misogyny from beginning to end! a perfect world full of only women built through eugenics……. ( )

This book has tons of potential. Unfortunately, the author's idealism and the politics of the day got in the way of a good story.

Like others have said, I wish this book could have even touched on sexuality. I know the book was written at a time where any hint of lesbianism would get your book banned, but my suspension of disbelief could not hold that a country of human women could exist continuously for 2000 years and not think "Oh hey, how about having sex with each other?"

I enjoyed the sort of anthropological perspective and I think that's probably the best way to approach a story who's main character is actually a society taken as a whole.

I do wish that of the 3 explorers, that one of them had been a woman. It would have really fleshed out the story. And the story was in dire need of fleshing out because it came off as really two dimensional.

The story as it is can be boiled down to: a few guys go to an idealized feminist utopia and become quite startled to learn that women are not actually their personal playthings.

Not a bad lesson, to be sure. But one that could have been delivered by something other than a 10 pound sledgehammer to the face. ( )

In a college cultural history course, I read turn-of-the-twentieth century feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s most famous writing, The Yellow Wallpaper, which is the fictional first-person narration of a mother suffering from post-partum depression whose physician husband rents a summer home so she could take the “rest cure” -- although it is said to have been based on Ms. Gilman's own battle with post-partum depression. The yellow patterned wallpaper in the room she is confined to becomes a symbolic prison as the narrator descends into madness in this popular novella published in 1892. That was my introduction to Ms. Gilman’s writing, and I re-read it three years ago when my book club chose it along with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. Herland, published in 1915, is a longer novel and one of Ms. Gilman’s several utopian novels focusing on a civilization run by women.

In this utopian novel, three men – Jeff Margrave, Terry Nicholson, and Van Jennings (the story’s narrator) – are part of an expedition to one of the few remaining uncharted regions on earth, an area rumored to be populated only by women, hidden high in the mountains. Typical of men at that time (who am I kidding -- still typical thinking of many men), they assume that any comparison of this women’s world to the allegedly civilized United States and Europe that they know, will be to the disadvantage of the former. These three, who have mixed motives for wanting to find this women-centric society and typical early 20th century erroneous notions about the capabilities of women – use a vaguely-described flying machine to reach the mountain area, landing on a hidden plateau. They are, of course, led by three young women – Celis, Alima, and Ellador – to the main settlement; the women treat them well and begin to teach them their own language, but it is clear that they are captives and not allowed to roam freely. Their first escape attempt is thwarted by Celis, Alima, and Ellador.

In captivity, the men learn that Herland, as they have started calling it, has been without men for two millennia, after a series of natural disasters and events orchestrated by men (wars and internal strife) combined to leave a small population of women alone on this hidden plateau in the mountains. As they adapt to these extreme circumstances, the women come to realize that cooperation is the only way they will survive, so they begin organizing their society based on cooperation rather than the male-centric basis of competition. Over time, the society they develop is efficient, effective, peaceful, and orderly – no crime, no competition, no antisocial behaviors. There are no separate families – just one giant organic community in which property is held in common and the care and education of children are the top priorities. Authority is based not on who one knows or to whom someone was born, but rather on experience, wisdom, and merit. The three travelers are eventually allowed to marry the three young women they encountered when they first arrived, but eventually Terry is exiled, and one of the women, Ellador, returns with her husband, Van, to the United States, along with Terry. Ellador is tasked to provide a report of life outside their peaceful country.

As an aside, the Kindle version of this book I bought seems to have been badly translated from another language to English or cobbled together badly via Captcha given that the book is likely in the public domain – curious, since Ms. Gilman was an American feminist and the book was written in (American) English to begin with. The terrible translations made reading what should have been a very quick read arduous and tedious. For example, everywhere the word “about” must have been in the original, the translation used “approximately”, which led to some weird sentences. Syntax, idiomatic expressions, and even sentence structure suffered mightily. If it were only some errors, it would have been tolerable, but almost every paragraph required thought as to what might have been meant. It’s abominable that I paid for a Kindle book that was essentially unreadable. I had to find a paperback copy to finish it. It could have been a book read in one sitting; instead I labored with it for the better part of a day and a half before locating a paperback copy. Because of this experience that has nothing to do with the writing itself (had I read it as it had been written), I might have overcompensated in my rating. It was a solid two stars placed in the context of its original publication and an extra star for the originality of thought also in the context of its time of publication, but the writing was average. ( )

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. ( )