Herland

Surprising lack of female character development.

From a historical perspective, I can understand why this book is important. Gilman's satirizing of gender roles and gender essentialism were no doubt cutting edge in 1915; likewise, her critique of how patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism are intertwined was pretty insightful. The problem is that a lot of her critique has become accepted reality in 2018, so it makes her commentary seem obvious and at times trite.

This wouldn't be a problem if the protagonists were anything more than the blandest WASPs that ever wasped. They're not, however, and the lack of strong protagonists for the story to hang from makes this more an interesting bit of trivia than a compelling read in my opinion.

I read this book as part of a collection of classic tales of scifi and fantasy

Like so many of the classics its a adventure narrative but the writing is not that exciting to be honest. Its really a premise mean to illustrated and idea more than anything and explorying this ideal of what a all woman society would look like from a male perspective.

The 3 men seem to represent 3 differnt extreme's of masculity, from toxic masculinity to middle of the road to anytihng or her type men while it seem to push the idea that motherhood was the most sacred and be all end of all being a woman.

while sometimes seems to illustrated the ideas well it was not overall a great read, just medicore middle of the road at best. and not all the exciting TBH