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A Country of Their Own Politics of Space in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's

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A Country of Their Own Politics of Space in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's A Country of Their Own Politics of Space in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland Iva Balic The name of Charlotte Perkins Gilman is often linked with the women’s movement of the turn of the twentieth century even though she viewed suffrage as just one of many issues that needed consideration. She believed that “‘the ballot [was] not an end—it [was] a means’”, and in her frequent lectures she addressed various topics that burdened women at the time, such as marriage, motherhood, wage discrimination, economic disability of women, factory work, and domestic strain and isolation.1 Today, Gilman’s name is usually associated with her feminist short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”2, a classic frequently taught in literature courses around the United States. During her lifetime, however, she was best known for her work Women and Economics3, which was translated into seven languages and used as a college textbook in the 1920s. In this book, Gilman reacted to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by arguing that women’s inferior position in society hindered the evolutionary process. Gilman claimed that women’s position in society was anti-evolutionary because, isolated in their husbands’ homes and confined to household chores and child rearing, women could not develop their potentials to the fullest, thus holding back the progress of society as a whole. Gilman says: It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating; but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, 1 Mary A. HILL, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Making of a Radical Feminist, 1860–1896, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980, 253. 2 Charlotte PERKINS GILMAN, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, The New England Magazine, May (1892). 3 Charlotte PERKINS GILMAN, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1899. Variations 13 (2005) 104 Iva Balic directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it. The woman is narrowed by the home and the man is narrowed by the woman.4 Gilman did not see the situation as hopeless, though. She believed that women, under right conditions, could contribute tremen- dously to the process of social evolution and help accelerate it. Her utopian novels, which combine Gilman’s convictions about socialism and feminism, are crucial to her legacy.5 Although Gilman never viewed herself as a fiction writer and never truly aspired to be one, she realized that fiction would provide her with space to develop further and more freely the thoughts she strived to materialize so fervently in her everyday life. Through fiction, she could reach wider audience and become more efficient in presenting her ideas. In her best-known utopia, Herland (1915)6, Gilman created an alternative social vision, placing women outside the restricting reach of patriarchy to enable them to exist without limitations and impositions. Although Gilman placed a great importance on social relations and considered them a determining factor in social evolution, this utopia stresses space and spatial design as shaping tools of human behavior. Such shift in focus suggests a spatial reaction to Darwin’s mostly temporal theories of human progress as Gilman goes beyond the biological aspects and beyond the ideologically often-abused notion of the survival of the fittest7, which she viewed as detrimental to society as a whole. In 4 Dolores HAYDEN, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982, 183. 5 A Woman’s Utopia (1907; utopian fragment), What Diantha Did (1910), Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916). 6 Charlotte PERKINS GILMAN, Herland, New York: Pantheon Books, 1979. Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text. 7 In 1859 the arrival of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life virtually changed the world as Darwin’s theory strongly influenced religious, economic, social, and physiological beliefs of the time. Various social sciences, which started developing at around the same time, felt Darwin’s tremendous influence, and researchers in these fields adopted principles of biology in their methodology. Eventually, the phrase “social Darwinism” was coined, and its followers argued that the same laws that applied to nature were also at work in society. Although the proponents of social Darwinism may have had some legitimate claims, the notion also served as a great tool for justifying widely varying ideologies and convictions. Some used A Country of Their Own 105 Herland, Gilman allots considerable agency to the humankind in controlling and manipulating their destinies and suggests that the right re-design of a lived environment can serve as a corrective for the problems of the past and positively shape the future. Juxtaposing the society of her time and the utopian land of women, Gilman reshapes and challenges our notions of city, community, and progress. She provides an alternative version to the patriarchal space designed for inequality and, consequently, highlights the restrictive spatial practices that need to be reworked in order for society to evolve. Yet, Gilman’s attempt to undo the contradictions of masculine design that relate improvement and progress with domination, violence, and waste produces other contradictions, which ultimately indicate her inability to escape the invasiveness and stealth of patriarchal ideology. The utopian genre, toward which Gilman leaned most often in her fiction, helps accentuate the innovatory character of her ideas. Since the word utopia can mean both “no place” and “good place”, it allows for various interpretations. We can view utopian texts as presenting us with a non-existent but ideal arrangement of possibilities that we should desire to reach. Or, to borrow Ernst Bloch’s definition, we can approach utopian narratives as presenting the “‘Not-Yet-Conscious’” but “‘real and concrete final state which can be achieved politically’”.8 Of course, utopias can also be taken as mere flights of fancy aimed at entertaining the reader. Whichever role of utopian literature we decide to accept, though, it is certain that utopias, as overt constructs of imagination, have the power to defamiliarize the world around us, thus helping us see more clearly what we did not, could not, or would not see the ideas of social Darwinism to support their beliefs in a general progressive trend, others to defend extreme laissez-faire economics, and yet others to argue for state control and militancy. The followers of the English theorist Herbert Spencer argued that society’s laws were imbedded in the evolutionary process and could not be changed; while the followers of the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward claimed that, because of their minds and culture, humans could shape their social laws. Gilman identified herself with Ward’s followers. 8 Duangrudi SUKSANG, “A World of Their Own: The Separatist Utopian Vision of Mary E. Bradley Lane’s Mizora”, in: Sharon M. Harris, ed. Redefining the Political Novel: American Women Writers, 1797–1901, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995, 128–148, 130. 106 Iva Balic before. Being critical and constructive at the same time, the genre’s fluidity and ambiguity challenge the conventional thought while raising doubts and provoking inquiries about the established order. The genre’s conventions stress Gilman’s critique of patriarchy. As the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre proposes, “a new space cannot be born (produced) unless it accentuates differences”; the narrative approach of utopia highlights the differences between the nature of the new space and the environment with which we are familiar.9 According to the convention of the genre, we encounter the utopian architecture and social design through its visitors. The three visitors to Herland are extremely fitting to this task because, different in their natures, each is symbolic of a particular patriarchal approach toward women: romantic, sexist, and scientific. Observing the land of women through their eyes and experiencing Herland only by the means of their reactions, we are constantly forced to compare our world with the utopian community and evaluate the differences. Furthermore, Herland’s history makes the utopian community immediately close to our historical experience while accentuating differences between our society and Herland. Just like us, Herlanders had gone through wars, slavery, invasions, revolts, and natural disasters. This context of historical conflicts and misfortunes is universally familiar, which makes the possibility of change seem possible and probable since Herlanders have managed to alter their lives dramatically despite their tortuous past. And, the fact that the negative course of history changes its direction only after the women take charge accentuates the violent and oppressive nature of patriarchal government and societal organization. With this gesture, Gilman brings our attention to the power she believed the humankind had in influencing their circumstances and, therefore, their behavior and character. Finally, the geographical location makes the most pronounced point in Gilman’s attack on patriarchy. While it is usually necessary for any utopia to be separated from the rest of 9 Henri LEFEBVRE, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson Smith, Oxford: Blackwell, 1991, 52. A Country of Their Own 107 the world either in time or space in order to develop and exist, Herlanders have to be separated twice — not only from the rest of the world but also from their male population. When all of the free men are either killed in battles or by revolting slaves, the women decide to rise and seize control of the country by slaying their conquerors. The mountain range towering around Herland holds these women captive, which initiates this act of “sheer desperation” (55), but the mountains also mark safe space, thus providing a chance for a new beginning.
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