A review by octavia_cade
Moving the Mountain by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
3.0
Not quite as good as Herland, but I do appreciate future-world narratives where life is better rather than worse - though the self-satisfied destruction of big, "useless" animals such as tigers is where Gilman and I differ severely. Valuable primarily on the product-of-its-time level - it's interesting to see an early feminist utopia, but one can't overlook some of the more unsavoury elements (euthanasia of undesirables, for instance).
As in Herland, the breadth of thought given to the elements of the new society is impressive and refreshing - Gilman is always very concerned with educational reform, and the focus on schools is an interesting one. Where it stops being convincing for me is where is stops being convincing for the narrator - isolated from his former society by decades lost in Tibet, he returns to a new world and can't comprehend the relatively small time frame in which this massive social/political/economic change has taken place.
Frankly, I cant fathom it either.
As in Herland, the breadth of thought given to the elements of the new society is impressive and refreshing - Gilman is always very concerned with educational reform, and the focus on schools is an interesting one. Where it stops being convincing for me is where is stops being convincing for the narrator - isolated from his former society by decades lost in Tibet, he returns to a new world and can't comprehend the relatively small time frame in which this massive social/political/economic change has taken place.
Frankly, I cant fathom it either.