Herland: Chapter 9: Our Relations and Theirs Summary & Analysis

Van writes that while the women of Herland experience intense feelings of sisterhood with one another, the men entered the country hoping to inspire “proper” feelings in them. However, whatever “sex-feeling” exists between the couples translates as friendship in the women’s minds. While the women think it’s natural to spend a lot of time with the men, they struggle to understand the concept of home. Terry explains that men like to keep their wives in their home, prompting Alima to ask what work wives do. Terry says the wives must care for the children and direct the servants, leading to a discussion about what women who have servants do for work. The men try to explain, but Ellador says it’s difficult to understand and that she’d like to see it for herself one day. Van says she will.

One night after a fight with Alima, Terry angrily rails against the lack of any excitement in Herland. He complains that the women have neither interesting vices nor virtues, which makes both Jeff and Van angry with him. When Jeff says that the women have plenty of virtues, Terry insists that they have none of the modesty, patience, or submissiveness that makes a woman appealing. Irritated, Van tells Terry to go make up with Alima and be happy again, but Terry goes on about how little there is for a man to do because the whole country is “an everlasting parlor and nursery.” When Van argues that the country is also a home, Terry grows angrier and tells him there’s not a single home there and that he prefers being in a place where there’s “Something Doing,” adding that in Herland everything is already done.

In a narrated aside, Van notes that Terry wasn’t entirely wrong—the Herlandians were no longer in a stage of development, but rather in a state of peaceful prosperity that only needed to be managed instead of overcome. Van likes this because he enjoys studying the sociology of the Herlandians and Jeff likes it because he has such a deep love of peace, but Terry—the ambitious, energetic, adventurous Terry—is bored by it. There is no jealousy or poverty or war, so there is no drama in Herlandian life. This, however, is good for the Herlandian children, who know peace, prosperity, and safety from the very beginning. The children are treated with unwavering kindness, respect, and patience by everyone, and everyone helps the children grow and learn about the world around them. Van compares this to the lives of American children, who are carefully secluded within the home. 

Van also notes that there are two life cycles in Western culture: one for men in which they prepare for an active public life, and one for women in which they prepare to get married and have children. In Herland, however, there is only one life cycle and all children look forward to taking part in the national life. To this end everything about Herlandian life is geared towards educating and caring for the children. In fact, Van notes that the Herlandian language was changed over time to make it easier for children to learn. Van is amazed that the women had the foresight and initiative to do this and accepts it as evidence of the fact that women can naturally develop these positive qualities—they are not exclusively masculine characteristics. 

Van says that one of the most impressive elements of Herlandian culture is the care every member of society shows to the children. All the women in Herland treat the children with unwavering kindness and patience. They are so well taken care of that Van says he never heard a child cry in Herland unless they took an unusually hard fall; and in these cases, every adult that heard the child cry would run to help. The women carefully design the environment in Herland to make it not only safe, but beautiful and interesting for their children to explore. As a result, all the children are uniformly happy and look forward to the day they’ll be old enough to work for the good of the nation, too. This, according to Van, challenges his long-held belief that if life is too easy, it is not enjoyable.

One day, Van asks Somel to explain Herland’s theory of education. She explains that women in Herland seek to teach their children by appealing to the child’s natural appetite for learning without forcing or overstimulating them. As children grow, the women help them develop their individual talents in addition to general knowledge. All Herlandians enjoy learning even as adults, and so they are always seeking new information and ideas. This in turn helps them develop new and better ways of teaching the next generation, continually adding to the pool of general knowledge that all Herlandians share. They also develop new educational games from one generation to the next that are fun for women of all ages. Above all, Herlandian education helps foster the sense of sisterhood and unity that characterizes their culture.