Gilman Critical Theory

¨“Her sociological and historical works analyze the past from her peculiar humanist-socialist perspective. (Gilman insisted she was not a feminist; rather the world was “masculinist,” and it was she who sought to introduce a truly humanized concept”
-Ann Lane, Herland, a Critical Reader



“Herland is described as a feminist utopia because, as Theresa De Lauretis argues, it follows in the tradition of a feminist aesthetic that offers the opportunity to reveal misogynist assumptions and deconstruct androcentric norms…Herland also shares similar principles with other feminist utopias in that it examines issues such as social assistance, child-care, and community responsibility that are central to the discourse of women.”
-Lathrop, Anna. “Herland Revisited: Narratives of Motherhood, Domesticity, and Physical Emancipation in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Feminist Utopia”



¨Women and Economics provides a valuable source for teasing out the meanings of "sex" in Gilman's utopian novel and, therefore, that it is foundational to the social program she promotes in that text. Further, I will suggest that although Gilman's evolutionary feminism does not provide contemporary feminism with a model to emulate, it does offer an alternative view (within current debates) of the body as the locus of biosocial problems for women.
-Murphy, Graham. “Considering Her Ways: In(ter)secting Matriarchal Utopias”



¨“Writing combines two intermingled acts—exploration and presentation…cognitive mapping is essential to utopian thought. He contends that in order to think specifically about a better future, one must know exatly where he or she stands in the present…Utopian literature, then, is an exploratory mapping: mapping the present world as one imagines it and mapping the utopia as the site of exploratory solutions specific to the problems imagined”
-Arnold, Bridgitte. “’It Began this Way’: The Synonymy of Cartography and Writing as Utopian Cognitive Mapping in Herland”



a feature article entitled "Working Girls, Broken Society" is published.
Author contends that women's gradual access to equal opportunity in the workplace has led to serious negative consequences. Access to education and employment, she argues, has resulted in the death of feminist sisterhood, the erosion of female altruism, and a negative impact on childbearing.
¨"One could interpret today's feminist assumptions as reflecting the appetite of global capitalism for all talent, female and male, at the expense of the family."
-Wolf, Alison. "Working Girls, Broken Society“. Toronto Star, April 2, 2006



¨Financial disincentives to childbearing in the Twenty-First Century have now become so high for upper middle income women, that it is a puzzle why they have any at all.
¨Burggraf argues that the tension between the modern workplace and family well-being is real and irresolvable as long as capitalist societies place no financial value on the activities that take place in the home
-Burggraf, Shirley. The Feminine Economyand Economic Man: Reviving the Role of the Family in the Postindustrial Age.