To Herland and Beyond

Book excerpt: To Herland and Beyond is Ann J. Lane's perceptive biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of America's most important fin-de-siecle feminists. Drawing from an abundance of diaries, letters, essays, and two autobiographies -- one published, one unpublished -- Lane contends that her subject's inner life can be traced through the major relationships that gave form to her personality. Accordingly, instead of being a straightforward chronology of Gilman's life, the book is divided into chapters reflecting her relationships with her parents, her closest female friends, her two husbands, her neurologist, and finally her daughter. Of particular significance and interest are the author's analysis of the intellectual legacy of Gilman's writings and an engaging dialogue on Lane's own role as biographer and her affection for her subject.