"A Little Happy Sound": Collective Labor, Ecocide, and Soundscapes in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland

Abstract:

Previous scholarship on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel Herland (1915) has compellingly argued that the ecological space in the novel reflects an extension of an idealized domestic sphere, as a site where Gilman’s problematic eugenic beliefs manifest through the careful conservation of a park-like space. This analysis tends, however, to be wholly ocularcentric, grounded in the aesthetics of the verdant environment that features in Gilman’s narrative. As a necessary sensory departure from a visually preoccupied body of scholarship, I examine the barren sonic portrait that Gilman creates through her essayistic prose, arguing that female autonomy, individual orality, and bio-diverse ecological space become problematically compromised. Drawing on the intersections between feminist scholarship on Gilman’s novel, soundscape studies, and ecocritical frameworks in the environmental humanities, this essay aims to sonically deconstruct the problematic eugenic discourse that underpins Gilman’s ultimate human fantasy.