Although Gilman’s Herland does not entirely fall into the category, being more akin to a fictional memoir, it is a utopian novel. Herland is approximately 40 thousand words long, shorter than the generally accepted word count range for novels but much longer than an average short story. Gilman’s novel revolves around three main characters with the help of six secondary characters, unlike short stories, which usually have one or two characters.
However, the plot lacks depth, which, as Awkward-Rich suggests, gives it ethnographic quality devoid of any meaningful conflict; still, it contains several subplots to support the setting and themes of the feministic utopia. In conclusion, Herland seems to be a literary experiment without concrete action intrinsic to other novels, but it is filled with symbolism, and the story develops logically with the apparent resolution of presented conflicts.