Senior Seminar. At the same time that Herland is busily defamiliarizing sexism and the patriarchy it is also steadily developing the characters of its three male traveler-protagonists. You don’t always see a lot of character development in the utopian genre. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Jeff Margrave and Vandyck Jennings are fully developed or “round” characters, but Herland certainly does more with them than Utopia does with Raphael Hythloday or Looking Backward with Julian West.
Is there something intrinsic to the feminist dystopia that demands, or at least encourages, greater character development? More generally, does Herland suggest any ways in which a feminist utopia’s focus on gender revises the very form of the utopia? Or does the focus on gender never get beyond mere content?
Tuesday, March 10
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5 comments:
rob says
these three chrectors are not merely the means to discovery of herland. these three men are an independent plot movement. where as hilthloday or any of the other narrators we have been introduced to are not necessary to moving the plot as they are not full participants in the actions that take place in the utopias.in my opinion the other utopias do not utilize a narrative structure in fact they appear to be lists.
these men need to be round characters because you could not use a non formed characters to discuss the hygenomy they are being confronted with.
Why of course there is something intrinsic to the feminist utopia that demands greater character develop. What is that? Well the feminism of course. Women always have to go into intrinsic detail about just every fact and color, so of course the characters would be more developed in a feminist's take on Utopia or Dystopia. A feminist would take great pride in defamiliarizing patriarchy, and therefore, there has to be greater character development, especially of the male characters, because it is needed to deconstruct everything men think they stand for.
I am not familiar with enough feminist utopias/dystopias/anti-utopias to be able to know if particularly developed characters are intrinsic to a female treatment of the subject or not, but Gilman’s use of character in Herland is quite perfect for her feminist purpose. The three men very adequately, and humorously, capture the three spheres of common male perspective towards females. By removing them from the system that supports the power they as males are automatically privileged in the world beyond Herland’s walls and plopping them into this strange lady-land, we as readers who probably, consciously or not, share those men’s views about femininity are defamiliarized as they are. The men are forced to encounter a society that subverts all their notions of gender, and we as readers must join them on their journey. Terry’s chauvinistic attitude is shown as ridiculous, counterproductive, even dangerous (attempted rape is hardly harmless), and Jeff’s “knight-in-shining-armor” syndrome is not necessarily bad, but certainly not productive.
I think such a defamiliarization through character treatment could be used for non-feminist ends, but I do see it as particularly effective for a feminist work such as Herland.
I believe the characters are useful in Herland - the men are cut off at the knees, their usefulness is pretty much nil. But it's this point that makes them useful in the work. A lot of lit up to the point this work was written, along with society was predominantly male-oriented. Certainly there may have been works directed towards a female audience, but Herland seems to be a work that shakes things up quite a bit. The male characters, while the central part of the book, are shown and portrayed to be utterly and completely useless - the females in Herland have no need for a male figure in any aspect of their lives. And this is a little shocking to the trio of men. Actually, it's a lot shocking. They don't know what to do - they have spent their whole lives in a world that depended on men for survival, that understood the atypical roles of man and woman, that stood by in these roles. Then the men get to Herland where there is no need for man, his strength, thoughts, even his body.
I believe this type of utopia lends an idea to the thought of character development for destruction of stereotypes and societal roles. For a reader to truly understand Herland and the women in it one needs to have a counterpoint available within the text.
Herland definitely revises the form of Utopias. In Herland we get to know the characters, in the other Utopias we only get a glimpse of the people. An exception is Erewhon; we know the main character's personality but we are supposed to critique him. We are also supposed to critique the three men who were trapped in Herland. Instead of focusing on a commonwealth, the women focuses on family and raising their children. Many of the Utopias almost pass their children off on nannies or other people. There is a sense of not taking responsibility for your families in these Utopias, perhaps that is what some people think is utopic, not having to deal with families. The Herland women are completely devoted to their children and want to care for and teach them so they are a better people than themselves.
Snoopy
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