Getting Oriented Who are Van, Terry, and Jeff, and how do their views on women differ before they even arrive? How does Gilman explain a country that has had no men at all for two thousand years? What does the parthenogenesis conversation in Chapter 4 change about how I should read the rest of the book? Why might Gilman have called the opening chapter 'A Not Unnatural Enterprise'?
Reading the Satire What is Gilman satirizing when the women ask plain questions about American economics or crime? How does Van's training as a sociologist shape — and limit — what he notices? What's the real difference between how Terry, Jeff, and Van each react to Herland? Why might Gilman have made her narrator a man instead of a woman?