Herland: Chapter 11: Our Difficulties Summary & Analysis

Marriage proves more difficult to navigate than Jeff, Van, and Terry initially thought. Van says he and Ellador discussed what marriage would be like before their wedding but he is ultimately surprised by just how much he took for granted. He notes that in America, what a woman thinks marriage will be like doesn’t matter once she takes a husband. However, the men soon learn more about the differences between mindsets in America and those in Herland. While they prepared for their marriages, the men assumed that they would be able to persuade Ellador, Celis, and Alima to adopt their beliefs about marriage. However, they find that these predictions and beliefs don’t matter any more than an American woman’s initial predictions about her marriage matter.

The trouble between the newlyweds has little to do with a lack of love and more to do with a lack of understanding. Jeff, Van, and Terry want their new wives to focus on housekeeping duties and activities that the men have been taught are “inherently appropriate” and pleasurable to women. However, the women have been taught to focus on higher duties (duties to the country and each other). Terry is often furious with Alima, but Jeff readily adopts Celis’s Herlandian ideas. Van takes a middle ground, being neither as lustful as Terry nor as chivalrous as Jeff. Terry rants about the fact that the women don’t know how to be wives (which, of course, they don’t, because 2,000 years stand between the present and the last time men existed in Herland) and hates the fact that all the women think about is fatherhood and motherhood.

After their marriages, Celis, Alima, and Ellador return to work immediately. With no work of their own to do, Jeff, Van, and Terry often go with their wives to the forest. Still, the men yearn for private time with their wives as couples. This yearning, however, is not reciprocated. When Van tries to talk to Ellador about it, she becomes confused and reminds him that they are alone in the forest together and frequently eat and talk alone together. Van acknowledges this, but to the reader admits that what is missing is “possession.”

Van tries to explain to Ellador that there is also a higher form of love to experience in their marriages separate from creating children. Ellador is puzzled by this and explains that there are birds who love their partners, but never mate except when it’s the right season. Exasperated, Van tries to explain that birds are a lower form of life than people and asks Ellador what birds can possibly understand about the love they share. Van ecstatically seizes Ellador’s hands, but she simply gazes into his eyes and begs him to be patient because she and the other Herlandians are first and foremost mothers; as such, Ellador explains, they “have not specialized in this line.”

Van tries to explain how this higher love between spouses can stimulate them to produce more creative work. Ellador asks him if he means that married people “go right on doing this in season and out of season” without considering children. With a hint of bitterness, Van explains that they do, because married couples are not just parents, but also two people who love each other deeply for their entire lives. Ellador enthusiastically admits that it is a beautiful idea that people do for pleasure what Herlandians generally believe only has a single purpose. She praises American culture on these grounds, noting that the people there must be invariably happy and productive. They both silently consider Ellador’s words until Ellador tells Van he must bring her to America one day.

In a narrated aside, Van tells the reader that he doesn’t have a lot of experience with falling in love, but what little he does have doesn’t quite compare with what he found in his marriage to Ellador. Van soon finds himself experiencing a profound calm feeling with Ellador that he used to believe could only be attained one way. Almost without his noticing, Ellador can distract him from what initially seems like “an […] imperative demand.” The results, according to Van, are surprising: what he once believed was a physical necessity is, after all, a psychological one. Over time, his feelings change, and the beauty of his wife becomes “an aesthetic pleasure, not an irritant.” At one point, Ellador experiences a “strange new hope” about dual parenting, but simply becomes a “good comrade” again when the feeling passes.

Ellador never leaves Van to dwell on his difficulties, but always tried to help divert his thoughts. There are distractions that can be deployed that hold Van’s attention until his desires simply go away. Van notes that in America, women are kept as different from men as possible. When men tire of the masculine world, then, they turn to the feminine world and enjoy the company of women. Whenever Ellador senses that Van is craving that feminine refreshment, she gives him too much of her “de-feminized” company instead of heightening his desire by withdrawing. Still, Van enjoys Ellador for herself so much that he is glad to be with her on any terms.

While Van and Jeff find more and more happiness with Ellador and Celis, Terry’s experience with Alima is much different. To the reader, Van explains that he simply never understood Terry’s true character until coming to Herland and is ashamed of what he found. Terry and Alima’s marriage turns sour and one day, in a fit of rage, Terry tells Jeff that there was never a woman who didn’t “enjoy being mastered.” Jeff angrily leaves Terry and even Van is disturbed by his words. Alima refuses to be alone with Terry, but this only heightens his desire for her. So, one night, Terry hides in Alima’s room and tries to rape her. Alima calls for help before any serious harm is done, Moadine and some other women intervene, and Terry is arrested. The women of Herland are shocked and repulsed by Terry’s behavior. As a result, the Herlandian court decides Terry must leave Herland.