Stefen’s Bookclub – November

Herland
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

After the very science-heavy book we read recently, I thought I’d like to look at something more speculative and since the last two have been fairly modern, I also wanted something older. Herland has been on my book club possibles since last year and now seems a good time to include it.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent feminist and sociologist and a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction. Herland was originally published in magazine serial form in 1915, but was not published as a book until 1979. Part of the genre of utopian fiction that I think also has a role in early science fiction, it is told from the perspective of an explorer and sociologist and his friends who stumble across a lost community of women. A society that has for thousands of years been made up exclusively of women. How such a society could exist is a puzzle he and his companions set out to solve, and find many of their ideas about the world challenged in the process.

This is an exploration of social norms, gender identity and politics as well as ideas about evolution, biology and eugenics. I think it will be an interesting discussion, particularly in the light of other utopian/ dystopian books we’ve read over the last few years.

The vintage edition we have in the store also includes The Yellow Wallpaper, the story of a women kept prisoner in a room in her own home by her husband ‘for the sake of her health’ and her resulting decent into madness. This was a common practice at the time and one that Charlotte Perkins Gilman had had personal experience of. We may not get to it at the book club, but if you have the vintage edition or another that includes it I highly recommend you read it too.