Introduction [Ann J. Lane]

"Gilman appealed to an assortment of our comic sensibilities—the satiric, the whimsical, the sardonic, the rousing belly laugh—all in the interest of exposing the absurdities of accepted pieties, particularly as they applied to woman’s “eternal place” or “eternal nature.” She used the marginality forced upon her as a woman in Victorian America to shape a distinctly woman’s humor. Herland is an example of Gilman’s playful best."(2)

"Writing in the years when the women’s movement and the socialist movement were each trying to win mass support, Gilman sought to unite them by demonstrating their essential and necessary interdependence."(4)

"Charlotte Stetson [de naam van haar ex-man] found herself drawn to the ideas of Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist movement, as well as caught up in the women’s movement."(7)

"Here is a woman in late-Victorian America, denying the social definition of herself as wife and mother, first with a scandalous divorce (scandalous because it was amicable and seemingly without cause), then by “abandoning” her child to its father, and finally by denying the very reality of home. She created a kind of self-imposed exile, reproducing, but this time by choice, the marginality of her early life." [mijn nadruk] (8)

"What we call masculine traits are simply human traits, which have been denied to women and are thereby assumed to belong to men: traits such as courage, strength, creativity, generosity, and integrity. To be “virtuous” a woman needs but one “virtue”—chastity. “Women are not undeveloped men,” said Gilman, “but the feminine half of humanity is undeveloped humans.”" [mijn nadruk] (15)

"Gilman was determined to package her social vision in terms attractive to the mass of the population and at the same time to make socialism a legitimate, appealing, and reasonable idea. The literary genre she selected was the Utopian novel, and she wrote three of them: Moving the Mountain, 1911; Herland, 1915; and its sequel, With Her in Ourland, 1916, all of them appearing in The Forerunner."(16)

[Dat was haar eigen tijdschrift.]

"Gilman’s views of immigrants, blacks, and Jews, however typical of her time and place, are sometimes unsettling and sometimes offensive, though characteristically clever. The Jewish people, Ellador explains to Van, “seem not to have passed the tribal stage,” as demonstrated by their inability to establish a separate nation. Their consequent alien position makes them distrusted and disliked. They also cling to the notion of being a chosen people, making them even less lovable as a group." [mijn nadruk] (30)

"Several utopias have espoused the rights or exposed the plight of women—Charles Brockden Brown’s Alcuin, published in 1798, is an early example—but few utopias were written by women. Even those few rarely view women’s situation in any special way. For instance, San Salvador (1892)3 by Mary Agnes Tincker is a conventional Utopian romance concerning a colony of Christian idealists who maintain their perfection by isolating themselves from the rest of the world. M. Louise Moore, in Al-Modad (1892), describes her protagonist’s adventures among slave traders and Africans, and includes the inevitable shipwreck that carries him to a “fertile twilight land, peopled by bouyant, blue-eyed youths.” Zebina Forbush, in The Co-opiltan: A Story of the Cooperative Commonwealth of Idaho (1898), examines a fictional community in operation from 1897 to 1919, whose model of a successful nationalist experiment inspires the rest of the nation to follow its example, but there is nothing particularly feminist about her world. Carolina A. Mason, with a sad but more realistic story, A Woman of Yesterday (1900), describes a typical failure of a Utopian community, but again without any particular emphasis on women." [mijn nadruk] (33)

"Mary E. Bradley Lane’s Mizora, published in 1890, is the only self-consciously feminist utopia published before Herland that I have been able to locate."(34)

"The Utopian novel as a literary form seems to be going through a rebirth as a uniquely feminist expression at the present, with such books as Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), Dorothy Bryant’s The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You (published in 1971 as The Comforter), and Mary Staton’s From the Legend of Biel (1975). Many of the ideas in these books are reminiscent of notions expressed in Herland: class equality; some kind of communal child-rearing; absence of privilege by sex; freedom from fear of male violence; elimination of sex-linked work; the mother-child relationship and the idealized home as models for social institutions; and the use of persuasion and consensus to maintain social order. But the contemporary fictional worlds are so much in the arena of the fantastic, in the genre of science fiction, that as a new kind of feminist expression they are in important ways not comparable to the classic Utopian form." [mijn nadruk] (35)

"In Gilman’s work education—not formal education but the process by which values permeate an entire social fabric—evolves as a natural device in the creation of new people, especially the young."(39)

"Two thirds of all utopias were written in the nineteenth century, when the world was, indeed, in the process of visible and enormous change. Utopias created in the wake of capitalist growth and disorder were often seen as a call to action, both by their creators and their followers."(40)

"But the roots of utopia are in the literary, not the political, imagination; and it is a strength of Herland, and even of the “realistic” Moving the Mountain, that they cannot be seen as blueprints.(41)"

[Want daarvoor zijn we bang? ]

(42) 1 - A Not Unnatural Enterprise

[Het gaat weer over een onbekend afgelegen en geheimzinnig land waar het leven heel anders is.]

"I haven’t said where it was for fear some self-appointed missionaries, or traders, or land-greedy expansionists, will take it upon themselves to push in."(43)

[Zodat het een geheim blijft en niemand het verhaal over het bestaan ervan kan controleren. Dat ook.]

De ik-figuur is Vandyck Jennings ("Van"), die met twee vrienden Terry en Jeff naar een ver land reisde, een reis waarover hij wil vertellen. Die reis was begonnen als een wetenschappelijke expeditie, maar ze hoorden verhalen over "a strange and terrible Woman Land in the high distance" "where no men lived—only women and girl children"(45) en besloten die verhalen te onderzoeken in een nieuwe eigen expeditie via boot en vliegtuig. Jeff blijkt een zachtaardige man die vrouwen idealiseert en Terry is zo'n mannetje dat denkt dat hij vrouwen alle kanten uit kan sturen. "I held a middle ground, highly scientific, of course, and used to argue learnedly about the physiological limitations of the sex. We were not in the least “advanced” on the woman question, any of us, then."(57) Dat laatste is duidelijk uit de eerste reactie op een vlucht waarin ze het nieuwe land vanit de lucht bekijken: “But they look—why, this is a civilized country!” I protested. “There must be men.”(61) Ze besluiten te landen.

(61) 2 - Rash Advances

En komen de eerste bewoners tegen, drie meisjes. Ze zijn onder de indruk van hoe goed het land is gecultiveerd. Wanneer ze het stadje bereiken, staat er een ontvangstcomité van vrouwen te wachten. Ze worden met zachte aandrang een gebouw binnengebracht en daar verdooft als ze hun wapens trekken.

"They were girls, of course, no boys could ever have shown that sparkling beauty, and yet none of us was certain at first. We saw short hair, hatless, loose, and shining; a suit of some light firm stuff, the closest of tunics and kneebreeches, met by trim gaiters."(65)

"The road was some sort of hard manufactured stuff, sloped slightly to shed rain, with every curve and grade and gutter as perfect as if it were Europe’s best. “No men, eh?” sneered Terry."(71)

"Here was evidently a people highly skilled, efficient, caring for their country as a florist cares for his costliest orchids."(71)

"Everything was beauty, order, perfect cleanness, and the pleasantest sense of home over it all. As we neared the center of the town the houses stood thicker, ran together as it were, grew into rambling palaces grouped among parks and open squares, something as college buildings stand in their quiet greens."(73)

"They were not young. They were not old. They were not, in the girl sense, beautiful. They were not in the least ferocious."(73)

"In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy. “Woman” in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother. We looked for nervousness—there was none."(75)

(80) 3 - A Peculiar Imprisonment

Ze worden wakker in een mooie kamer, in prachtige bedden, er is een badkamer, er is kleding, er is een ontbijt met de oudere vrouwen, er is een taalcursus, ze nemen deel aan fysieke oefeningen. Terry heeft als het mannetje grote moeite met de situatie en wil ontsnappen. Hij is respectloos tegenover de vrouwen.

"“They don’t seem to notice our being men,” he went on. “They treat us—well—just as they do one another. It’s as if our being men was a minor incident.”"(90)

"In the matter of personal appearance, there was a great difference. They all wore short hair, some few inches at most; some curly, some not; all light and clean and fresh-looking.
“If their hair was only long,” Jeff would complain, “they would look so much more feminine.”
I rather liked it myself, after I got used to it. Why we should so admire “a woman’s crown of hair” and not admire a Chinaman’s queue is hard to explain, except that we are so convinced that the long hair “belongs” to a woman. Whereas the “mane” in horses is on both, and in lions, buffalos, and such creatures only on the male. But I did miss it—at first."(91-92)

"“I’m sick and tired of being educated,” Terry protested. “Fancy going to a dame school—at our age. I want to Get Out!”
But we could not get out, and we were being educated swiftly. Our special tutors rose rapidly in our esteem. They seemed of rather finer quality than the guards, though all were on terms of easy friendliness."(96)

(101) 4 - Our Venture

Ze ontsnappen voorlopig. Vooral Terry wil dat. Hij ervaart de situatie namelijk als gevangenschap en in plaats van er iets van te maken wil hij 'vrij' zijn.

"“I never said ’twould be a picnic. But I’d run away in the Antarctic ice fields rather than be a prisoner.”"(104)

Ze worden gesnapt als ze bij de vliegmachine zijn Maar er volgt geen straf of een strenger behandeling. De lessen gaan gewoon weer door, de gesprekken worden opener.

"Of course we looked for punishment—a closer imprisonment, solitary confinement maybe—but nothing of the kind happened. They treated us as truants only, and as if they quite understood our truancy."(111)

"And everywhere, open country, village, or city—only women. Old women and young women and a great majority who seemed neither young nor old, but just women; young girls, also, though these, and the children, seeming to be in groups by themselves generally, were less in evidence. We caught many glimpses of girls and children in what seemed to be schools or in playgrounds, and so far as we could judge there were no boys."(112)

"“Can’t expect stirring romance and wild adventure without men, can you?” I asked. Nothing irritated Terry more than to have us assume that there were no men; but there were no signs of them in the books they gave us, or the pictures."(114)

De drie mannen en de drie tutors raken in gesprek nu de taal minder een probleem is geordn door hun studie ervan. Terry moet absoluut weten of er hier ook mannen zijn.

"“No,” she answered quietly. “There are no men in this country. There has not been a man among us for two thousand years.”(...) “But—the people—the children,” he protested, not believing her in the least, but not wishing to say so. “Oh yes,” she smiled. “I do not wonder you are puzzled. We are mothers—all of us—but there are no fathers."(116)

[Hoe dat dan kan is nog onduidelijk. Het gesprek levert prachtige vooroordeel bestrijdende wendingen op over mannen en vrouwen. Voorbeelden: ]

"“Birth, we know, of course; but what is virgin?”
Terry looked uncomfortable, but Jeff met the question quite calmly. “Among mating animals, the term virgin is applied to the female who has not mated,” he answered.
“Oh, I see. And does it apply to the male also? Or is there a different term for him?”
He passed this over rather hurriedly, saying that the same term would apply, but was seldom used.
“No?” she said. “But one cannot mate without the other surely. Is not each then—virgin—before mating?"(117)

"They had the evenest tempers, the most perfect patience and good nature—one of the things most impressive about them all was the absence of irritability. So far we had only this group to study, but afterward I found it a common trait."(118)

Ze hebben geen dieren als koeien en eten geen vlees. Het horen over de bioindustrie maakt ze misselijk.

(121) 5 - A Unique History

De gesprekken gaan door.

[Een ander voorbeeld van mooie reacties tegenover vooroordelen:]

"While we were discussing birds, Terry asked them if they used feathers for their hats, and they seemed amused at the idea. He made a few sketches of our women’s hats, with plumes and quills and those various tickling things that stick out so far; and they were eagerly interested, as at everything about our women.
As for them, they said they only wore hats for shade when working in the sun; and those were big light straw hats, something like those used in China and Japan. In cold weather they wore caps or hoods.
“But for decorative purposes—don’t you think they would be becoming?” pursued Terry, making as pretty a picture as he could of a lady with a plumed hat.
They by no means agreed to that, asking quite simply if the men wore the same kind. We hastened to assure her that they did not—drew for them our kind of headgear.
“And do no men wear feathers in their hats?”" [mijn nadruk] (122)

"I wish I could represent the kind, quiet, steady, ingenious way they questioned us. It was not just curiosity—they weren’t a bit more curious about us than we were about them, if as much. But they were bent on understanding our kind of civilization, and their lines of interrogation would gradually surround us and drive us in till we found ourselves up against some admissions we did not want to make."(123)

[Precies. Ze hebben er alleen katten, een paar katers maar, waarvoor ze goed zorgen. Zielig voor ze, zegt Terry spottend. Daarna gaat het over honden in Terry's beschaving, Terry die honden ziet als iets voor mannen en dat er vooral mannetjeshonden gekozen worden om te houden. Zielig voor ze, krijgt hij terug. ]

"“Do we understand that you keep an animal—an unmated male animal—that bites children?"(...)
Terry broke in at this. “You must not imagine they are all dangerous—it’s not one in a hundred that ever bites anybody. Why, they are the best friends of the children—a boy doesn’t have half a chance that hasn’t a dog to play with!”
“And the girls?” asked Somel.
“Oh—girls—why they like them too,” he said, but his voice flatted a little. They always noticed little things like that, we found later."(126)

Het leren in het fort gaat nog zes maanden door. Daarna worden ze verplaatst naar een stadje voor drie maanden met alleen oudere vrouwen en kinderen. Tot slot naar een stadje met een normale samenstelling, dus ook met meisjes, maar daar staan ze steeds onder toezicht. Een kort overzicht van hun geschiedenis volgt. Het land raakte geïsoleerd van de buitenwereld door een vulkaanuitbarsting. De inwoners zijn blank. Vroeger waren er wel mannen. Maar de vrouwen kwamen in opstand tegen hun onderdrukkers.

"There was literally no one left on this beautiful high garden land but a bunch of hysterical girls and some older slave women. That was about two thousand years ago."(132)

"For five or ten years they worked together, growing stronger and wiser and more and more mutually attached, and then the miracle happened—one of these young women bore a child. Of course they all thought there must be a man somewhere, but none was found. Then they decided it must be a direct gift from the gods, and placed the proud mother in the Temple of Maaia—their Goddess of Motherhood—under strict watch. And there, as years passed, this wonder-woman bore child after child, five of them—all girls." [mijn nadruk] (133)

[Jammer, echt een zwaktebod: er gebeurt een genetisch wonder waardoor ze mannen niet meer nodig hebben om zwanger te worden. Maar het betekent ook dat heel hun andere afwijkende gedrag uit de biologie voortkomt en niet sociaal-cultureel gemaakt wordt. Lees verder:]

"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."(134)

"The whole little nation of women surrounded them with loving service, and waited, between a boundless hope and an equally boundless despair, to see if they, too, would be mothers.
And they were! As fast as they reached the age of twenty-five they began bearing. Each of them, like her mother, bore five daughters. Presently there were twenty-five New Women, Mothers in their own right, and the whole spirit of the country changed from mourning and mere courageous resignation to proud joy. The older women, those who remembered men, died off; the youngest of all the first lot of course died too, after a while, and by that time there were left one hundred and fifty-five parthenogenetic women, founding a new race."(134)

"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!"(135)

"Here you have human beings, unquestionably, but what we were slow in understanding was how these ultra-women, inheriting only from women, had eliminated not only certain masculine characteristics, which of course we did not look for, but so much of what we had always thought essentially feminine.
The tradition of men as guardians and protectors had quite died out. These stalwart virgins had no men to fear and therefore no need of protection. As to wild beasts—there were none in their sheltered land.
The power of mother-love, that maternal instinct we so highly laud, was theirs of course, raised to its highest power; and a sister-love which, even while recognizing the actual relationship, we found it hard to credit." [mijn nadruk] (136)

[Dat het "vrouwelijke" verdwijnt heeft dus te maken met erfelijkheid. ]

Terry gelooft er geen woord van. Zonder mannen is er geen lol, vindt hij.

"“And it’s a big miss, too. There’s not only no fun without ’em—no real sport—no competition; but these women aren’t womanly. You know they aren’t.”"(137)

"As to Terry’s criticism, it was true. These women, whose essential distinction of motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture, were strikingly deficient in what we call “femininity.” This led me very promptly to the conviction that those “feminine charms” we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity—developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process. But Terry came to no such conclusion." [mijn nadruk] (138)

"The religion they had to begin with was much like that of old Greece—a number of gods and goddesses; but they lost all interest in deities of war and plunder, and gradually centered on their Mother Goddess altogether. Then, as they grew more intelligent, this had turned into a sort of Maternal Pantheism."(139)

"As I learned more and more to appreciate what these women had accomplished, the less proud I was of what we, with all our manhood, had done.
You see, they had had no wars. They had had no kings, and no priests, and no aristocracies. They were sisters, and as they grew, they grew together—not by competition, but by united action." [mijn nadruk] (140)

"“Oh, everything,” Terry said grandly. “The men do everything, with us.” He squared his broad shoulders and lifted his chest. “We do not allow our women to work. Women are loved—idolized—honored—kept in the home to care for the children.”
“What is ‘the home’?” asked Somel a little wistfully.
But Zava begged: “Tell me first, do no women work, really?”
“Why, yes,” Terry admitted. “Some have to, of the poorer sort.”
“About how many—in your country?”
“About seven or eight million,” said Jeff, as mischievous as ever." [mijn nadruk] (142)

(142) 6 - Comparisons Are Odious

"But just as a clear-eyed, intelligent, perfectly honest, and well-meaning child will frequently jar one’s self-esteem by innocent questions, so did these women, without the slightest appearance of malice or satire, continually bring up points of discussion which we spent our best efforts in evading."(142)

[Discussies vermijden is wel erg slap. De VS vallen uiteraard door de mand. Terry schept wel op, maar de feiten blijken anders. En een beroep op de natuurwetten zoals in het volgende citaat, maakt zeker geen indruk:]

"Terry put it up to me, saying I was the sociologist, and I explained that the laws of nature require a struggle for existence, and that in the struggle the fittest survive, and the unfit perish. In our economic struggle, I continued, there was always plenty of opportunity for the fittest to reach the top, which they did, in great numbers, particularly in our country; that where there was severe economic pressure the lowest classes of course felt it the worst, and that among the poorest of all the women were driven into the labor market by necessity.
They listened closely, with the usual note-taking.
“About one-third, then, belong to the poorest class,” observed Moadine gravely. “And two-thirds are the ones who are—how was it you so beautifully put it?—‘loved, honored, kept in the home to care for the children.’ This inferior one-third have no children, I suppose?”
Jeff—he was getting as bad as they were—solemnly replied that, on the contrary, the poorer they were, the more children they had. That too, he explained, was a law of nature: “Reproduction is in inverse proportion to individuation.”"(144)

"Also we found this out—as soon as we were free of the country, and by further study and question—that what one knew, all knew, to a very considerable extent.(...) Some knew far more than others about one thing—they were specialized, of course; but all of them knew more about everything—that is, about everything the country was acquainted with—than is the case with us. We boast a good deal of our “high level of general intelligence” and our “compulsory public education,” but in proportion to their opportunities they were far better educated than our people."(147)

[Zo is het.]

"Then, since the prosperity of their children depended on it, the fullest and subtlest coordination began to be practiced.
I remember how long Terry balked at the evident unanimity of these women—the most conspicuous feature of their whole culture. “It’s impossible!” he would insist. “Women cannot cooperate—it’s against nature.”
When we urged the obvious facts he would say: “Fiddlesticks!” or “Hang your facts—I tell you it can’t be done!” And we never succeeded in shutting him up till Jeff dragged in the hymenoptera."(151)

[Wat een ergerlijk mannetje. Maar het is fantastisch hoe de auteur Terry gebruikt om te laten zien waaraan ze zo'n hekel heeft bij mannen. Vervolgens gaat het over de bevolkingsgroei die een probleem zou kunnen vormen. ]

"Do what they would, however, there soon came a time when they were confronted with the problem of “the pressure of population” in an acute form. There was really crowding, and with it, unavoidably, a decline in standards.
And how did those women meet it?
Not by a “struggle for existence” which would result in an everlasting writhing mass of underbred people trying to get ahead of one another—some few on top, temporarily, many constantly crushed out underneath, a hopeless substratum of paupers and degenerates, and no serenity or peace for anyone, no possibility for really noble qualities among the people at large.
Neither did they start off on predatory excursions to get more land from somebody else, or to get more food from somebody else, to maintain their struggling mass.
Not at all. They sat down in council together and thought it out. Very clear, strong thinkers they were. They said: “With our best endeavors this country will support about so many people, with the standard of peace, comfort, health, beauty, and progress we demand. Very well. That is all the people we will make.”
There you have it. You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People. Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere “instinct,” a wholly personal feeling; it was—a religion."(153-154)

"“But what I do not understand, naturally, is how you prevent it. I gathered that each woman had five. You have no tyrannical husbands to hold in check—and you surely do not destroy the unborn—”"(156)

"She explained to me, with sweet seriousness, that as I had supposed, at first each woman bore five children; and that, in their eager desire to build up a nation, they had gone on in that way for a few centuries, till they were confronted with the absolute need of a limit. This fact was equally plain to all—all were equally interested. They were now as anxious to check their wonderful power as they had been to develop it; and for some generations gave the matter their most earnest thought and study."(157)

"When a woman chose to be a mother, she allowed the child-longing to grow within her till it worked its natural miracle. When she did not so choose she put the whole thing out of her mind, and fed her heart with the other babies."(159)

"Physiology, hygiene, sanitation, physical culture—all that line of work had been perfected long since. Sickness was almost wholly unknown among them, so much so that a previously high development in what we call the “science of medicine” had become practically a lost art. They were a clean-bred, vigorous lot, having the best of care, the most perfect living conditions always."(159)

(160) 7 - Our Growing Modesty

Ze worden op een gegeven moment genoeg vertrouwd om het land door te reizen met hun tutors: Zava (voor Jeff), Somel (voor Van), en Moadine (voor Jerry). Jerry is nog steeds respectloos naar zijn gastvrouwen.

"I hated to admit to myself how much Terry had sunk in my esteem. Jeff felt it too, I am sure; but neither of us admitted it to the other. At home we had measured him with other men, and, though we knew his failings, he was by no means an unusual type."(162)

"They had early observed the value of certain improvements, had easily inferred that there was room for more, and took the greatest pains to develop two kinds of minds—the critic and inventor. Those who showed an early tendency to observe, to discriminate, to suggest, were given special training for that function; and some of their highest officials spent their time in the most careful study of one or another branch of work, with a view to its further improvement."(167)

"The country was about the size of Holland, some ten or twelve thousand square miles. One could lose a good many Hollands along the forest-smothered flanks of those mighty mountains. They had a population of about three million—not a large one, but quality is something. Three million is quite enough to allow for considerable variation, and these people varied more widely than we could at first account for."(169)

"Physically they were more alike than we, as they lacked all morbid or excessive types. They were tall, strong, healthy, and beautiful as a race, but differed individually in a wide range of feature, coloring, and expression."(169)

"Be that as it might, they certainly presented a higher level of active intelligence, and of behavior, than we had so far really grasped."(170)

"As for the intelligence, I confess that this was the most impressive and, to me, most mortifying, of any single feature of Herland. We soon ceased to comment on this or other matters which to them were such obvious commonplaces as to call forth embarrassing questions about our own conditions. This was nowhere better shown than in that matter of food supply, which I will now attempt to describe."(171)

"“You’ll find they have their faults too,” Terry insisted; and partly in self-defense, we all three began to look for those faults of theirs. We had been very strong on this subject before we got there—in those baseless speculations of ours.
“Suppose there is a country of women only,” Jeff had put it, over and over. “What’ll they be like?”
And we had been cocksure as to the inevitable limitations, the faults and vices, of a lot of women. We had expected them to be given over to what we called “feminine vanity”—“frills and furbelows,” and we found they had evolved a costume more perfect than the Chinese dress, richly beautiful when so desired, always useful, of unfailing dignity and good taste.
We had expected a dull submissive monotony, and found a daring social inventiveness far beyond our own, and a mechanical and scientific development fully equal to ours.
We had expected pettiness, and found a social consciousness besides which our nations looked like quarreling children—feebleminded ones at that.
We had expected jealousy, and found a broad sisterly affection, a fair-minded intelligence, to which we could produce no parallel.
We had expected hysteria, and found a standard of health and vigor, a calmness of temper, to which the habit of profanity, for instance, was impossible to explain—we tried it.
All these things even Terry had to admit, but he still insisted that we should find out the other side pretty soon."(175)

"“But I thought motherhood was for each of you—”
“Motherhood—yes, that is, maternity, to bear a child. But education is our highest art, only allowed to our highest artists.”
“Education?” I was puzzled again. “I don’t mean education. I mean by motherhood not only child-bearing, but the care of babies.”
“The care of babies involves education, and is entrusted only to the most fit,” she repeated.
“Then you separate mother and child!” I cried in cold horror, something of Terry’s feeling creeping over me, that there must be something wrong among these many virtues."(178)

"“But the poor mother—bereaved of her baby—”
“Oh no!” she earnestly assured me. “Not in the least bereaved. It is her baby still—it is with her—she has not lost it. But she is not the only one to care for it. There are others whom she knows to be wiser. She knows it because she has studied as they did, practiced as they did, and honors their real superiority. For the child’s sake, she is glad to have for it this highest care.”"(180)

(180) 8 - The Girls of Herland

"I watched Terry with special interest, knowing how he had longed for this time, and how irresistible he had always been at home. And I could see, just in snatches, of course, how his suave and masterful approach seemed to irritate them; his too-intimate glances were vaguely resented, his compliments puzzled and annoyed. Sometimes a girl would flush, not with drooped eyelids and inviting timidity, but with anger and a quick lift of the head. Girl after girl turned on her heel and left him, till he had but a small ring of questioners, and they, visibly, were the least “girlish” of the lot."(184)

"When it came to courtship, which it soon did, I can of course best describe my own—and am least inclined to."(186)

[Ik vraag me af wat daar dan precies onder verstaan wordt. Het is gericht op een individueel persoon in ieder geval. Jeff heeft Celis, Terry met veel moeite Alima, en Van heeft Ellador.]

"From her, and from Somel, who talked very freely with me, I learned at last something of the viewpoint of Herland toward its visitors.
Here they were, isolated, happy, contented, when the booming buzz of our biplane tore the air above them.
Everybody heard it—saw it—for miles and miles, word flashed all over the country, and a council was held in every town and village.
And this was their rapid determination:
“From another country. Probably men. Evidently highly civilized. Doubtless possessed of much valuable knowledge. May be dangerous. Catch them if possible; tame and train them if necessary. This may be a chance to re-establish a bi-sexual state for our people.”" [mijn nadruk] (187)

[Dat is vreemd. Ze hadden het immers zo goed voor elkaar, waarom zou je dan een wereld met mannen erbij willen?]

"They were interested, profoundly interested, but it was not the kind of interest we were looking for.
To get an idea of their attitude you have to hold in mind their extremely high sense of solidarity. They were not each choosing a lover; they hadn’t the faintest idea of love—sex-love, that is. These girls—to each of whom motherhood was a lodestar, and that motherhood exalted above a mere personal function, looked forward to as the highest social service, as the sacrament of a lifetime—were now confronted with an opportunity to make the great step of changing their whole status, of reverting to their earlier bi-sexual order of nature." [mijn nadruk] (188)

[1/ Ze zagen het dus wel als een mogelijkheid, maar niet als een erg waarschijnlijke mogelijkheid. 2/ Dit is de eerste opmerking over seks. Ze hebben geen idee wat het is, maar het is blijkbaar ook niet ter sprake gekomen. Seks lijkt dus afgewezen te worden als een element van gedrag, waarschijnlijk vanuit het idee dat seks=neuken/penetratie en dat je voor seks dus mannen nodig hebt. Dat je als vrouwen samen ook veel seksueel plezier kunt hebben, lijkt niet de opvatting te zijn.]

Van is het meest populair, omdat hij dezelfde mentaliteit heeft als de vrouwen daar. Hij voelt zich wat ongemakkelijk bij dat etiket. Ze bedoelen: je bent het meest een Mens zoals wij (niet een man als Terry, of iemand die vrouwen als vrouw idealiseert als Jeff)

"“We like you the best,” Somel told me, “because you seem more like us.”
“More like a lot of women!” I thought to myself disgustedly, and then remembered how little like “women,” in our derogatory sense, they were. She was smiling at me, reading my thought.
“We can quite see that we do not seem like—women—to you. Of course, in a bi-sexual race the distinctive feature of each sex must be intensified. But surely there are characteristics enough which belong to People, aren’t there? That’s what I mean about you being more like us—more like People. We feel at ease with you.”"(189)

[Een groot compliment dus. Van en Ellador raken dan ook goed bevriend en worden onafscheidelijk.]

"She turned to me, with that high, sweet look of hers, and then, as her eyes rested in mine and her hands too—then suddenly there blazed out between us a farther glory, instant, overwhelming—quite beyond any words of mine to tell."(193)

"But I felt, we all did, that we should have chosen them among millions, unerringly. And yet, “the path of true love never did run smooth”; this period of courtship was full of the most unsuspected pitfalls."(194)

"Here everything was different. There was no sex-feeling to appeal to, or practically none. Two thousand years’ disuse had left very little of the instinct; also we must remember that those who had at times manifested it as atavistic exceptions were often, by that very fact, denied motherhood.
Yet while the mother process remains, the inherent ground for sex-distinction remains also; and who shall say what long-forgotten feeling, vague and nameless, was stirred in some of these mother hearts by our arrival? [mijn nadruk] What left us even more at sea in our approach was the lack of any sex-tradition. There was no accepted standard of what was “manly” and what was “womanly.”" [mijn nadruk] (195)

"However it came about, we all three at length achieved full understanding, and solemnly faced what was to them a step of measureless importance, a grave question as well as a great happiness; to us a strange, new joy. Of marriage as a ceremony they knew nothing."(198)

[De drie mannen denken helemaal in termen van seks binnen het huwelijk.]

(201) 9 - Our Relations and Theirs

"However much, or little, of true sex-feeling there was between us, it phrased itself in their minds in terms of friendship, the one purely personal love they knew, and of ultimate parentage. Visibly we were not mothers, nor children, nor compatriots; so, if they loved us, we must be friends.
That we should pair off together in our courting days was natural to them; that we three should remain much together, as they did themselves, was also natural. We had as yet no work, so we hung about them in their forest tasks; that was natural, too.
But when we began to talk about each couple having “homes” of our own, they could not understand it."(202)

[Zo ontzettend saai, die uitgangspunten over de rol van mannen en vrouwen, over relaties en huwelijk, van de drie mannen.]

"[Terry] “Oh, well, of course, if you like a perpetual Sunday school, it’s all very well. But I like Something Doing. Here it’s all done.”
There was something to this criticism. The years of pioneering lay far behind them. Theirs was a civilization in which the initial difficulties had long since been overcome. The untroubled peace, the unmeasured plenty, the steady health, the large good will and smooth management which ordered everything, left nothing to overcome. It was like a pleasant family in an old established, perfectly run country place."(206)

[En wat is daar mis mee? Moet er oorlog zijn dan, of armoede, of al die andere vormen van ellende die deze samenleving heeft en die daar in Herland ontbreken?]

"Terry did not like it because he found nothing to oppose, to struggle with, to conquer.
“Life is a struggle, has to be,” he insisted. “If there is no struggle, there is no life—that’s all.”
“You’re talking nonsense—masculine nonsense,” the peaceful Jeff replied."(207)

[Inderdaad. ]

"He rather had us there. The drama of the country was—to our taste—rather flat. You see, they lacked the sex motive and, with it, jealousy. They had no interplay of warring nations, no aristocracy and its ambitions, no wealth and poverty opposition."(207)

[Waarom moet er drama zijn? ]

"No Herland child ever met the overbearing rudeness we so commonly show to children. They were People, too, from the first; the most precious part of the nation."(209)

"We have two life cycles: the man’s and the woman’s. To the man there is growth, struggle, conquest, the establishment of his family, and as much further success in gain or ambition as he can achieve.
To the woman, growth, the securing of a husband, the subordinate activities of family life, and afterward such “social” or charitable interests as her position allows.
Here was but one cycle, and that a large one."(211)

"What Terry meant by saying they had no “modesty” was that this great life-view had no shady places; they had a high sense of personal decorum, but no shame—no knowledge of anything to be ashamed of.
Even their shortcomings and misdeeds in childhood never were presented to them as sins; merely as errors and misplays—as in a game. Some of them, who were palpably less agreeable than others or who had a real weakness or fault, were treated with cheerful allowance, as a friendly group at whist would treat a poor player."(212)

[Erg positief, lijkt me. ]

"It was the eager happiness of the children and young people which first made me see the folly of that common notion of ours—that if life was smooth and happy, people would not enjoy it. As I studied these youngsters, vigorous, joyous, eager little creatures, and their voracious appetite for life, it shook my previous ideas so thoroughly that they have never been re-established.(...) Ellador could not understand my astonishment. She explained things kindly and sweetly, but with some amazement that they needed explaining, and with sudden questions as to how we did it that left me meeker than ever."(215)

[Het is ook echt een onzinnig idee. ]

"The children seemed always playing something; or else, sometimes, engaged in peaceful researches of their own. I had wondered at first when they went to school, but soon found that they never did—to their knowledge. It was all education but no schooling."(220)

"The Herland child was born not only into a world carefully prepared, full of the most fascinating materials and opportunities to learn, but into the society of plentiful numbers of teachers, teachers born and trained, whose business it was to accompany the children along that, to us, impossible thing—the royal road to learning."(221)

(222) 10 - Their Religions and Our Marriages

"It took me a long time, as a man, a foreigner, and a species of Christian—I was that as much as anything—to get any clear understanding of the religion of Herland. Its deification of motherhood was obvious enough; but there was far more to it than that; or, at least, than my first interpretation of that."(223)

"Every smallest village had its temple, and in those gracious retreats sat wise and noble women, quietly busy at some work of their own until they were wanted, always ready to give comfort, light, or help, to any applicant."(225)

[Waarom zou je dat 'tempel' noemen en waarom zou jet het hier over religie hebben? Het is gewoon een gemeenschapshuis, waar mensen zijn bij wie je je ei kwijt kunt.]

"You do not have to think that there ever was such a God—for there wasn’t. Or such a happening—for there wasn’t. Nor even that this hideous false idea was believed by anybody. But only this—that people who are utterly ignorant will believe anything—which you certainly knew before.’" [mijn nadruk] (225)

"“Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?”
“Why, no,” she said. “Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them—and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us.”
This set me thinking in good earnest. I had always imagined—simply from hearing it said, I suppose—that women were by nature conservative. Yet these women, quite unassisted by any masculine spirit of enterprise, had ignored their past and built daringly for the future."(226)

"“Does God mean a person to you?”
This she thought over a little. “Why—in trying to get close to it in our minds we personify the idea, naturally; but we certainly do not assume a Big Woman somewhere, who is God. What we call God is a Pervading Power, you know, an Indwelling Spirit, something inside of us that we want more of. Is your God a Big Man?” she asked innocently.
“Why—yes, to most of us, I think. Of course we call it an Indwelling Spirit just as you do, but we insist that it is Him, a Person, and a Man—with whiskers.”"(229)

"They developed their central theory of a Loving Power, and assumed that its relation to them was motherly—that it desired their welfare and especially their development. Their relation to it, similarly, was filial, a loving appreciation and a glad fulfillment of its high purposes. Then, being nothing if not practical, they set their keen and active minds to discover the kind of conduct expected of them. This worked out in a most admirable system of ethics. The principle of Love was universally recognized—and used.
Patience, gentleness, courtesy, all that we call “good breeding,” was part of their code of conduct. But where they went far beyond us was in the special application of religious feeling to every field of life. They had no ritual, no little set of performances called “divine service,” save those glorious pageants I have spoken of, and those were as much educational as religious, and as much social as either. But they had a clear established connection between everything they did—and God. Their cleanliness, their health, their exquisite order, the rich peaceful beauty of the whole land, the happiness of the children, and above all the constant progress they made—all this was their religion.
(...) Here was a religion which gave to the searching mind a rational basis in life, the concept of an immense Loving Power working steadily out through them, toward good. It gave to the “soul” that sense of contact with the inmost force, of perception of the uttermost purpose, which we always crave. It gave to the “heart” the blessed feeling of being loved, loved and understood. It gave clear, simple, rational directions as to how we should live—and why. And for ritual it gave first those triumphant group demonstrations, when with a union of all the arts, the revivifying combination of great multitudes moved rhythmically with march and dance, song and music, among their own noblest products and the open beauty of their groves and hills. Second, it gave these numerous little centers of wisdom where the least wise could go to the most wise and be helped."(233-234)

[Waarom zou je dat religie noemen en waarom zou je het hier over god hebben? Het is totaal overbodig zoals eigenlijk ook blijkt uit die laatst geciteerde alinea. Het is pantheïsme zonder theïsme.]

"But—how about death? And the life everlasting? What does your religion teach about eternity?” “Nothing,” said Ellador. “What is eternity?”"(234)

[Inderdaad. Ook al zo'n leeg begrip. ]

"None of us were willing to tell the women of Herland about the evils of our own beloved land. It was all very well for us to assume them to be necessary and essential, and to criticize—strictly among ourselves—their all-too-perfect civilization, but when it came to telling them about the failures and wastes of our own, we never could bring ourselves to do it."(237)

[Volgt een stuk over hun huwelijk, waarbij ze kritiekloos allerlei eigen waarden inbrengen zoals dat de man zijn naam aan een vrouw geeft, dat zij zijn naam aanneemt, en dat zij daarmee zijn eigendom wordt. Je ziet in deze context van Herland meteen hoe belachelijk dat allemaal is.]

"“As to giving us things—of course we can see that you’d like to, but we are glad you can’t,” Celis continued. “You see, we love you just for yourselves—we wouldn’t want you to—to pay anything. Isn’t it enough to know that you are loved personally—and just as men?”
Enough or not, that was the way we were married. We had a great triple wedding in the biggest temple of all, and it looked as if most of the nation was present. It was very solemn and very beautiful. Someone had written a new song for the occasion, nobly beautiful, about the New Hope for their people—the New Tie with other lands—Brotherhood as well as Sisterhood, and, with evident awe, Fatherhood."(239)

(241) 11 - Our Difficulties

Dat huwelijk blijft logischerwijs niet zonder problemen.

"t was not that they did not love us; they did, deeply and warmly. But there you are again—what they meant by “love” and what we meant by “love” were so different."(244)

"I think I can make clear the points of difference without a too painful explicitness. The more external disagreement was in the matter of “the home,” and the housekeeping duties and pleasures we, by instinct and long education, supposed to be inherently appropriate to women."(244)

"This also was correct. They had their long, wide, deep, rich experience of Motherhood, and their only perception of the value of a male creature as such was for Fatherhood."(247)

[Maar over seks binnen dat huwelijk wordt niet gesproken? ]

De vrouwen blijven werken. Ze blijven in alles leven met anderen en trekken zich niet terug in hun relatie. Ze hebben hun eigen huis.

"After marriage there arose in us a somewhat unexpected urge of feeling that called for a separate house; but this feeling found no response in the hearts of those fair ladies."(249)

"We had our pleasant mutual solitude about our work, and our pleasant evening talks in their apartments or ours; we had, as it were, all the pleasures of courtship carried right on; but we had no sense of—perhaps it may be called possession."(249)

[Waarom is het zo belangrijk om een vrouw te bezitten?]

"Then I did my earnest best to picture to her the sweet intense joy of married lovers, and the result in higher stimulus to all creative work.
“Do you mean,” she asked quite calmly, as if I was not holding her cool firm hands in my hot and rather quivering ones, “that with you, when people marry, they go right on doing this in season and out of season, with no thought of children at all?”
“They do,” I said, with some bitterness. “They are not mere parents. They are men and women, and they love each other.”
“How long?” asked Ellador, rather unexpectedly.
“How long?” I repeated, a little dashed. “Why as long as they live.”
“There is something very beautiful in the idea,” she admitted, still as if she were discussing life on Mars. “This climactic expression, which, in all the other life-forms, has but the one purpose, has with you become specialized to higher, purer, nobler uses. It has—I judge from what you tell me—the most ennobling effect on character. People marry, not only for parentage, but for this exquisite interchange—and, as a result, you have a world full of continuous lovers, ardent, happy, mutually devoted, always living on that high tide of supreme emotion which we had supposed to belong only to one season and one use. And you say it has other results, stimulating all high creative work. That must mean floods, oceans of such work, blossoming from this intense happiness of every married pair! It is a beautiful idea!”" [mijn nadruk] (252)

[Hier gaat het in bedekte termen dan eindeleijk over seks in een relatie, nou ja: huwelijksrelatie.]

"I was amazed at the results. I found that much, very much, of what I had honestly supposed to be a physiological necessity was a psychological necessity—or so believed. I found, after my ideas of what was essential had changed, that my feelings changed also. And more than all, I found this—a factor of enormous weight—these women were not provocative. That made an immense difference."(254)

[Dat is eerlijk. ]

"Here was I, with an Ideal in mind, for which I hotly longed, and here was she, deliberately obtruding in the foreground of my consciousness a Fact—a fact which I coolly enjoyed, but which actually interfered with what I wanted. I see now clearly enough why a certain kind of man, like Sir Almroth Wright, resents the professional development of women. It gets in the way of the sex ideal; it temporarily covers and excludes femininity.
Of course, in this case, I was so fond of Ellador my friend, of Ellador my professional companion, that I necessarily enjoyed her society on any terms. Only—when I had had her with me in her de-feminine capacity for a sixteen-hour day, I could go to my own room and sleep without dreaming about her."(257)

[Betekent dit nu dat ze geen seks hebben en altijd apart slapen? ]

Tussen Terry en Alima gaat het helemaal mis.

"He made a tremendous row about their separate establishments, tried to keep her in his rooms, tried to stay in hers. But there she drew the line sharply."(260)

"Terry put in practice his pet conviction that a woman loves to be mastered, and by sheer brute force, in all the pride and passion of his intense masculinity, he tried to master this woman.
It did not work. I got a pretty clear account of it later from Ellador, but what we heard at the time was the noise of a tremendous struggle, and Alima calling to Moadine. Moadine was close by and came at once; one or two more strong grave women followed."(261)

Terry wordt verbannen.

(262) 12 - Expelled

"Terry was under guard now, all the time, known as unsafe, convicted of what was to them an unpardonable sin.
He laughed at their chill horror. “Parcel of old maids!” he called them. “They’re all old maids—children or not. They don’t know the first thing about Sex.”
When Terry said Sex, sex with a very large S, he meant the male sex, naturally; its special values, its profound conviction of being “the life force,” its cheerful ignoring of the true life process, and its interpretation of the other sex solely from its own point of view."(263)

"Three of us were to go: Terry, because he must; I, because two were safer for our flyer, and the long boat trip to the coast; Ellador, because she would not let me go without her.
If Jeff had elected to return, Celis would have gone too—they were the most absorbed of lovers; but Jeff had no desire that way."(264)

"We were now well used to seeing women not as females but as people; people of all sorts, doing every kind of work."(269)

"They had no faintest approach to such a thing in their minds, knowing nothing of the custom of marital indulgence among us. To them the one high purpose of motherhood had been for so long the governing law of life, and the contribution of the father, though known to them, so distinctly another method to the same end, that they could not, with all their effort, get the point of view of the male creature whose desires quite ignore parentage and seek only for what we euphoniously term “the joys of love.”
When I tried to tell Ellador that women too felt so, with us, she drew away from me, and tried hard to grasp intellectually what she could in no way sympathize with.
“You mean—that with you—love between man and woman expresses itself in that way—without regard to motherhood? To parentage, I mean,” she added carefully.
“Yes, surely. It is love we think of—the deep sweet love between two. Of course we want children, and children come—but that is not what we think about.”
“But—but—it seems so against nature!” she said. “None of the creatures we know do that. Do other animals—in your country?”
“We are not animals!” I replied with some sharpness. “At least we are something more—something higher. This is a far nobler and more beautiful relation, as I have explained before. Your view seems to us rather—shall I say, practical? Prosaic? Merely a means to an end! With us—oh, my dear girl—cannot you see? Cannot you feel? It is the last, sweetest, highest consummation of mutual love.”
She was impressed visibly. She trembled in my arms, as I held her close, kissing her hungrily. But there rose in her eyes that look I knew so well, that remote clear look as if she had gone far away even though I held her beautiful body so close, and was now on some snowy mountain regarding me from a distance.
“I feel it quite clearly,” she said to me. “It gives me a deep sympathy with what you feel, no doubt more strongly still. But what I feel, even what you feel, dearest, does not convince me that it is right. Until I am sure of that, of course I cannot do as you wish.”"(270-271)

[Seks met een man wordt dus alleen gezien als het maken van een kind, dus voor de voortplanting, en dan nog alleen op een bepaald moment. Je hebt geen seks voor je plezier. Daarom vrijen die vrouwen ook niet met elkaar, neem ik aan.]

"Do not imagine that these young women utterly refused “the Great New Hope,” as they called it, that of dual parentage. For that they had agreed to marry us, though the marrying part of it was a concession to our prejudices rather than theirs. To them the process was the holy thing—and they meant to keep it holy.
But so far only Celis, her blue eyes swimming in happy tears, her heart lifted with that tide of race-motherhood which was their supreme passion, could with ineffable joy and pride announce that she was to be a mother. “The New Motherhood” they called it, and the whole country knew. There was no pleasure, no service, no honor in all the land that Celis might not have had. Almost like the breathless reverence with which, two thousand years ago, that dwindling band of women had watched the miracle of virgin birth, was the deep awe and warm expectancy with which they greeted this new miracle of union."(274)

"“It is better,” she said to me. “It is much better that it has not come to me yet—to us, that is. For if I am to go with you to your country, we may have ‘adventures by sea and land,’ as you say [and as in truth we did], and it might not be at all safe for a baby. So we won’t try again, dear, till it is safe—will we?”
This was a hard saying for a very loving husband.
“Unless,” she went on, “if one is coming, you will leave me behind. You can come back, you know—and I shall have the child.”"(275)

"And I was beginning to find that Ellador’s friendship, Ellador’s comradeship, Ellador’s sisterly affection, Ellador’s perfectly sincere love—none the less deep that she held it back on a definite line of reserve—were enough to live on very happily."(276)

[Zie ook de vergelijking van dat gevoel met de manier waarop vrouwen gezien werden in de 'oude wereld' op p. 276. Ze moeten plechtig beloven om de ligging van Herland aan niemand te vertellen. Ik kan me andere redenen voorstellen dan de angst voor besmetting met ziektes ... Besmetting met achterlijke waarden en normen bijvoorbeeld.]