ABSTRACT
Rape became not only a male prerogative, but mans basic weapon of force against woman, the principal agent of his will and her fear. Susan Gubar assures us that one of the primary metaphors of masculine power over the feminine—rape—is subverted in Herland. Rape—the most odious form of masculine brutality—is venerated in Herland by the textual power Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives the act. It is the driving force of the novel, the source of motivation, and ultimately and tragically audience interest. Gilman leads to the attempted rape as seductively as a pornographic film or novel leads to such scenes of violation and denigration of the female. Gilman teases, and compels her audience with Terry’s implied violence and Alima’s supposed vulnerability. Whereas in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman rejects literary convention for the sake of her narrative and for the integrity of her vision, in Herland she bows to her readership and offers a distortion or perversion of her original Utopian novel.
