With Her in Ourland - Ch. 1-5

[Silver]

Here you may discuss the first five chapters of With Her in Ourland. Please be aware if you have not finished these chapters spoilers may be posted here.

[Emma]

Can I open the commentary on this?
To summarise these chapters: Ellador accompanies Van eagerly to the outer world, seeing herself as as ambassador for Herland. A Swedish steamer takes them to Europe, where they visit the UK and war-stricken France before setting off around the world. They travel to India, Egypt, China and Japan, with Ellador making notes and observations all the way, until they finally arrive in California. As we would expect, Ellador finds much that is bewildering and distressing in the way people live, with war, poverty, waste and inequality.

So far I'm finding this book a strange mixture of travelogue and philosophy; but the travelogue element is so thinly described that it seems unconvincing to me. None of the countries are depicted with the detail of Herland. And none of the people Ellador meets is actually given a voice, apart from the missionary: I find it particularly odd that no other woman so far has had a word of dialogue. We're told that Ellador finds the women difficult to talk to, excepting a female doctor and a biologist on board ship - yet I feel that we could have done with some of their conversation to illustrate Ellador's difficulty.

Possibly without having had the chance to travel herself, Gilman didn't feel confident about describing other countries. But without any depth of context, I feel the philosophical side suffers. So far, I'm finding this rather unsatisfactory compared to Herland.