With Her In Ourland, Vol. 159

Two works in one, this volume contains the full text of With Her in Ourland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as an illuminating sociological analysis by Mary Jo Deegan with the assistance of Michael R. Hill. Ourland is the sequel to Gilman's acclaimed feminist utopian novel Herland; both were published in her journal, The Forerunner, in 1915 and 1916. Ourland resumes the adventures of ^IHerland^R's protagonists, Ellador 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 Gilman's work but truncated the larger aims implicit in the ^IHerland/Ourland^R saga, leaving an erroneous understanding of Gilman's other/better half of the story, in which it is suggested that strong women can resocialize men to be nurturant and cooperative. Gilman's choice of a sexually integrated society in With Her in Ourland 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 Ourland, 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 Herland/Ourland, 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.

Reissues an important but overlooked work by a brilliant American feminist.

Publishers Weekly

He's a brash American adventurer; she's an independent, albeit sheltered, sociologist from Herland, a 2000-year-old, all-female society. Not surprisingly, when Vandyck (Van) and Ellador marry, most everything becomes a point of negotiation, if not contention: sexual relations, family obligations and attitudes about race, class and the welfare state. Originally published in 1916, this sequel to Gilman's utopian Herland (1915) was serialized in her monthly magazine, the Forerunner. Ostensibly Van's recollection of the pair's whirlwind, two-year trip through Europe, Asia and the U.S., this fictional vehicle is a thinly veiled platform for Gilman to rail against the evils of her era. Starting with the couple's exploration of WWI European battlefields, Gilman posits Ellador as a nave innocent peering at violence and inequity for the first time. Throughout, various forms of oppression, including poverty, racism and female subjugation, are caught in her incredulous gaze: "I think your prejudice against the black is silly, wicked, andhypocritical." Van, for his part, represents the blithely ignorant American status quo and is a perfect foil for Ellador's wide-eyed realizations. Gilman's politics, progressive by the standards of her day, aren't always correct by ours: her anti-Semitism and nativism are sure to rankle contemporary readers. Nonetheless, the book is a window into the second decade of the 20th century, and despite their persistent heavy-handedness, many of Gilman's observations are prescient and astute. (Aug.)

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) was an eminent feminist sociologist and novelist, perhaps best known professionally for Women in Economics (1898, repr. 1966) and, as a fiction writer, for her semiautobiographical novella, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892, repr. 1973).

MARY JO DEEGAN is Professor of Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Among her earlier publications are Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892-1918, Women in Sociology: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Greenwood, 1991) and American Ritual Drama (Greenwood, 1989).

MICHAEL R. HILL is an interdisciplinary social scientist from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Iowa Western Community College.