The Problem of Pretense and Chronocentrism, Part II

"[T]he public, the populace, the citizenry,

must be provided with the correct

feelings! Sentiments...are insisted upon

in all public utterances."

In Chapter 15, Terry convinces Alim to leave Herland or Troas. He also determines to get himself chucked out by breaking taboos:

As Alim states, 

Terry was convinced that he needed to break more taboos, force the leaders to deal with him as a malefactor or transgressor.

In retrospect, the plan was unbelievably risky. Any culture—no matter how polite and so-called civilized on the surface—can descend into anarchy and witch trials.

Not that I knew that then. To a coddled teen, Troas appeared entirely predictable. Boring. To Terry, it appeared merely restrictive. Both of us were tempting fate, Terry especially. He was hoping for exile. He could have gotten worse.

And as Terry states,

Bureaucracies are the same the world over. The leaders were discussing us—or, maybe, just me. Jeff wanted to stay in Troas. Van would stay or go to be near Ellador. In the meantime, there was no indication the leaders would encourage or allow or permit (whatever terms dictators use to convince themselves of their compassion) such a dangerous, unworthy, harmful course of action as Ellador or Alim leaving.

The tension here is between the reality of the utopia and what it pretends about itself.

Chronocentrism, Part II

 The ego-centered belief that we suffer more than our ancestors is irritating.

The ego-centered belief that we have progressed far beyond our ancestors is more understandable. It is still incredibly self-centered. 

Progress does exist. Medicine. Education. "Givens" regarding rights. The early years of the Common Era produced fresh ideas about the individual and God, ideas which filtered across many cultures and greatly improved conditions for individuals everywhere. As Rodney Stark points out, the Dark Ages are only dark because of how little we know. In general, life got better when the Common Era hit.

The arrogance comes into play not so much with the material goods and opportunities that we've gained. Those should entail a humble response: I'm so glad to be alive now! The arrogance comes into play when people in the past are treated with smug contempt. 

The smug contempt sounds something like this: 

"Those primitive ancestors of ours didn't know any better when it comes to science and religion and social order. We do. We are moving forward, beyond their silly thoughts and clearly shallow thinking based on our advanced theories and our talent for maintaining those advanced theories! We don't even have to refute those idiots of the past. We just have to roll our eyes over them like high schoolers at the prom. Har har har. Let us contemplate our magnificence!" 

Herland rests on the above thinking--to an extent. Gilman's perspective is rooted in nineteenth-century Progressivism. The mindset--we have progressed beyond our backwards ancestors--shows up in Victorianism even before Darwin. (Evolution as progression wasn't his precise argument, but what people thought he was saying fit well with the ethos of the time.) It continued until two World Wars turned it into a nonsense. It is now back in a slightly different guise. 

The problem is not that the world isn't materially better (despite all the bad stuff) than it was thirty to fifty to a hundred years ago. The problem is the adoption of a label or attitude: "Because I'm not as backwards as they, I'm automatically better and don't have to consider anything other than congratulating my vacuum-sealed existence and echoing what my group/clique/mob says." 

This we're-so-much-more-thoughtful-and-cultured-and-insightful insistence shows up in every area of life (not just social media, though it flourishes there). A few years ago, I encountered an article by a woman proclaiming how far she has risen above the backwards theological assumptions of her church: In this day and age, sin and guilt are such déclassé concepts! So tacky! I'm beyond all that!

Okay, was my thought. What do you have to offer?

What she had to offer were ponderings from her naval; big thoughts about the nature of the universe based on..."MYSELF" (I'm not kidding).

Not exactly Thomas Aquinas.

Gilman goes down the road of the aforementioned me-myself-and-I writer. In fairness, Gilman argues that just as the current generation of Herland's citizens is building on the ancestresses' achievements, so shall the next generation build on the current leaders' achievements. She acknowledges that their ideas (Gilman's ideas) might prove to be lacking--which is good, cause they were.

And she argues against infant damnation, which is a positive.

The problem, as my Celis character points out, is that Gilman doesn't argue against infant damnation using logic, faith, or, simply, a better idea--as plenty of people did, including Joseph Smith. She argues against it by having Ellador break down in tears (again, I'm not kidding). In His in Herland, Alim and Celis have this exchange: 

I [Alim] never paid much attention to Ellador and Van’s philosophical discussions. I shrugged. 

Celis said, “Van, bless him, tried to explain to Ellador about infant damnation. It’s a belief from the other world’s history. A belief that unbaptized children—children who are not inoculated against the sins of their ancestors—are doomed to hell.” 

“That’s unpleasant,” I said. 

“Of course it is. But it’s part of a bigger theology. Religions are complex. People are complex. Understand the idea, understand how people think. Then, you can challenge the religion or the philosophy directly. Yet Ellador ran off in hysterics to a Temple Mother.” 

Celis’s tone was fondly exasperated. 

“And of course, the Temple Mother told her, No, no, that sort of thing can’t be true. Only ignorant people ever believed it. Ellador’s no fool. She realized immediately that dismissing the idea wasn’t going to make it easier to grasp that big picture she’s always pursuing. She should have known better than to run to someone who wouldn’t talk to her as honestly as Van. But she did. That’s why mentors like Tyra put up with her. Because Ellador is appalled by the right—or, rather, wrong—things. She’s offended when appropriate. Appreciative when appropriate. She’s a ‘good’ girl.”

In other words, Herland's religion has nothing to offer in the place of Presbyterianism, not even anything as witty as Twain's quote. It offers a kind of generalized "we're better" self-label, a kind of "in" group culture filled with rules, cultural appropriateness, and "good thoughts." It's entirely substanceless, in part because it rests on the premise that it doesn't have to justify itself. The quality of being advanced is supposedly enough.

The end result of such smug self-satisfaction (I'm upset about the right things! I curse the right things! I hate the right people! I cry at the right times! I embrace the worthy people and ideas!) is a remarkable lack of critical thought. That is, the pretense or performance or presentation--Look at our wonderfulness!--is more important than thinking about...anything, really. 

My personal theory is that utopians are actually hunting for safety.  In truth, I'm not sure they are even aware that under all of the boasts of advanced thinking and edgy ideas, they are in fact...

Intensely reactionary, the kind of reactionary that belongs in countries run by dictators and religious oligarchs. It is less about holding the course (conservatism) or respecting the individual (classical liberalism) and more about retreating to something almost entirely imaginary based on an almost entirely constructed imaginary past.

Take the current so-called "revolution" on gender. The end result is not a broadening of gender or understanding of human self-perception and sexuality but, rather, "girls must like pink stuff and dolls" while "boys must like trucks and sports." In the meantime, schools that push pronouns on little kids create psychological havoc. Kids are fully capable of liking multiple things at once. Being forced to parse dinosaurs, sports, and unicorns is, to them, weird. 

They are right. It is weird.

My generation asked questions like, "Is it okay for men to cry?" and "Hey, what about women astronauts?!" Simplistic maybe, but we were headed in the right direction. Expand, not retract.

The categories being fed these kids are more reminiscent of Victorianism than anything in the last fifty years. 

Gilman does the same. To be honest, I've never fully understood her take here, since she suffered post-partum depression after the birth of her daughter and wasn't really an Earth Mother type. Yet Herland is entirely devoted to a gender imperative. The purpose of women is Motherhood, and yes, the "m" is capitalized in the book. 

Perhaps Gilman felt guilty about her own lack of motherliness. She may have embraced the idea of Utah polygamy whereby a woman could go to college while other women watched her kids. Or perhaps Gilman wanted to make her utopia palatable to her audience. Or perhaps she truly embraced the idea of improving future generations: bringing up children should be done right. (Her daughter and she had a strained relationship, which isn't made more understandable by recent scholars wanting the daughter to have had a different attitude towards her "great" parent than she actually did or cared to have or thought about.)

To Gilman's credit, she pairs Motherhood with Fatherhood. 

And Terry objects. 

Interestingly enough, although his objections in the book are portrayed as somewhat sexist, they resonate with a modern audience. When he proclaims, "What a man wants from women is more than all this Motherhood," he sounds like a feminist!

His objections to Fatherhood are equally strident. 

Terry is arguing for the individual. 

So many utopias falter on the need to tell citizens what roles they must adopt. Like dictatorships and American Ivory Towers, utopias really like the idea that people have been properly pigeonholed.  

In reality, revolutions are often far less "new" than they like to pretend. 

Chapter 15

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Self-Fulfilling Labels

One issue that I faced with my male Alim in His in Herland was,  

Why should he have to hide? 

The male intruders--Terry, Van, and Jeff--don't. So why Alim?

Interestingly enough, the answer lies in the underlying "forward-thinking" ideology of most utopias. 

In Gilman's Herland, Terry, Van, and Jeff are treated as representing a current, contemporary, forward-moving culture. Van is embarrassed to admit how much society has not advanced (considering that the world was on the brink of World War I, "not advanced" is something of an understatement). Jeff is gleeful at the comparisons, which put American/European society in the wrong. Terry doesn't care, except he wants to leave. 

The leaders of Gilman's Herland monitor and supervise the men throughout their stay, though Gilman pretends they don't. They are never given any "legal" rights, such as voting or governance--not even the equivalent of driver's licenses!

The implication is that Van and Jeff, at least, have progressed far enough, they can be "educated" to the new way of living. Terry is a throw-back and therefore ungovernable and unmanageable. In the book, when Terry attempts to rape his wife, Alima, the answer is either to eject him or kill him. Moadine pronounces that death would be "kinder" than locking him up. 

In one version, Astyanax

is thrown from Troy's walls.

In my version, of course, Terry never goes that far. His exile is planned with Alim's help. 

But the leaders' reaction to Terry in Gilman's book--and Gilman's praise of eugenics (and Gilman's later sanguine acceptance--alongside other intellectuals--of WWI's "purging") shadow the dangers to Alim. Alim is a literal representative of the unprogressive mindset. He is Astyanax, Hector's son, a lingering remnant of the so-called evil past. 

For a culture that believes in "breeding," Alim would be a throwback. After all, at the end of the book, only supposedly completely progressive Jeff actually breeds in Herland. (Van and Ellador leave, then return.)

As my Moadine points out to my Terry (she is as ruthless as Gilman's Moadine):

“You three men are acknowledged intruders. And, too, your presence has temporarily quelled questions about the ‘other sex.’ But Alima, Alim, is a citizen. Any restrictions on him would be resented—by Alima and by his friends. He would be defended. But yes, some citizens would wish to send him away—because of his past, because he represents going back rather than forward.”

Astyanax, Andromache & Hector

“He is a boy, not a symbol. What kind of society is this that you can’t incorporate him?”

“The truth of him would cause conflict.”

“You think conflict won’t arise anyway? You think male distinctiveness is the only distinctiveness? Suppose Celis was more of a go-getter? You really think Tyra and others could keep her in place?”

The smallest smile touched Moadine's lips. “No. But destruction is always to be deplored. Should we start that battle now?”

Over one boy, a boy who could be persuaded to leave.

The argument here is between the reality and the label, or, rather, self-fulfilling label. As with all utopias, the problem is created by the utopia itself. 

If a society determines that certain people are "good mothers" and certain people are "bad mothers"--if it focuses on breeding as a way to remove the criminal element from human nature--if it insists that human nature must "progress," not in terms of functional governments and intelligent policies but in terms of inherent human nature--the enforcement of that mindset will follow. Tolerance ends at the point where "primitive," non-progressive, very human nature rears its head. It isn't supposed to return! Therefore, it must be eradicated! 

Rather than a frank and honest appraisal of human nature, labels become judgment--and self-deception. Terry's behavior in the book is unacceptable (as my Terry acknowledges). The utopia's downfall arises not from Alima's reaction--and Terry's exile--but from the surprise of the entire society that the label (we are a self-congratulatory pristine society who exercise the following advanced philosophies) didn't carry more weight than the circumstances. No infrastructure or law exists to handle the circumstances because, well, really, those circumstances shouldn't have arisen at all, now should they have?

Human nature is the battleground that utopias can never overwhelm and scorch from existence. The attempt to do so anyway--rather than accepting human nature as part of the equation--creates outcomes that far outstrip human nature in viciousness. Utopias are, in sum, dystopias in waiting.    

Chapter 14

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

Introduction: Too Much Seamlessness

Over the past few years, I have attempted several retellings of the classic Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. On the one hand, I consider the book to be one of the more interesting and substantive "modern" (1915) utopia novels. On the other hand, like with all utopia novels, it suffers from the burden of its own premise. 

The posts here address the problems of utopia. Each post is connected to one or more chapters in my tribute/critique of Herland, His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding.

First problem:

Is the only response to a utopia another utopia?

The best explanation of this problem actually comes in a mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Documents in the Case. The story is told through letters, reports, newspaper articles. One of the reports, written by the murderer's flatmate, John Munting, contains this insightful passage:

 [Lathom] is a real creator--narrow, eager, headlong, and loathing introspection and compromise. He questions nothing; I question everything...I cannot settle and dismiss questions, as he does, in one burst of inspired insight or equally inspired contempt...It was my fault that I did not help Lathom more, for, just because of my uneasy sensitiveness, I understood him far better than he ever understood me. It would have suited him better if I had violently disagreed with him. But I had the fatal knack of seeing his point and cautiously advancing counter-arguments, and that satisfied neither of us.

I have encountered a similar problem when faced with "no, no, Kate, this is the way life is" seamless narratives/theories from people on both the right and the left. 

I cannot agree with them, but I also fail to argue adequately because the response, "But life is more complicated than that--if you research any given time period, you will discover that your theory loses credence and even falls to pieces, especially when you look at history through the experiences of the individuals who actually created it"...comes across as waffling. 

Granted, I am personally drawn to pundits and thinkers who allow for nuance and variety. And I like to think that those pundits and thinkers win in the long-run.

But can one really argue, in the short run, with the "life is this an unarguable seamless theory" mindset?

In my master's program, one of my fellow students used to make these types of arguments, usually by utilizing a shallow version of Marxism that seemed mostly comprised of blame and Marxist terminology. (Not that Marxism offers much--but her narrative was trite, even by Marxist standards.) 

Nowadays, the student would likely wield a trickle-down version of CRT. And, unfortunately, these days, the student might be given more credence than when I attended classes over a decade ago. When I attended classes, the proclamation, "Those workers only said those things because they were brainwashed by the authoritarian establishment" was met with a kind of awful silence. The rest of the students--most of whom were quite leftist--would then move the conversation back to more intelligent ground: let's listen to the workers rather than reducing them to a "poor" group to be pitied, labeled, and disposed of.

I could never figure out whether I should argue with the "I have life all figured out and under my thumb because I have a theory" student or not. It seemed to me that the only person who could argue with her was a right-wing pundit. The two could batter each other with conspiracy theories disconnected from individuality. Everybody in the past was... They could toss labels and derisive comments at each other. 

(I came to the above conclusion about noisy arguers in 2004--it seems a trifle prescient now!)

 

As Kristin says in Last Man Standing (after Mike and Ryan start tossing "Bills" at each other), "Everyone has their own set of facts and a cable channel to back up the opinion that he already has."

In any case, my retelling/reimagining of Herland is an attempt to add nuance and complication to a utopia. And maybe that can't be done! No reason not to try. 

Chapter 1

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Isolation

It is typical of utopia novels/tracts to start with "I met a man who told me about..." similar to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

More's Utopia, for instance, is described by a traveler, Raphael, who claims the island was already populated when a group of Romans and Egyptians arrived there in a shipwreck. The resulting perfection is a combination of those cultures. James Hilton's Shangri-la is described by one man to another man based on the first man's encounter with Conway (the Ronald Colman character in the 1937 movie). Shangri-la is in the mountains and only reached by Conway and his companions when their plane is hijacked. 

All versions of His in Herland have struggled with this problem. In one version, I created trade between Herland, an island, and the mainland over a bridge. 

In the current version, I place Herland in a far more isolated position, even more isolated than in Gilman's book. In the book, the young men hear stories about the country (about the size of Holland) from guides plus they discover woven cloth in a river. Stuff leaks out.

The problem, of course, is that in reality, people also tend to leak out. Why wouldn't Utopia's fisherman keep going? Why wouldn't Herland's citizens up and leave? George Mallory isn't the only one who wanted to climb a mountain because it was there.

In fairness, Gilman's women are infinitely practical, which is a welcome change from rampaging idealism, but human nature is not infinitely practical, male or female. Road trips and rituals like Rumspringa exist for a reason. Good grief, Gilman got a divorce and hauled herself and a child all the way across the country to California--why wouldn't her women do the same? For that matter, at age 25, I drove cross-country in a non-air-conditioned Dodge Colt (stick shift) in the summer with a cat by myself. I would never do that now! (People get more risk-adverse as they age.) 

Even during Japan's most extreme isolationist period, people still knew it was there and eventually showed up in a "here we are; what are you going to do now?" way. (And, yes, people did leave, even if they did so partly unintentionally. Courtesy of Eugene, see John Manjiro, "whose biography would barely be believable as fiction.")

In addition, one of the most fascinating revelations of archeological digs is how much people in the past got around. Goods from Asia show up in medieval England. Folks from England show up in the Mediterranean world.

Not to forget, during the nineteenth century, that time of no-holds-barred nationalism, the attempt by antiquarians to discover the "pure" past of a nation ended in failure. German fairy tales weren't German--for one, a lot of them were French. 

And so on.

Isolation is necessary to utopias. Mobile people undermine utopias since (1) restless people indicate that people care about more than "needs" (sorry, Marx); (2) if mobile people can leave, other mobile people can arrive, and there goes the perfectly structured society. 

Star Trek tackled this problem in several ways (setting aside the utopian ideals of the show itself). TOS tackled it philosophically: How can you thrive if you are too happy? TNG tackled it, to my mind, somewhat more realistically. In "Masterpiece Society," the engineers on the planet are too excited about Enterprise technology to give it up. Now we see the cost of not being part of a space-faring community! No, thanks!

Welcome to human nature. 

To avoid the plot issues created by constantly mobile people (hard to write a critique of a utopia if the upshot is, "Yeah, well, it lasted about ten minutes"), the current version of His in Herland is extremely isolated--though Terry suggests that even this state of affairs can't last. 

People are always going to come.

Chapter 2

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding 

The Problem of Bullying

Many utopias purport not to need a police or other type of civil force. Citizens are described as complying with the society's blueprint. Something as basic as More's city-dwellers NOT agreeing to move to the countryside for 2 years is never addressed (or even contemplated). Goods NOT being automatically distributed as expected is also never addressed. 

The non-compliant behaviors aren't crimes, not by any credible moral standard. Simply--human nature. Suppose a city-dweller decides to leave the countryside before the 2 years of required labor are up? Suppose a city-dweller doesn't agree to give up a garden plot after the allotted time? Or an artisan doesn't want to leave one family to live with another as expected? 

The narrator claims that there are few private disputes in Utopia, which "observation" doesn't correspond to any human society that has ever existed in the course of history. 

Granted, More's Utopia is partly a thought experiment--but one imagines that a thought experiment would include some way to enforce the expected social customs/structure. Faced with how often human beings would fall short in More's Utopia, how could it possibly be kept going as described by the narrator?

There are only two ways: totalitarianism or stigma/condemnation. 

More falls back on a combination. The ultimate punishment is in fact death--first, the malefactor (breaker of customs) is placed into slavery (from which the malefactor can be pardoned), but if the prisoner/slave continues to rebel, the slave is killed. (How slaves are monitored is bypassed: the necessary number of guards is never addressed.)

The section on Punishments and Rewards, however, focuses more on condemning bad behavior (what must not happen) than on establishing laws. The virtuous are rewarded with accolades while the threat of possible stigma lurks around every corner (social media, anyone?). Citizens, for instance, can eat at home rather than in communal cafeterias but "no one does it willingly because it is not thought proper...besides, it would be stupid." 

Guess all us homebodies will have to go live in one of the colonies (thank goodness!). 

Many utopias disguise this inherent bullying with assumptions of compliance. They then rave about harmony and beautiful vistas, rather like small-minded American idealists on a boat ride being ushered about by bored Soviet hospitality managers. Oh, my, everything looks so nice--how can Reagan be so critical of the USSR?!

In Chapter 3 of His in Herland, I have Terry make the following point: 

"To be held inside walls without consent is imprisonment, however beautiful the walls or pleasant the food." 

In Gilman's Herland, the three men are taken captive by a cohort of tough, athletic women, about forty in number. Terry is carrying a gun but shoots over the women's heads. Interestingly (and I think correctly), Gilman has Terry balk at shooting the women directly. He is a product of his nineteenth-century upper-class culture. "Women and children first" was not quite as common as popular culture likes to argue (on the Titanic, most of the crew simply wanted passengers, any passengers, to get in the lifeboats). But the concept existed. Terry, for all his faults, is a man's man. He won't shoot women. He won't shoot anyone in the back. 

I took the guns away since my Terry is somewhat more cool-headed and slightly more ruthless--and is perfectly aware that women can be soldiers.

However, I also have my Terry "pull his punches" in the confrontation with the women. The men have arrived on the island/in the country, imagining they are tourists who will be shown the nearest hostelry. The women see them as invaders and behave accordingly. Terry doesn't want to start an international incident.

Gilman gives the women a bland, remorseless demeanor, but she also tries to present them as non-violent. It isn't...force! Oh, no! It's a kind of...herding...

Gilman is a good writer--a point I will refer back to later--and I want to give her her dues. But Terry is my truthsayer and the truth is...Taking people captive is taking people captive. 

Bullying is bullying.

One of the worst aspects of modern-day bullying is when people argue that their "niceness" or "good intentions" or "high-mindedness" or "identity" or, for that matter, other people's bad behavior/thoughts somehow wipes out the fact that they are using underhanded and cruel techniques to accomplish actually nasty things: take away people's jobs, smear their reputations, steal their life's work, commit violence against them, and attempt through various venues to cow them into submission. 

It's jealousy and small-mindedness under a veneer of benevolent righteousness. 

Likewise, taking people captive--while it might be justified--doesn't transform into something else simply because it is labeled something else. Violent or not, justified or not, the women ignore the men's human rights and put them in the equivalent of prison. 

In Herland, Van, the social scientist, tries to to explain everything (away); Jeff, the chivalrous, well, boob, thinks the women are pure and noble simply for being women. Both try to excuse the women's behavior by labeling it something else. Only Terry sees it for what it is--and he respects it. 

Elizabeth Bathory

To her credit, while keeping Terry somewhat more obnoxious than even I can stomach (but appropriate to his time frame), Gilman allows that Jeff, at least, is off-base. 

As my Terry states in the next chapter:

"Hopefully, the women’s agenda wouldn’t entail screwing us before chopping off our entrails or sending us on suicidal missions against a prowling enemy or playing games with our disemboweled guts or mounting our decapitated heads on spikes." 

My Terry knows more history that Gilman's Terry. Everybody has the capacity to be nasty. Someone doesn't instantly stop being a bully because that someone is female or the upholder of a utopia.   

Chapter 3

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding

The Problem of Sameness, Part I: Hair

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a skilled writer. 

Her six protagonists in Herland, if one includes Terry, have distinct and memorable personalities. She achieves this feat easily early on and never wavers:

Van is reflective, diffident, romantic, and observant. He is basically Henry from Northanger Abbey. 

Jeff is chivalrous and mild-mannered. He is more intensely romantic than Van since what he perceives as romance is a narrative in his head and based on almost entirely erroneous assumptions. But he never challenges his assumptions, so hey, he is happy!

Terry is brash, chauvinistic, and domineering. 

Ellador is curious, intellectual, and direct. She and Van become the perfect yuppie couple who will tour the world and write books about it. They will have, in all fairness, a decent marriage. 

Celis in the book is sweet and fragile. I, however, give her a core of ruthlessness. Celis gets what Celis wants. She wants Jeff because she can do whatever she wants with him. That is, my Celis is more Bianca than Katerina from Taming of the Shrew. Butter-won't-melt-in-her-mouth yet her suitors feel the whip hand nonetheless.

Not Gilman's characterization but my characterization was surprisingly easy to impose.

Alima is the fiery, rebel type. I took tremendous liberties with Alima, of course. In the book, Alima and Terry are constantly at odds but both seem to enjoy it (until the end). Think Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. 

Good characterizations and frankly more definitive than one usually finds in utopia novels. 

Here's where things get odd:

In Gilman's Herland, all the women have short hair. 

Gilman is making a somewhat caustic point. In her social class (upper-class Americans, culturally, at least--not quite at the Vanderbilt level but in that ballpark), a woman's hair was her "crowning glory." Gilman was unimpressed. Why should women have to put up with heavy, smothering hair that takes time to wash and comb and style when male lions and horses also have "crowning glories"?

I think Gilman has a point. 

Except all her women have the same hair style. 

As Rodney Stark points out about religion and Yasmine Mohammad also about religion: Remove the social/top-down requirement and people will begin to worship/wear whatever they darn-well please. 

And yet every utopia (left or right, religious or political) falls to pieces around this idea. Sameness becomes equated with comfort and security. 

In fairness, there is some truth to the idea. In cultures where cultural assumptions are grassroots-givens (rather than imposed givens), the same style of dress and hair and speech can create a feeling of belonging. High school cliques exist for a reason.

Gilman is not a fan of cliques and argues for a degree of freedom unique to her utopia. 

Yet her young women don't experiment with their hair? 

Between age 14 to 25, I bleached my hair, dyed it red, dyed it blue, dyed it black, dyed it pink. I grew it long (to my shoulders, which is long for me), cut it short, and shaved it off. I got perms. I tried out wigs. If I'd had longer hair, I would have braided it. To my everlasting gratitude, my mother was more interested than appalled by my experiments during the teen portion of those years. I honestly wasn't rebelling. I was curious. 

I simply don't buy the idea that the young women in Herland--if they are given as much latitude as the text argues--wouldn't do the same. 

For Terry, the lack of differing hairstyles indicates that the country is less free than his instructors argue. Terry is not necessarily right, but the cultural background that would make sartorial agreement a "given" is something Gilman wants to refute and assume at the same time. 

Utopias are always intensely personal. They reflect the author, not the differing realities of all the people who are unlike the author.

Chapter 4

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding 

The Problem of Sameness, Part II, Culture

The problem of sameness occurs in other utopias. Thomas More's Utopia promotes cities that are all "exactly alike" in layout. Plato likewise argues that the elite members of his Republic will share "common houses and meet at common meals." (Gilman was not a fan of communal living and allows for more "me" time and space in her utopia.)

The similarity in architecture and habits extends to an acceptance of established norms (ironically, since utopias are often formed in protest of standing norms). James Hilton's Shangri-la, for instance, though somewhat more hands-off than Plato and More's utopias, is based around the entirely unbelievable assumption that two people in a dispute--over a woman, for instance--will settle it peacefully because one person will let the matter go out of sheer "que sera sera" whateverness (as if an entire culture was run by Bingleys rather than Darcys). 

Hilton has his main character, Conway (who is something of a que sera sera guy himself) question the ability to get people to let things go. As with More and Plato, stigma (or "shame") is the operating factor, the inculcation that certain things are simply "not done." 

Gilman plays with the idea of accepted norms but is less willing to explain precisely where so much harmony starts from. She promotes individuality and an unnerving degree of cultural sameness at the same time. That is, she wants the easygoing "that's just the way things are" attitude of Shangri-la (More and Plato are more willing to punish people). Unlike Hilton, however, she doesn't have an entire tradition of cultural mores to back her approach. 

Shangri-la is based within a Tibetan high-context culture that promotes profound cultural convergence. Gilman wants to force an American/European culture towards the same end while retaining the low-context aspects of that American/European culture. 

In sum--

Herland combines intense individuality where one gets to do one's own thing and talk back to superiors and strike out on one's own path  paired with cultural harmony in which one subordinates oneself, at least in public, to the common good and acquiesces to that public's customs. And every leader is perfect, so they are admired, but if they weren't, they wouldn't be.

Yeah, right. 

An inability to recognize the inherent tension between the above positions is one of the most annoying aspects of people who prat about utopias. Many countries with greater cultural convergence than America/Europe also have far stricter immigration laws. Many countries with greater cultural convergence include far more stigmas about behaviors, even placing those behavior into the category of mental illness. Many countries with greater cultural convergence exhibit far more deference to older people, so that in the BL that I watch, achieving the parents' consent or, at least, lack of disapprobation is considered a primary goal. (So is going to school, getting good grades, working hard, and not causing unnecessary furor in public settings.) Pluralism takes a back seat to not rocking the boat.

The response to these obvious observations is to hack up cultures and people to create imaginary results. Preachers of "it's so much better over there" ignore that most other cultures are as complicated and multi-faceted as their own. Instead, they (1) present those cultures as monolithic entities; (2) "translate" those cultures to fit their needs and views.

In Chapter 5 of His in Herland, Terry complains about his companions' willingness to define the new world they are in as an extension of their own assumptions:

One payoff of our failed escape was I found a kind of refuge, a place to go when the demands of propriety became too much. I went alone. Jeff and Van were convinced that another attempt to escape would—who knows? Our imprisonment hadn’t changed substantially after our first attempt except for an increase in guards. I think Jeff and Van were afraid that another attempt to flee would be “offensive,” like showing up to a house party without a gift.

Chapter 5

His in Herland: Astyanax in Hiding