I Read Books: Herland
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's all-female (and feminist) utopian novel. Three men find a lost world inhabited entirely by women. It’s a place of kindness and absolute organisation. Motherhood is revered above all other attributes.
One of the men refuses to engage with what they discover, insisting that the women will compete and be jealous, and that men are superior and the women will insist on being ruled by them when they understand what they are missing. This doesn't happen. As might be expected he tries to rape his closest friend, who has married him in a ceremony that neither quite understands, leading to the expulsion at the end.
A second one of the men accepts it, becoming a Herlander in all ways. The third and final one, the narrator, understands what is happening, recognises the superiority of Herland and the shame of his own country, yet when it comes to it decides to leave, along with a Herland representative, his wife.
Read This: For a forceful early feminist utopian novel
Don’t Read This: If a science fictional manifesto in novel form sounds dull as ditchwater
Out of Copyright: And available for free online
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