An Analysis Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman s Novel ...

During my middle school history class when I learned about the progress of minorities in America, I always believed in the simplicity of the lesson: everyone in the United States was equal in everything that they did, no matter their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Little did I know that this â€Å"Land of Equal Freedom and Opportunity† did not actually exist, but rather was an idealistic, simplified version of an extremely complicated debate regarding worth and equal rights. Charlotte Perkins Gilman focuses on many of the feminist issues in America in her works, specifically in Herland, along with her disappointment in the American educational system and possible changes to the institution that could better society as a whole. In conceiving Herland, written in 1915, Charlotte Perkins Gilman created her flawless utopian society: Herland was a paradise of only women were they thrived This utopian society was infinitely better than that of the American culture at the time – perhaps due to the absence of men. The many contrasts between Herland and the early twentieth century, the time in which the book was written, shows how the American culture, along with the entire westernized system, failed to recognize the full humanity and worth of women. At the time that Gilman wrote Herland, the writing of women on serious topics such as sociology was not respected. By concealing sociological theory in speculative fiction, Gilman was able to avoid the immediate dismissal