ABSTRACT
Students of literature may be surprised to learn that Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one of several writers who produced nonfiction social science as well as fiction, including sociologically informed novels. Gilman employed Van as a foil on which to skewer the assumptions and practices of patriarchal sociology. The republication of Herland as a separate novel, presumably complete in itself, revived critical interest in Gilman’s work and, at the same time, truncated Gilman’s larger aim and condemned Gilman’s Herland/Ourland saga as a whole to misinterpretation and even greater oblivion. Herland, taken by itself, stops mid-story, leaving readers with an erroneous understanding of Gilman’s social vision and feminist worldview. Gilman, through Ellador, evaluates Ourland according to the principles of Herland and the precepts espoused by Ourlanders in the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
