CULTURAL ECOFEMINISM IN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S FEMINIST UTOPIAN VISION AND ITS LIMITATIONS

Abstract

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American feminist author of fiction and non-fiction, lecturer and sociologist of the late 19th, early 20th centuries. She integrates her sociological commentary into her ecofeminist vision for an alternative community consisting merely of women in her utopian fiction Herland published in 1915. The community she envisioned can best be read through the lens of cultural ecofeminism with her essentialist view of women’s innate tendency to uphold the sanctity of the environment opting for a peaceful coexistence rather than patriarchal domination. Since men are considered to be impediments to such a coexistence, they are absent from the utopian vision based on sisterhood of all women where they breed through parthenogenesis and raise their daughters as a community rather than in individual family units. Familial relations are not entirely eliminated, rather, as all Herlanders descend from a common maternal ancestor, are biologically as well as culturally connected.

Keywords

• Cultural ecofeminism
• utopian fiction
• gender identity
• Herland
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Kaynakça

1. BALIC, I., 2005, A Country of Their Own Politics of Space in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, Variations, 13, 103-117.
2. BOWERS, E., 2018, An Exploration of Femininity, Masculinity, and Racial Prejudices in Herland, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 77(5), 1313-1327.
3. CARLASSARE, E., 2000, Socialist and Cultural Ecofeminism: Allies in Resistance, Ethics and the Environment, 5(1), 89-106.
4. CARTER-SANBORN, K., 2000, Restraining Order: The Imperialist Anti-violence of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, 56(2), 1-36.
5. GAARD, G., 2011, Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Materialist Environmentalism, Feminist Formations, 23(2), 26-53.
6. GILMAN, C. P., 1908, “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem, American Journal of Sociology, 14(1), 78-85.
7. GILMAN, C. P., 2009, The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings, Knight, D. D. (ed). Penguin Books, New York.
8. GILMAN, C. P., 1898, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, Small, Maynard & Company, Boston.

9. HUDAK, J., 2003., The Social Inventor: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the (Re) production of Perfection, Women's Studies: An inter-disciplinary journal, 32(4), 455-477.
10. LEONARD, T. C., 2009, American Economic Reform in the Progressive Era: Its Foundational Beliefs and Their Relation to Eugenics, History of Political Economy, 41(1), 109-141.
11. MALTHUS, T. R., 1807, An Essay on the Principle of Population, T. Bensley, London.
12. PEYSER, T. G., 1992, Reproducing Utopia: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Herland, Studies in American Fiction, 20(1), 1-16.
13. RENSING, S., 2013, Women “Waking Up” and Moving the Mountain: The Feminist Eugenics of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, MP: An Online Feminist Journal, 4(1), 96-120.
14. RICHARDS, E., 1912, Euthenics: The Science of Controllable Environment, Whitcomb & Barrows, Boston.
15. SHAW, D. B., 2000., Women, Science, and Fiction: The Frankenstein Inheritance, Palgrave, New York.
16. WARD, L. F., 1913, Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics, The American Journal of Sociology, 18(6), 737-757.
17. ZIEGLER, M., 2008, Note, Eugenic Feminism: Mental Hygiene, the Women’s Movement, and the Campaign for Eugenic Legal Reform, 1900-1935, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, 31(1), 211-235.