In Gilman’s utopic Herland, we see the elimination of violence, poverty, corruption and starvation, which are all current issues in today’s society. Gilman creates a land of peace throughout her utopia by getting rid of men, with whom she associates as the root cause for all of these harmful societal issues. In doing this, she seems to express that the answer for ridding society of its corrupting issues is to take men out of the equation and allow the society to be ran by women. Gilman also points out the expectations that society has for men and women to stick to certain gender norms, and she challenges this notion by changing the degree of femininity in her female characters and changing the way that the male characters see women. When Terry, Jeff and Vandyck first come to Herland, they all have the traditional beliefs of gender norms, that women have a certain inferiority to men. Each man takes a different type of approach towards interacting with the women of Herland- Jeff sees the women as weak and delicate beings and tries to win over Celis; on the contrary, Terry is disgusted by a world without men and treats the women of Herland as inferior beings to men. Vandyck, our main narrator, comes into Herland with the traditional belief of female inferiority, but he leaves Herland with the gender-ambiguous ideal. Gilman clearly shows the traditional view that society has on gender roles by immediately establishing the idea that women are weak and feminine when we see Terry try to win the women over with jewelry, which demonstrates the societal notion that women have a weakness for anything that sparkles. Nancy Armstrong talks about the notion of women being weak in her article, Some Call It Fiction: On the Politics of Domesticity, where she talks about society creating the gender norm of women being perfect wives and mothers and not having much else to their lives than domesticity. When the women hardly pay any mind to the jewelry, other than genuine curiosity, Gilman shows that these women of Herland are rejecting the traditional feminine stereotype. Gilman then further portrays the women of Herland in a less feminine manner by telling us how well engineered the roads are through the men’s perspectives. Terry immediately assumes that the roads were evidence that men did exist in Herland, since there was no way that the women of Herland could’ve built such well made roads. Once again, we see women presented as inferior beings to men through the ideals of the male characters. The women of Herland are portrayed as strong and independent people who are very much capable of running a successful country without the need for any male assistance, and this really bothers Terry throughout the novel, as he becomes so frustrated that he begins to make comment on the lack of femininity and relating it to their womanhood. On the other hand, Jeff and Vandyck start to appreciate Herland, and become more aware of the gender stereotypes that have begin created by our society. By creating Herland, Gilman has succeeded in discounting the notion that women cannot create anything of their own without the help of men.
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