced a bunch of people they were right?

No. Our minds are our own, each individual. Women are not tailor made to certain pursuits and neither are men. Everyone has their own gifts in different areas, man or woman. Some PEOPLE are better at science. Some PEOPLE are better at medicine. Some PEOPLE are excellent artists. Some PEOPLE are good with kids. Most PEOPLE like sex, a lot!

BREAKING NEWS: MEN AREN'T HALF SO HORNY AS THEY THINK THEY HAVE TO ACT, AND WOMEN ARE MUCH HORNIER THAN PEOPLE GENERALLY ARE COMFORTABLE ADMITTING.

And the best bit is that the sexual drive is exactly the same in both genders. It's our residual animal brains telling us to reproduce. Its not girls wanting to be moms and guys wanting to feel nice and then fall asleep. Men want sex because they want to be Daddies on a subconscious level. Get over it. I didn't write the biological imperative, I am just sayin' it. 

But here is the real kicker for me. Since time immemorial, we seem to have one view on sex- its shameful. There are lots of different ways to describe it- dirty being one. Even the people that get a real thrill of the idea of sex being dirty are only reveling in how 'wrong' it's supposed to be. But seriously people? Is it?

I hate the idea of sex always being 'dirty.' I equally hate the idea of sex being strictly for procreation ***hint hint, this might have been what set me off........ again.*** Between two people who truly love, trust, and care for each other, sex takes on a totally different roll. It is intimacy. It is comfort. An affirmation of shared emotion and passion. Of course there is also pleasure, and why not? What's really supposed to be so scary or so wrong about that? I take pleasure in eating a nice ice cream, but I don't blush and hide the fact that I enjoy it. 

I will say that 'free love' and 'casual sex' disgust me. But not for the usual reasons exactly. Not to be all judgey here, but it seems sacrilegious to me. Sexual intimacy without love seems to me something like praying at the alter of a god you don't believe in... or rather more like dumping a load of stinky garbage on it.At that point it ceases to be about sharing or giving pleasure and becomes about taking it at a cost to yourself. It may be that some people lose self respect. But it always seems to me that even if you are truly shameless that you still destroy most of your chances at it being special and wonderful if you ever do have a shot at sharing it with the right person.

 Maybe I was raised with all kinds of bizarre ideas, but I think of sex as something incredible. Mystical even. I think its pretty freaking bizarre for a MARRIED couple in LOVE to not desire that level of intimacy. Why would you not wish to share something like that? Something so fundamentally human? And why oh why oh why does a feminist writer have to make her perfect women baby wanting prudes? Of course, that is the real problem with them anyway, isnt it? They are essentially automatons. They want to make and raise babies, and then die to give them some space. Humans need love! Real stupid messy crazy passionate love that doesn't make sense to anyone but the lovers. 

Of course, Terry's violation of the trust in his relationship is perhaps the worst breach possible. I won't even begin to discuss that or I'll never stop writing long enough to publish this.

People say you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else, yes? But most people willfully refuse to know themselves or understand their real nature and prefer to squeeze themselves into narrow little boxes with labels on. This one says manly. This one says girly. This one says 'jock' and this one says 'nerd.' We are actually beautiful, messy, crazy things called HUMAN BEINGS. I am almost sick of hearing myself sing this song now, but WHY CAN'T WE ACCEPT WHO WE ARE AS INDIVIDUALS AND MOOOOOVEEEEE OOOOOON?!

How are we supposed to try to create a better world when we won't acknowledge our true natures? Women pretending to be 'hard to get' or 'on a pillar' or god knows what and men thinking that other men will judge them as sissypants if they don't go chasing after skirts like one male dog locked in a room with a dozen females in heat?

We are animals. We like sex. Accept it, pick your own personal moral code about it, and throw gender rules right out the window, because they are Grade A Bullshit. 

Random Rant for a Utopia

            One of the most perplexing things I have noticed about the utopias that we have been reading about is an underlining sense of little or no amount of tolerance for others’ beliefs. I understand full well that it is impossible for everyone to agree, but respect and tolerance for other points of view should be a “given” in utopian society. For instance in Three Faces of Utopianism the people get along, but tolerance is decidedly lacking. Author Sargent basically just claims “this is utopia, and it can only be achieved my way.” He believes that he must define exactly what a utopia is and that his definition is the “correct” one, but what really is the right way to define a place that means no place? This omission is prevalent in a few other readings as well, and the closet thing to a utopia including tolerance so far was the book Unveiling a Parallel. In this reading both the men and the women were treated equally on the planet Mars. Consequently, from my point of view this notion of tolerance which leads to equality should be practiced in everyday life. In my experiences I find that most people consider themselves to be “tolerant,” and many are trying to be, but the more they try to be tolerant the more they are actually not.

            This breakdown of tolerance is no more evident than what is going on in Washington D.C. right now. Anytime one political side presents a bill to pass almost any kind of law the other side does nothing but basically try to raise hysteria levels claiming that passage will result in the decline and fall of America. The utter lack of compromising and recognizing the other side’s point of view is the reason why cockroaches have a higher approval rating than our Congress. I am not being sarcastic; this statement is based on actual polls. I mean, seriously, a five year old could compromise better than these alleged adults who we the people have elected to make decisions on our behalf. And yes, both sides are to blame since it takes two to tango and it takes two sides to make the compromises necessary to run a country. 

            This idea of tolerance should also be applied to everyday people. For instance the issue of gun control is prevalent in the news today. The one common characteristic in the debate seems to be that neither side believes that the other side has any good points. This is often what happens when trying to create a more perfect society. People tend to be so entrenched within their own beliefs that they assume that only they possess the right answers. Open-mindedness, tolerance, and a basic willingness to listen to other points of view go out the window to be replaced by “my-way-or-the-highway.” This is one of the many problems encountered in attempting to create a utopia in that each person has his or her own view of what the ideal will look like and what steps should be taken to achieve it. There is, quite frankly, little or no room for tolerance. If our society is to attempt to create a more perfect world then we are going to have to figure out a way to overcome our close-mindedness, and to convince everyone to do the same. Utopia or even a “better” society means we must listen to and be tolerant of others’ beliefs, points of view, opinions, and visions for a better world.