Comparing Gilman's Herland And Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Many people have come up with visons of what a Utopia could be, giving their perspective on what they think is wrong with the world and how they feel that they could improve it. With each person’s perspective, there was always the aspect of women. What would their role in society be? In Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and in Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, they show two very unique forms of Utopia. Orwell actually looks at what exactly the world should not be like. People say that his approach was a way to be conservative especially when compared to Herland. Both authors show that women in both stories play important roles and have power and responsibilities but what they do with it and how they got that power are very different. In the story Herland, three men named Terry, Jeff and Van hear of a strange land that is only inhabited by women. They were very curious to how they would live being that they lived in a male dominant world. …show more content…

By themselves they created a perfect land, and have been keeping it sustainable for them to live at on their own. When the women asked what live was like in their world, Terry replied, “We do not allow our women to work. Women are loved-idolized-honored-kept in the home to care for the children” (Gilman, 52). In Herland’s society there are children but the kids are not produced sexually. Women in Herland produce children on their own. Motherhood is very important to them. But when a child is born, the child does not belong to not one single person but to the community. “We soon grew to see that the mother-love has more than one channel of expression. I think the reason our children are so-fully loved, by all of us, is that we never-any of us-have enough of our own” (Gilman, 60). The women overall in Herland are independent, they take the leadership role and take care of themselves because that’s all they know and were

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