Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman(1860-1935)

Why did Charlotte become a feminist?

Mary A. Hill says:

“This anthology beautifully reflects the intellectual range and depth of Gilman's work. It

provides a valuable critique of many of her perspectives while respecting her originality and genius—as a fiction writer, poet, and theorist for the turn-of-the-century women's movement.”—Mary A. Hill, author of The Making of a Radical

Feminist

Carol F. Kessler says:

“An essential collection of essays covering Gilman's range of genres, written by new and established scholars, this volume offers timely reassessments of well-known titles and topics and incisive introductions to such lesser-known materials as the one-act play Three Women, His Religion and Hers, and newly published poetry.”—Carol F. Kessler, professor of English, American studies, and women's studies, Penn State University, Delaware County Campus

Janet Beer, author of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton agrees:

“These essays exemplify all the virtues of interdisciplinarity in consideration of that most multidisciplined of writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The contributors simultaneously clarify and complicate our understanding of some of the more vexed areas of Gilman's work by engaging saliently with her theories of ethnicity, class, prostitution, and the dynamics of gender; posing difficult questions to contemporary feminist scholars; and providing sensitive and insightful guidance to a well-chosen and wide range of texts.”—Janet Beer, author of Kate Chopin, Edith Whartonand Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction

Judith A. Allen thinks:

"Reconfiguring Vice," Judith A. Allen sums up the reason Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer is so unique: "The bulk of Gilman scholarship is literary in provenance.... Despite important exceptions, existing work is textual and to a degree biographical, rather than contextual in approach" (173).

Ann Lane thoughts are:

"She used her energies and her gifts in an effort to understand the world and her place in it and to extend that knowledge and those insights to others" (Lane, 1990, p. 229). Furthermore, "she saw the submergence of women as a critical handicap retarding the best development of society" (Lane, 1990, p. 232).

Gilman once said:“The female of the genus homo is economically dependent on the

male. He is her food supply.”