Problems with Utopias: Sameness

As I mention earlier, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a skilled fiction 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 wants 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, a fact referenced in the latest chapter of His in Herland

Gilman is making a somewhat caustic point. In her social class (wealthy 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 (women of her class had servants) 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 14-25, 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 

No comments: