Herland is a story about four men that travel to a land of women and discover that a community of women was able to prosper and grow. A Raisin in the Sun is a story about a family that is trying to get themselves out of the poor state that they are currently stuck in. Although the two stories have very different plot lines, the message that is conveyed about women is similar. In Herland, the four men go into the land believing the the women will be weak and dependent on what men can give them. The idea that women are a submissive group that are unable to provide for themselves and are dependent on men is what they were always taught and what they saw in their daily lives. When they got to the land of women, they struggled to comprehend how women were able to be successful without men constantly in their lives. The society went against what they had been taught. They eventually came to tolerate the fact that women were okay without men and quickly began to marvel at how they achieved such a successful lifestyle.
A Raisin in the Sun has similar ideas about women that Herland has. In A Raisin in the Sun, the family is trying to move into a nicer neighborhood. The house they choose (and end up buying) is in a white neighborhood. They are unwanted there and the whites in that neighborhood want to pay them to leave. The black family, understanding that they are unwanted, struggles to overcome the social expectations that they will submit to the whites for money. Money is a very influential factor in many peoples' daily lives. Much like the men in the society of women, the black family would be different from the rest of the white community that they would live in if they moved. Accepting this fact and learning to adjust their lives to accommodate the new changes is a task that both the men in Herland and the black family had to do.
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