REVISITANDO HERLAND: A NATUREZA FEMININA E PAPÉIS SOCIAIS DE GÊNERO SEGUNDO CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Abstract

This paper analyzes Herland, a utopian book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, from the perspective of the establishment of social roles based on a female nature. Used throughout history as the basis for a social system that excludes women from political participation and equal rights, the nature of the sexes – especially the female – was found in philosophical, religious, medical, literary and political discourses as a justification for a supposed female inferiority. Although several philosophers, legislators and other scholars fought for greater equality between the sexes, the essentialism, linked to female nature and women's biological functions, organized society and social roles according to an arbitrary hierarchy. From this, the present work analyzes the notion of the women's nature and then enters into the strictly feminine utopia proposed by Gilman in Herland, initially published in 1915 through serials, and then published as a book in 1979. To this end, we began the research by establishing the conception of female nature, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, using writings by philosophers who were both against and in favor of equality between the sexes. The explanation of female nature ends with Gilman's own formulation of androcentric culture, at the beginning of the 20th century. After the above, the research focuses on the analysis of the book that serves as the main object of research, examining how concepts such as femininity, motherhood, education, tradition and social roles are established in an exclusively female society. Finally, the issue of the male point of view and the androcentric language used by the novel's narrator, in his attempt to describe a society with women so different from those in the West, is discussed.