Final Thoughts on Herland

While I may not actually want to live in society of only women, there are still some aspects of Herland that I am totally on board with. Mostly, I love the power and independence that these women posses. The women in this society have the qualities that many women today are still striving for. However, I hate to think that this is only possible in a land without men. Gilman's intention is to show that her society does not allow women to reach their full potential, but I would like to believe that this can be changed without having to exclude men from the society. Although we have made a lot of progress since Gilman's time, we definitely still have a long way to go.

Another thing I really enjoyed in this book was the way in which Gilman exposes the ridiculous ideals in regards to gender relations in our society. When the men are made to explain many of the behaviors and customs in their society, you can clearly see them struggling to provide valid reasoning for it. And when they do provide reasoning, it almost always sounds absurd.
One quote that I find somewhat comical (from Terry of course):

"We do not allow our women to work. Women are loved—idolized—honored—kept in the home to care for the children"

 I actually laughed out loud when I read this line. The fact Terry said women are idolized and honored but also kept in the home makes no logical sense, and I love Gilman for pointing this out.

The one thing I still can't get on board with is the sudden change of heart about the necessity of men in this society. At the beginning of the novel they are very clear that fathers are useless, but then by the end they suddenly believe that their society desperately needs the reintroduction of men. I feel like this change is in a sense admitting defeat, and invalidating any arguments made about the worth and potential of women. 

A Lack of Diversity

My first thought when starting Book 2 was: this place seems really boring. Reading about how each of the 54 cities/country towns are "identical in language, manners, customs and laws," I could not imagine being happy in a place like this. I know that the point of making everything the same is to rid society of "unnecessary desires" and to not make any one person better than another. However, I cannot imagine a life without different cultures and languages. While these differences may be a problem for many people in this world, I find them to be beautiful and intriguing and therefore I would not want to be a part of More's Utopia.

I can, however, appreciate the fact that in this utopia, basic skills like agriculture are taught to everyone. I think that's an important concept that should be implemented everywhere. At this time, agriculture was an important skill set and one that everyone should have. In today's time, there are many skills that everyone should be taught, but sadly are not.

An Internal Utopia

St. Augustine's utopia greatly differs from many of the others we have seen in that it is one that is essentially attained in one's self. By this I mean that the utopia is not necessarily a specific place that is created (like Plato's Republic for example), but rather a spiritual journey that brings a person's soul to this peaceful "utopia" which in turn would make everyone live in perfect harmony. St. Augustine's utopia is one that is more easily and realistically attainable than others we have studied; all you have to do is choose to follow this spiritual path.

Despite these differences, the utopia presented here still shares some common themes with the others. The concepts of truth, justice, and desires are all mentioned in this book. One quote that stood out to me was: "the desires of the flesh oppose the spirit" (pg 854). It seems to be a common idea in all utopian literature that people's desires need to be maintained, because that is often the cause of problems. From our discussions, however, it seems that we all seem to be in agreement that the idea of suppressing our desires is more dystopian than utopian.


 My final thought is on a quote from page 861:

"For when men cannot communicate their thoughts to each other, simply because of difference of language, all the similarity of their common human nature is of no avail to unite them in fellowship."

Although St. Augustine mentions language here, this applies to more than just differences in language. Even when a common language is spoken, a difference in culture is enough to have this same result. We see this way too often, throughout history and even today. It is the cause of racism and wars and many other problems in our world. It is a very critical reason as to why a utopia has been unattainable. Some people just can't seem to get past the differences enough to realize that underneath we are all the same.  

Food For Thought

If I could change one thing to make our world a better place, I would make sure that every person on this earth has enough food to live a healthy life. 

I know this is a somewhat cliche choice, but as I was considering all the things in the world that I wanted to fix, nothing seemed quite as pressing as this. The knowledge that so many people in this world are starving every day is a fact that I have never been able to wrap my head around. Even as a child it always nagged at me. With such a large supply of food in the world, why are there so many people without it? 

Food is a necessity for life; without it we die. Most of us that live a comfortable life with a constant supply of food often take that for granted, and we are often quite wasteful as well. I am guilty of this as well, I will not pretend otherwise. The greatest food waste, however, comes from restaurants and grocery stores. I witnessed this firsthand when I started my first job at a restaurant.  Every night when we closed, we would dump any cooked food that had not been sold into the garbage. And every night it killed me to throw out so much food. Often it was enough to feed a whole family, if not more. If I had the choice I would have taken it to the nearest homeless shelter, but it was against company policy to do this.

My solution to this is to make it mandatory that all restaurants and grocery stores be required to package and donate all extra food to the nearest homeless shelter. To help enforce this, any business that is found disposing of the food should be fined. If we implement this rule across the world, it could greatly reduce the number of people going hungry in many communities. This solution will only work for the communities with a large number of businesses, since the food will perish quickly and can only be transported to nearby areas. 

So, on a global scale, we must work on transporting food to locations that cannot grow the food for themselves. With the technology we have today, we should be able to easily transport produce all over the world. Additionally, we can help create new methods that improve farming in areas that are capable of it, and maybe even make it possible to farm on land that was once not capable of it. 

While these solutions may not be enough to completely rid the world of hunger, I do believe that this would be a very good place to start. If everyone gave just a little bit of time or money, we could greatly reduce the number of deaths due to hunger. As human beings we should all do our best to make our world a better place to live in for everyone.