An audio book that kept my mind focused while I worked, I enjoyed entertaining the notion of a land inhabited only by women.

After reading The Yellow Wallpaper in grad school, I felt drawn to this novel-length work. The reader made the narrative engaging, but the adventurous storyline merely served as a framework for a less-nuanced (though humorous, and occasionally insightful) examination of the differences of men and women.

Several times during story the I longed for a book club discussion. How well did the writer understand the thinking of men? Would she hold motherhood as the highest possible calling for women if she wrote the story today? Why does the story end so abruptly?

A worthy diversion when the mind tends to wander. ( )

Surprisingly modern. I liked the conceit of having three men, naturally sexist as all men raised in a sexist society are, falling upon a utopian nation. How men, so certain in their superiority over women, confront a misogyny free society is just a really interesting concept to me. ( )

Dellas es una muy elaborada utopía de amazonas, de 'supermujeres' que conocen sus propias fuerzas y no tienen ninguna dependencia psicológica ni económica respecto a los hombres: su medio casi perfecto es el resultado de una cuidadosa planificación y control de la población.

A trio of male dumdums with varying levels of sexism find a country that has been populated entirely by women for centuries. The women reproduce asexually and have bred and engineered everything to be as perfect and useful as possible. This utopia is fascinating to read. It's so interesting how the author points out that a lot of what we consider gender or how women naturally are is a result of the patriarchy and its gender roles (this was written in 1915!). However, upon rereading this, I noticed how eugenics-y the book is: the Herland women are all white, despite being in a hidden part of South America or something, and they've deliberately bred themselves to be strong and tall and good at stuff and resist disease and smart, etc. I didn't really realize it until I read a quote from CPG that said that white men and women need to come together to improve the lower races, or something. All the great 19th and 20th century white feminists were all racist as hell, unfortunately. Anyway, I do like this book, but be aware of the racism and eugenics-y ways of thinking. It's critical of capitalism, the patriarchy, and Christianity (but rightfully so, imo). Loved the misandry though. ( )

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. 1915. Start Publishing, 2015.
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a utopian novelette in the tradition of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. It may be disappointing to readers who expect an intense psychological thriller like Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the most famous of Gilman’s works. In Herland, three men stumble on an isolated community of women who have evolved to breed parthenogenically and produce only female offspring. They are imprisoned and gradually educated by the women, who are also eager to learn about the outside world. The women practice a kind of eugenics that Gilman deftly compares to horticulture. The three men are the novel’s most completely developed characters. Our narrator, Van, is the most psychologically balanced of the three, while Terry is unable to see beyond his ideal of male dominance. In the end, Herland has more to say about ideal masculinity than it does about feminist ideals. 4 stars for historical interest. ( )