Those familiar with Gilman's other works— from fiction such as "The Yellow Wallpaper" to nonfiction like Women and Economics—are aware that her principal interest as a writer involves exposing the crushing gender inequities condoned by law and culture in her time. Herland is no exception.

In this novella, Gilman performs a kind of thought experiment, imagining what a world might be like if women were its only occupants and governors. Put simply, the world is nearly perfect; the three men who discover it wait and search in vain for a full year to discover some flaw in the system.

Thus, Gilman addresses concerns about the society in which she lives by pointing out how an ideal civilization would cure those social ills.

At the time Gilman wrote Herland, the gap between rich and poor in the United States was even more pronounced than...