Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a Chai

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novel Herland (1915) is not my cup of tea, but its influence is unquestionable. I think it's hard to think about motherhood and literature without considering "Yellow Wallpaper," Herland, or her other work. Herland especially is ripe for a multitude of interpretations: environmental, feminist, Marxist, anthropological, pedagogical, disability studies and more. I am most interested, though, in Gilman's depiction of the uses and influences of motherhood.

Gilman was writing at a pivotal moment in the construction of Western motherhood. The nineteenth-century mother was a moral figure, expected to instill important moral and cultural values into her children. She was a domestic figure associated with the hearth, the Angel of the House. The twentieth-century mother was something else, though. The Industrial Revolution had mechanized the Western world, and by the twentieth century, science and technology and ingratiated itself into the average home. The mother's role within this new machine had to be determined.

The influence of science is felt most strongly in the eugenics movement that blossomed during the early twentieth century. Gilman was not immune. Gilman was, unfortunately, a proponent of the supposed "Anglo-Saxon superiority" and a champion for the eugenics movement. She believed the best treatment for the mentally and physically disabled was sterilization or euthanasia. She believed ethnic diversity was degrading America and the only solution could be found through a guided evolution.

So, yeah, not great.

*sips tea*

Her novel Herland embodies these troubling values, and consequently, reveals the shift in the cultural consciousness regarding motherhood. The mother was no longer responsible for the raising of the individual, but rather for the elevation of the race. Gilman gives the mother greater significance by practically erasing men from the equation. Imagining a utopian society comprised only of women who produce asexually, Gilman details their imagined history. After the men had been killed off in various violent ways, the women try to carry on the best they can while awaiting their assumed end. Instead, one of the women "miraculously" bears five daughters without the help of any man. These miracle births initiated a new society:

"Left alone in that terrific orphanhood, they had clung together, supporting one another and their little sisters, and developing unknown powers in the stress of new necessity. To this pain-hardened and work-strengthened group, who had lost not only the love and care of parents, but the hope of ever having children of their own, there now dawned the new hope.

Here at last was Motherhood, and though it was not for all of them personally, it might—if the power was inherited—found here a new race."

Gilman asserts her a relatively typical belief: motherhood is responsible for the future. We see this in various Biblical stories, fairy tales, etc. There is no "happily ever after" without a promise of a birth because we believe happy endings beget happy beginnings. For a people or culture to have a future, there must be mothers.

"There you have the start of Herland! One family, all descended from one mother! She lived to a hundred years old; lived to see her hundred and twenty-five great-granddaughters born; lived as Queen-Priestess-Mother of them all; and died with a nobler pride and a fuller joy than perhaps any human soul has ever known—she alone had founded a new race!

The mother had saved Herland by creating a new race. A better race. Now trust me on this: this is hella racist. There were some mentions of rebellious slaves that the women killed and a carefully included description that these women were clearly "of Aryan stock." We're treading into some Third Reich territory, but that's because in the twentieth century, notions of motherhood took on an increasingly political tone. No longer was it solely the domain of queens or noble women. Every woman was deemed responsible for the future of her race.

Consequently, while Herland's original mother may be made a high priestess, this supreme station is not maintained by a single individual. Instead it is inherited by every single mother in Herland.

"To [her descendants] the longed-for motherhood was not only a personal joy, but a nation’s hope . . . And at last they were left alone; the white-haired First Mother was gone, and this one family, five sisters, twenty-five first cousins, and a hundred and twenty-five second cousins, began a new race."

The responsibility for the society is equally shared by all citizens of Herland because they all have the potential to reproduce. In the first half of the twentieth century, society is the race. Gilman continues to explain how the women eliminate negative traits to create a "perfect" society while making it clear that it is perfect because of "mother-love."

*sips tea*

So what about "father-love"? The book seems pretty dismissive of the idea, following instead the idea that men value sex for pleasure rather than for parentage or politics. Yet by the novel's end, one of the men has indeed become a father. Jeff--whom our narrator, Van, says he cannot describe as a man despite his being strong and brave--has conceived a child with Herlander, Celis. The citizens of Herland are overjoyed at the prospect of the "New Motherhood."

Why are the women so excited for Celis when they have been conceiving daughters for two millennia? Because we do not asexually conceive daughters. If Gilman is to translate this set of politics to a Western reality, she must make it portable by making it possible. Consequently, Gilman ensures that the novel makes it clear that an appropriate union--a productive union--can take place between a man and a woman.

But we all know that utopias--no matter how nice they appear--are just dystopias in disguise.

*chokes on tea*

#charlotteperkinsgilman #herland #motherhood #motherlove