With Her in Ourland

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.