With Her in Ourland Illustrated
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798675839025
- Series
- With Her in Ourland Illustrated
- Pages
- 190
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-08-16
- Author
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Description
Two works in one, this volume contains the full text of With Her in Orland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as an illuminating sociological analysis by Mary Jo Egan with the assistance of Michael R. Hill. Orland is the sequel to Gil man's acclaimed feminist utopian novel Harland; both were published in her journal, The Forerunner, in 1915 and 1916. Orland resumes the adventures of Harland's protagonists, Belladonna and Van, but turns from utopian fantasy to a challenging analysis of contemporary social fissures in "his land," or the real world. The republication of Herland as a separate novel in 1979 revived critical interest in Gil man's work but truncated the larger aims implicit in the Harland/Orland saga, leaving an erroneous understanding of Gil man's other/better half of the story, in which it is suggested that strong women can re socialize men to be nurturer and cooperative. Gil man's choice of a sexually integrated society in With Her in Orland provides us with her answer to her ideal society, but her foray into a woman-only society as a corrective to a male dominated one is a controversial option. The challenging message of Orland, however, does not impede the pleasure of reading it as a novel.Though known more for her fiction today, Gilman in her time was a recognized and accomplished sociologist who admired Lester F. Ward and frequently visited Jane Addams of Chicago's Hull-House. The male protagonist in Harland/Orland, Van, is a sociologist, used by Gilman as a foil on which to skewer the assumptions and practices of patriarchal sociology. The interpretation presented here, which adopts a sociological viewpoint, is invaluable reading for scholars and students of sociology, American women's studies, and utopian literature.
