They would survey, analyze, design, implement, maintain and re-evaluate, re-survey. Their way of life corkscrewed through their history following the pattern familiar to us as the braided helix of the strands of DNA. Since Herland was limited in quantity, the women concentrated on “continually improving in quality”. Not only was their way of life based on principles any permaculturalist would recognize, the results were remarkably similar too.Īs Ellador, the main woman character put it, “This country will only support a certain number of people with standards of peace, comfort, health, beauty, and progress. The culture of Herland is based solidly on the core values of permaculture: “Earth care, People care, and Fair Shares”, although they are of course stated in different words. Van, the narrator of the story, is one of a group of three men who have ‘discovered’ it. They live a communal life, and all the children are considered to be “our children”. It was about 10 or 12 thousand square miles and supported about 3 million women and girls. Gilmore imagined a country of women (who had somehow learned to reproduce parthenogenetically), isolated from the rest of the world on a high equatorial plateau. She first serialized it in her magazine, The Forerunner, that she wrote and published herself from 1909 to 1916, and with which she supported herself and her daughter. It was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore. There is a small book called Herland, first published in 1915, that strangely (almost eerily) foreshadows permaculture.

Herland charlotte perkins