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 wishes 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--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 praise 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/read, achieving the parents' consent or, at least, the parents' 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

The Problem of Change

Ultimately, the creation of utopias comes down not only to a fear of being wrong but a fear of change. 

The latter may seem unlikely since utopias are so often associated with revolutions, theological, political, economic, and so on. And people can wish to build better environments without, necessarily, wanting to build utopias. That is, there is a distinction between "we are going to tame this wilderness," "we are going to usher in a new world," "we are going to live perfectly," and "wow, those roads really need to be repaired--excuse me, where do we put the sewer lines?"  The Founders of the United States recognized that the new social order would still have to deal with human beings--hence, the debates over how government should be ordered.

The veer towards perfection appears to occur when utopia builders--whatever their political stripes--try to cancel out or override mutability: change, human vagaries, human oddities, human nature. 

The end result is often not only a focus on how the utopia will run but a move to force human behavior into something that won't get in the way of that running. The utopia is no longer there to serve humans. The humans are there to serve the utopia. And the change in focus occurs because change--as a human constant--is seen not as normal but as a threat.

In the epilogue to His in Herland, I needed to figure out, "How would Alima Asytanax adapt to his new environment?"

In truth, I didn't think he would have any trouble adapting at all. My students from outside the U.S. adjust fairly quickly to life in the U.S., those who come from rural areas and refugee camps and those who come from cities in Africa, South America, Russia, and South Korea. They complain about winters in the Northeast. Otherwise, American modern life in a small city is not that big a deal.

However, the ability of a fourteen-year-old, high-energy, intelligent and curious boy to quickly adapt to a new life left me, like for utopia builders, with a writing problem: Oh, no, where's the conflict!?

I wrote The Translator.

Eugene: I agree that human beings evolved to adapt. It's literally in our genes. If anything, unless we actively swim against the tide and (purposely) give ourselves culture shock, we adapt faster than we expect. Language aside, the foreign isn't as foreign as we often want it to be.

The stumbling blocks are usually the mundane day-to-day stuff, not the National Geographic stuff. Like how the plumbing works. Or the sheer density of human activity.

In Non Non Biyori, which takes place in the sticks, pretty much anybody from anywhere else is exotic. So the hometown girl once treated as remarkable because she attends school in a nearby city now finds herself upstaged by the new girl who moved from Tokyo. Tokyo!

A common trope in anime and manga is the alien who shows up in Tokyo and almost immediately fits into daily life. This trope is not without precedent. In the mid-19th century, after 250 years of isolation, the Japanese government sent delegations all over the world and the rest of the world sent delegations to Japan.

I've always thought it's a good model for how an alien invasion would actually play out.

It seems that anime and manga became ubiquitous practically overnight (though it took half a century). Publishers figured out pretty quickly that they didn't have to flip the page order in manga. K-drama caught on even faster.

Kate: Your comment about "mundane day-to-day stuff" reminded me: during my study abroad in England, I got irritated because British stationary stores sold A4 size paper rather than 8-1/2 x 11, and the A4 wouldn't fit well in my notebook (and I'm used to America, which even back then sold every paper size). A peer commented that it was the first time she had seen me behave in an insular fashion (everybody else kept complaining about the weather) but it was the first time I actually felt inconvenienced. I didn't make the mistake of bringing only shorts, short-sleeve shirts, and sandals for a stay in England in July. Different currency was a given. Bank holidays were irritating but not that big a deal. The underground was fun! I adored the ability to buy little cheeses at Sainsbury rather than blocks of the stuff (and I loved the pastries). The dinky kitchen in our flat was cute. Ribena, though gross, was interesting.

But paper of the wrong size? Ahhhhh.

Taking the above into account, I went ahead and had the epilogue focus on Alima's ability to adapt. Life may get overwhelming--and then there's the unfamiliar plumbing.  Otherwise, life is life.

Utopias are static environments. Human beings, however devoted they become to routine or perhaps because they are so good are turning anything into routine, are not. 

Note about image: One of my previous versions of His in Herland took place at the same time as the novel. Terry stowed Alim in Herland and went to fight in World War I. Alim and many of the women helped wounded soldiers who found themselves near Herland. Terry eventually returned, flying his tattered plane the last few miles after a dogfight to crash-land near Herland and be taken in. He survived.

I retained the image (from a previous post) since my point still stands: Alim is willing to take on a supposedly more dangerous, less apparently streamlined world when he leaves Herland. 

Utopias are the equivalent of magical thinking: a desire to pretend that the weirdness and randomness and uncertainty and "we don't know the future" nature of life has been "handled," put in its place, rendered innocuous, non-threatening, manageable, unsurprising. Human beings can be stored and rendered happily not at risk--like Star Trek's brains, in stasis forever.

Alim abandons the pretense.

Epilogue

His in Herland or Astyanax in Hiding