So what becomes of them? & More...

After finishing the novel, I want to know what happens to all the characters. I speculate that Terry is happy to be back in the “real” world, but still longs for Alima. But I am more curious to know what happens when Ellador and Van return to the outside world. What does Ellador think of “our” world? Does Ellador and Van’s relationship progress? Does Ellador return to Herland, and if so what does she report about the outside world? Also, what happens to Jeff in Herland? Since they are allowing him to stay does this mean that there will be regular sexual reproduction instead of parthenogenesis? So many unanswered questions!!

Like many of my other classmates, I found this text somewhat contradictory in its message. I am unsure of whether or not Charlotte Perkins Gilman intended this to be a feminist piece. There are some things that suggest that it is, such as the superiority of their society compared to the outside world which is dominated by men. However, at the end of the book, they decide to let Jeff stay and Ellador leaves to explore the outside world and report back if the people of Herland should allow themselves to assimilate with the rest of the world.

There were a lot of parts of this book that were very comical especially when the men were explaining their world to the women with so much pride. They originally had a huge sense of nationalism for the United States, but when they were questioned about a lot of aspects of their society they began to see a lot of the faults of their culture. I think it was funny how the women were not intentionally asking these questions to embarrass or frustrate the men, but the men, especially Terry, still tried to defend their culture and got frustrated when they could see the faults in their culture. I also found it comical that when the men avoided a subject they thought it would go unnoticed, but the women noted which topics they were uncomfortable talking about.

I found the whole idea of parthenogenesis very interesting. It would take a lot of time and many generations for humans to evolve and change from sexual reproduction to parthenogenesis, so how did this begin? I know that they were trying to limit the population, but did they just stop reproducing with men, so women’s bodies had to evolve to be able to reproduce by themselves. I am also glad that Sara was able to explain it to us during class because I would have been very confused as to how it was possible for any species to reproduce without a mate.