Herland and Selected Stories Quotes

“It was the eager happiness of the children and the young people which first made me see the folly of that common notion of ours—that if life was smooth and happy, people would not enjoy it. As I studied these youngsters, vigorous, joyous, eager little creatures, and their voracious appetite for life, it shook my preconceived ideas so thoroughly that they had never been re-established. The steady level of good health gave them all that natural stimulus we used to call “animal spirits” —an odd contradiction in terms. They found themselves in an immediate environment which was agreeable and interesting, and before them stretched the years of learning and discovery, the fascinating, endless process of education.
As I looked into these methods and compared them with our own, my strange uncomfortable sense of race-humility grew apace.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“They all wore short hair, some few inches at most; some curly, some not; all light and clean and fresh-looking.
“If only their hair was long,” Jeff would complain, “they would look so much more feminine.”
I rather liked it myself, after I got used to it. Why should we admire a “woman’s crown of hair” and not admire a Chinaman’s queue is hard to explain, except that we are so convinced that long hair “belongs” to a woman. Whereas the “mane” in horses is on both, and on lions, buffaloes, and such creatures only on the male.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“I always liked Terry. He was a man's man, very much so, generous and brave and clever; but I don't think any of us in college days was quite pleased to have him with our sisters.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“It was not a pleasant evening. She tried to read, but the insistent gnawing thought that her life was done, and not very well done at that, appeared on every page. She tried to sew—but the work she had at hand was unsatisfactory. “It’s only another failure!” she said to herself, and laid it down.
She had no fancy work. If her books failed her she was lonely indeed.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“I find it quite beyond me to describe what this woman was to me. We talk fine things about women, but in our hearts we know that they are limited beings—most of them. We honor them for their functional powers, even while we dishonor them by our use of it; we honor them for their carefully enforced virtue, even while we show by our own conduct how little we think of that virtue; we value them, sincerely, for the perverted maternal activities which make wives the most comfortable of servants, bound to us for life with the wages wholly at our decision, their whole business, outside of the temporary duties of such motherhood as they may achieve, to meet our needs in every way. Oh, we value them, all right, “in their place,” which place is the home, where they perform that mixture of duties so ably described by Mrs. Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, in which the services of “a mistress “ are carefully specified.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“I find it quite beyond me to describe what this woman was to me. We talk fine things about women, but in our hearts we know that they are limited beings—most of them. We honor them for their functional powers, even while we dishonor them by our use of it; we honor them for their carefully enforced virtue, even while we show by our own conduct how little we think of that virtue; we value them, sincerely, for the perverted maternal activities which make wives the most comfortable of servants, bound to use for life with the wages wholly at our decision, their whole business, outside of the temporary duties of such motherhood as they may achieve, to meet our needs in every way. Oh, we value them, all right, “in their place,” which place is the home, where they perform that mixture of duties so ably described by Mrs. Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon, in which the services of “a mistress “ are carefully specified.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“We can at least give them our names,” Jeff insisted.
They were very sweet about it, quite willing to do whatever we asked, to please us. As to the names, Alima, frank soul that she was, asked what good it would do.
Terry, always irritating her, said it was a sign of possession. “You are going to be Mrs. Nicholson,” he said, “Mrs. T.O. Nicholson. That shows everyone that you are my wife.”
“What is a ‘wife’ exactly?” she demanded, a dangerous gleam in her eye.
“A wife is a woman who belongs to a man,” he began.
But Jeff took it up eagerly: “And a husband is the man who belongs to a woman. It is because we are monogamous, you know. And marriage is a ceremony, civil and religious, that joins the two together—“until death do us part,” he finished, looking at Celia with unutterable devotion.
“What makes us feel foolish,” I told the girls, “is that here we have nothing to give you—except, of course, our names.”
“Do your women have no names before they are married?” Celis suddenly demanded.
“Why, yes,” Jeff explained. “They have their maiden names—their father’s names, that is.”
“And what becomes of them?” asked Alima.
“They change them for their husband’s, my dear,” Terry answered her.
“Change them? Do the husbands then take the wives’ ‘maiden names’?”
“Oh no,” he laughed. “The man keeps his own and gives it too her, too.”
“Then she just loses hers and takes a new one—how unpleasant! We won’t do that!” Alima said decidedly.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“Have you no respect for the past? For what was thought and believed by your foremothers?”
“Why, no,” she said. “Why should we? They are all gone. They knew less than we do. If we are not beyond them, we are unworthy of them—and unworthy of the children who must go beyond us.”
This set me thinking in good earnest. I had always imagined—simply from hearing it said, I suppose—that women were by nature conservative. Yet these women, quite unassisted by any masculine spirit of enterprise, had ignored their past and built daringly for the future.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“He never seemed to recognize the quiet background of superiority. When she dropped an argument he always thought he had silenced her; when she laughed he thought it tribute to his wit.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“They were much surprised that we were still burying—asked our reasons for it, and were much dissatisfied with what we gave. We told them of the belief in the resurrection of the body, and they asked if our God was not able to resurrect from ashes as from long corruption. We told them of how people thought it repugnant to have their loved ones burn, and they asked if it was less repugnant to have them decay. They were inconveniently reasonable, those women.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“They were inconveniently reasonable, those women.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories

“We found a friendly nut-tree, those large, satisfying nuts we already knew so well, and filled our pockets. I see that I have not remarked that these women had pockets in surprising number and variety. They were in all their garments.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland and Selected Stories