Charlotte Perkins Gilman She also self-published a magazine titled, The Forerunner, for seven years; the magazine is an incredible collection of thought and ideas and an example of how driven she was. Best known for her short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper," Gilman was a woman who wrote a great number of works, from short journalism to book length discussions of the social realities of women's lives to poetry. Her book, Women and Economics was acclaimed as a major triumph and re-published in several languages; Vassar College even used it as a textbook for a short time. Gilman's major concern during her lifetime was feminism-- women's suffrage as well as women's economic independence.
Transcript
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
She also self-published a magazine titled,
The Forerunner, for seven years; the magazine is
an incredible collection of thought and ideas and
an example of how driven she was.
Best known for her short story "The Yellow
Wall-Paper," Gilman was a woman who wrote a
great number of works, from short journalism
to book length discussions of the social realities
of women's lives to poetry. Her book, Women
and Economics was acclaimed as a major
triumph and re-published in several languages;
Vassar College even used it as a textbook for a
short time. Gilman's major concern during her
lifetime was feminism-- women's suffrage as
well as women's economic independence.
Biography
She was born Charlotte Anna Perkins, on July
3, 1860, in Hartford, CT. Her mother was Mary
Fitch Westcott, and her father was Frederic
Beecher Perkins. This made Gilman the great
granddaughter of Lyman Beecher, and the great-
niece of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher
Stowe. She had a brother, Thomas Adie, who was
14 months older; there were two siblings who died
in infancy. Gilman's mother was advised to have
no more children, soon after this, her father left
the family on their own. Critics have guessed that
the basis for his desertion was concern of killing
his wife in childbirth. (Wells) The family was sent
to live with relatives; they were the "poor
relations" who traveled around frequently during
Gilman's childhood. Maybe this is one reason that
Gilman herself developed
unsure outlook about marriage and declared to not
marry. Needless to say, that vow was broken when
she married Charles Walter Stetson. Their
marriage was a troubled one, eventually ending in
a controversial divorce. They had one daughter,
Katherine Beecher Stetson who was born
March 23, 1885. Many years later (in 1900),
Gilman was re-married to her cousin George
Houghton Gilman; they remained happily married
until his sudden death May 4, 1934. After his
death, Gilman moved to California to be with her
daughter and her family. Gilman learned in 1932
that she had incurable breast cancer. As an
advocate for the right-to-die, Gilman committed
suicide on August 17, 1935 by taking an overdose
of chloroform. She "chose chloroform over
cancer" as her autobiography and suicide note
stated. (Wells) It seems that in her lifetime,
Gilman was well respected among her peers and
socialist circles. Her original attempt at
publishing “The Yellow Wallpaper” failed as
Horace Scudder, the editor of The Atlantic wrote,
“that it was so terribly good that it ought never to
be printed.” (Reuben)
Bibliography
Non-Fiction•Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. (1898) •Concerning Children. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. (1900) •The Home: Its Work and Influence. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co. (1903) •Human Work. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co. (1904) •The Man-Made World; or, Our Andocentric Culture. New York: Charlton Co. (1911) •His Religion and Hers: A Study of the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers. New York and London: Century Co. (1923) •The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography.. New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Co. (1935)
Fiction •The Yellow Wallpaper. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. (1899). •What Diantha Did. New York: Charlton Co. (1910) •Moving the Mountain. New York: Charlton Co. (1911) •The Crux. New York: Charlton Co. (1911) •Benigna Machiavelli. (1916) [serialized in Forerunner]; Santa Barbara, CA: Bandanna Books, 1994. •Herland. (1915) [serialized in Forerunner] •With Her in Ourland. (1916) [serialized in Forerunner] •Unpunished. [detective novel; First published by Feminist Press, Hardback edition 1997, paperback edition 1998]
Poetry •In This Our World. Oakland, California: McCombs & Vaughn (1893) •Suffrage Songs and Verses New York: The Charlton Company. (1911)
http://www.scaryforkids.com/yellow-wallpaper/
•
Prior to the twentieth century, men delegated and
defined women’s responsibilities. Although all
women were affected by men shaping women’s
behavior, for the most part middle class women
suffered. Men carried out an ideological prison that
subjected and suppressed women. There were three
main feminist movements in the late 1800’s through
the early 1900’s. After 1870, “the suffragists”
focused on winning for women the right to vote.
Their opinions were slightly different than those of
suffragists before the Civil War. Early reformers had
argued that women, as human-beings, had a natural
right to vote. From the 1870s on, however, suffragists
took their cues from the Cult of True Womanhood
and contended that women were unlike and, in some
cases, better than men. Women, for example, were
more noble, more spiritual, and truer
of heart then men. Granting women the right to vote,
they argued, would help filter political corruption in
the United States. Social feminists agreed with the
suffragists that women should get the vote, but
dedicated themselves to social reforms other than
suffrage. Part of that generation of women who first
gained access to higher education
The new generation of social feminists were
more conservative, but also more pragmatic. Radical
feminists offered a much stronger evaluation of
American society, economics, and politics. Charlotte
Perkins Gilman was the most prominent of this
group. In 1898, Gilman achieved international fame
with her book, Women and Economics: The
Economic Factor between Men and Women as a
Factor in Social Evolution, a condemnation of the
Cult of True Womanhood. Her chief arguments in the
book were quite radical for America at the turn of the
century. She argued that: common humanity shared
by men and women was far more important than
sexual differences, Social environment, not biology,
determined the roles of men and women in society, in
an industrial society, women would be released from
the home, enabled to make a broad human
contribution rather than a narrow feminine
contribution to society. (Schultz) Gilman founded the
argument, which she would expand and continue
throughout her life, that the economic reliance of
women on men not only delayed their intellectual
and emotional growth, it also prevented the healthy
