Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland, New York : Signet Classic, [1992].Led by sociology student Vandyk Jennings (Van), a group of explorers set out to find a mythical society composed entirely of women, supposedly hidden in the jungles of South America. Upon discovering the tribe, the men try to observe them from afar, but are lured to their village, where they are captured, accomodated and made to learn the tribe's language, culture and history. The men learn that the tribe have subsisted in isolation since inter-tribal warfare and a volcanic eruption destroyed their civilisation (and all its men) 2000 years ago, and has mastered a form of asexual reproduction. Following a foiled escape-attempt, the men are gradually afforded more freedom, as they apply themselves to proper membership of the tribe, its rites and relationships.
Gilman's novel -serialised in 1916- has been described as an early feminist epic that inverts gender-roles, which are depicted as socially-contingent; her positioning of the novel's women as both nurturing, and fiercely independent and physically hardy, enables her to unpick several gender stereotypes, and question many of the assumptions underpinning our understanding of gender and gender-relations.
