SOURCE: “Herland: Utopic in a Different Voice,” in Politics, Gender, and the Arts, edited by Ronald Dotterer and Susan Bowers, Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1992, pp. 52-63.

In the following essay, Doskow examines differences in Gilman's approach to the notion of utopia in Herland.

From earliest times, humanity has longed for a perfect world, one in sharp contrast to whatever its particular surrounding reality happened to be. Such utopian longings are still prevalent, still written about in our literature, and still, as always, unrealized. Expressed in the story of the Garden of Eden or a lost golden age, in classic works such as Plato's Republic or More's Utopia, in nineteenth-century socialist visions or twentieth-century behaviorist ones, man's longing for the ideal has been seen through many eyes and taken many shapes. Yet, it has always been man's view; “man” used in the generic sense, of course, but unavoidably expressing...