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Critical Essay by Thomas Galt Peyser
SOURCE: “Reproducing Utopia: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Herland,” in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 20, No. 1, spring, 1992, pp. 1-16.
In the following essay, Peyser argues against prevailing interpretations of Herland, claiming that “the imagination of utopia depends on the pre-existence of a utopian imagination.”
According to the prevailing view of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, the utopian novel suited the aims of a radical feminism by subverting the confinements of a realism dedicated to the representation of, and thus acquiescence to, a patriarchal order. Summing up this position, Susan Gubar argues that “women abused by the probable refuse it by imagining the possible in a revolutionary rejection of patriarchal culture;” “feminism imagines an alternative reality that is truly fantastic.”1 Along these lines, Herland is seen as a sanctuary for the imagination, a place the reader can visit in order to gain a vantage point outside the prevailing culture. As...
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This section contains 7,291 words (approx. 25 pages at 300 words per page) |
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