Perhaps most surprising, however, especially given Gilman’s own romantic entanglements with women, is that before the men arrive, Herland is entirely sexless. There is no hint of lesbianism here: the citizens of Herland are firmly collectivized, with no intimacy between individuals. It is the men who introduce their partners to the very idea of sex. In 1900, Gilman had remarried to her first cousin, Houghton Gilman, with whom she lived — it seems happily — until his death in 1934. There’s perhaps something of that later, companionate, familial marriage in Van’s relationship with Ellador, the woman he falls in love with and then takes back home with him in the sequel With Her in Ourland, which appeared the following year.
