Herland

Three male explorers hear rumors of a hidden country populated entirely by women and set out to find it, certain that no society could function without men. What Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives them instead is Herland, a peaceful and orderly civilization where women reproduce without men and raise their children in common. As the visitors learn the language and customs, their assumptions about gender, motherhood, and human nature come apart one by one. First serialized in Gilman’s own magazine in 1915, the novel uses gentle satire and a traveler’s-tale structure to argue that much of what people call natural is only habit dressed up as law. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.