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THE CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN READER is an anthology of ...)
THE CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN READER is an anthology of fiction by one of America's most important feminist writers. Probably best known as the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which a woman is driven mad by chauvinist psychiatry, Gilman wrote numerous other short stories and novels reflecting her radical socialist and feminist view of turn-of-the-century America. Collected here by noted Gilman scholar Ann J. Lane are eighteen stories and fragments, including a selection from Herland, Gilman's feminist Utopia. The resulting anthology provides a provocative blueprint to Gilman's intellectual and creative production.
Concerning children. By: Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman: Novel
(Charlotte Perkins Gilman( July 3, 1860 August 17, 1935)...)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman( July 3, 1860 August 17, 1935) was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. Early life Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Mary Perkins (formerly Mary Fitch Westcott) and Frederic Beecher Perkins. She had only one brother, Thomas Adie, who was fourteen months older, because a physician advised Mary Perkins that she might die if she bore other children. During Charlotte's infancy, her father moved out and abandoned his wife and children, leaving them in an impoverished state.1 Since their mother was unable to support the family on her own, the Perkins were often in the presence of her father's aunts, namely Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragist, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Catharine Beecher. Her schooling was erratic: she attended seven different schools, for a cumulative total of just four years, ending when she was fifteen. Her mother was not affectionate with her children. To keep them from getting hurt as she had been, she forbade her children to make strong friendships or read fiction. In her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman wrote that her mother showed affection only when she thought her young daughter was asleep.Although she lived a childhood of isolated, impoverished loneliness, she unknowingly prepared herself for the life that lay ahead by frequently visiting the public library and studying ancient civilizations on her own. Additionally, her father's love for literature influenced her, and years later he contacted her with a list of books he felt would be worthwhile for her to read. Much of Gilman's youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. What friends she had were mainly male, and she was unashamed, for her time, to call herself a "tomboy." Her natural intelligence and breadth of knowledge always impressed her teachers, who were nonetheless disappointed in her because she was a poor student.Her favorite subject was "natural philosophy," especially what later would become known as physics. In 1878, the eighteen-year-old enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design with the monetary help of her absent father,and subsequently supported herself as an artist of trade cards. She was a tutor, and encouraged others to expand their artistic creativity.She was also a painter.
(Long unknown to Gilman scholars, Art Gems is now recogniz...)
Long unknown to Gilman scholars, Art Gems is now recognized as the pioneering feminist's first book, discussed by Gilman's biographer Cynthia Davis: "The roughly 100 page illustrated volume covers forty-nine artists, each work accompanied by commentary written by the book's author, "Mrs. Charles Walter Stetson," a formality Charlotte may have adopted to capitalize on her husband's better renown in the art world. " (Davis, Charlotte Gilman: A Biography, p.104ff). Prior to her marriage to Stetson in 1884, Gilman had studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, and subsequently supported herself as a painter and a designer of trade cards. At a glance, the volume appears little more than a Victorian American parlor book, with little relation to Gilman's later feminist, socialist and utopian ideologies. But careful examination reveals that, whether she wrote about race, suffrage, or art, Gilman was a sensitive social critic. Her commentary on the images in Art Gems is frequently sarcastic, occasionally biting, especially as regards the representation of women in the artworks she has included. As one critic has noted, discussing Gilman's interpretative captions: "Gilman's phrasing suggests that she is imposing . her personal disappointment with the pervasive view that "no one would believe" an attractive woman can care deeply about books.We cannot ignore the social purpose and sarcasm behind Gilman's interpretation or the significance of her frustration with the social construction of domestic femininity: ideological characterizations of the woman were fluid yet persistent" (Catherine J. Golden, Images of the Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction (University Press of Florida, 2003). Folio, olive green cloth, with titling and decorative elements stamped in red and dark green to spine and covers; illustrated with 50 engravings.
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Author of the well-known short story "The Yellow Wallpa...)
Author of the well-known short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and other important fiction, Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman (18601935) was an ardent advocate of women's rights. In this classic feminist treatise, Gilman argues that women's dependence on men for their livelihood results in a state of arrested intellectual and emotional development deleterious to both genders. Moreover, she explains, such reliance causes shortcomings in the human species as a whole.
A landmark in feminist theory, Women and Economics was translated into seven languages and hailed as the "Bible" of the women's movement. Although its author's influence declined in the post-World War I period, modern feminists have returned to her still-incisive observations on the role and status of women, establishing Gilman as an important early figure in the struggle for women's economic and social rights. Now Gilman's masterpiece of feminist theory is again available in this modestly priced edition, ready to stimulate and inspire a new generation of women and men engaged in the ongoing fight for gender equality. New Introduction by Sheryl L. Meyering.
The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1869-1935) was one of the...)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1869-1935) was one of the leading intellectuals of the American women's movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Moving beyond the struggle for suffrage, Gilman confronted an even larger problemeconomic and social discrimination against women. Her book, Women and Economics, published in 1898, was repeatedly printed and translated into seven languages. She was a tireless traveler, lecturer, and writer and is perhaps best known for her dramatic short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman's autobiography gives us access to the life of a remarkable and courageous woman.
Originally published in 1935, soon after Gilman's death, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been out of print for several years. This edition includes a new introduction by Gilman's noted biographer, Anne J. Lane.
(Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist...)
Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination.
Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman was a writer and lecturer who tried to create a cohesive body of historical and social thought that combined feminism and socialism.
Background
Charlotte Perkins was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. She was raised by her mother, Mary A. Fitch Perkins, because her father left his wife and children soon after Charlotte's birth and thereafter provided little support, emotional or financial, to his family. Frederick Beecher Perkins, her father, was the grandson of the noted theologian Lyman Beecher, which made Charlotte's great aunt the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Beecher family was perhaps the most famous family in America, but when Charlotte's father left he took his family connection with him. She and her brother grew up in an unhappy, cheerless home. Mother and children lived on the edge of poverty, moving 19 times in 18 years to 14 different cities.
Education
Charlotte's schooling was erratic: she attended seven different schools, for a cumulative total of just four years, ending when she was fifteen. Her natural intelligence and breadth of knowledge always impressed her teachers, who were nonetheless disappointed in her because she was a poor student.
Career
In 1888, Charlotte published her first book, "Art Gems for the Home and Fireside", which went on to establish her as a professional novelist.
In 1890, Charlotte was motivated to write fifteen essays, poems, a parable, and the short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", which was a semi-autobiography on her life and which went on to become an instant best-seller.
First published in the New England Magazine in 1892, it was inspired by the author's experiences as a patient of S. Weir Mitchell, whose rest cure for women suffering from nervous disorders was highly regarded in the late 19th century.
Charlotte gained worldwide attention with her first tome of poetry titled, "In This Our World", in 1893. During this time, she also began giving lectures on Nationalism, which gave her a stable source of income.
From 1894 to 1895, she served as the editor of the magazine, "The Impress", a literary tabloid that was published by the Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association.
After moving to Pasadena, Gilman became active in organizing social reform movements. As a delegate, she represented California in 1896 at both the Suffrage Convention in Washington, D. C. and the International Socialist and Labor Congress which was held in England.
After years of travel, Charlotte wanted to document her thoughts on sexual relationships and economic capacities for women and she thus, went on to publish, "Women and Economics" in 1899.
In 1903, Charlotte wrote one of her best-known works, "The Home: Its Work and Influence". Three years later, she wrote and independently managed her first magazine, "The Forerunner", a feat she accomplished for one decade. The next year, she published another one of her well-known works, "Human Work".
From 1906 to 1910, Charlotte published a number of short-stories including, "According to Solomon", "Three Thanksgivings", "When I Was A Witch" and "The Cottagette".
From 1910 to 1911, Charlotte's magazine "The Forerunner" published her utopian works, "What Diantha Did", "The Crux", "Moving the Mountain" and "Herland". A number of her articles were also published in the magazine during this time.
In 1925, Charlotte began work on her autobiography, "The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman" and the work was published only posthumously. Five years later, she authored the non-fiction work, "Our Changing Morality".
In 1935 Gilman completed her autobiography. She said good-bye to her family, and, with the chloroform she had been long accumulating, she ended her life. The note she left appears in the last pages of her autobiography.
Achievements
Charlotte's best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis.
A serious critic of history and society, she tried to create a cohesive body of thought that combined feminism and socialism. She struggled to define a human social order built upon the values she identified most closely as female values, life-giving and nurturing. She constructed a theoretical world view to explain human behavior, past and present, and to project the outlines of her vision for the future.
The most important fact about the sexes, men and women, is the common humanity we share, not the differences that distinguish us, Gilman said repeatedly. But women are denied autonomy and thus are not provided the environment in which to develop. Women are forced to lead restricted lives, and this serves to retard all human progress. Men, too, suffer from personalities distorted by their cultural habits of dominance and power. A healthy social organism for both men and women, therefore, requires the autonomy of women.
She saw herself as engaged in a fierce struggle for the minds of women. She wrote historical treatises, sociological essays, short stories, novels, plays, and poems in an effort to win over women to her view of the past and, more important, to project a vision of the future. In sociological and historical works she analyzed the past from her peculiar humanist-socialist perspective. (Gilman insisted she was not a feminist; rather the world was "masculinist, " and it was she who sought to introduce a truly humanized concept. ) In her fiction she suggested the kind of world we could have if we worked at it.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's life remains as an inspiration to subsequent generations. Her daily living, her ideas, her writing, her lectures are all of a piece. She wrote about the need for women to achieve autonomy, and she struggled in her own life to achieve autonomy. She drew upon the painful and debilitating elements in our own inner and outer experiences as a central focus of her world. In a sense she studied history and sociology, economics and ethics, in order to understand where she came from, why her parents were the way they were, why her life took the form it did, and ultimately how to learn to control her destiny and to manage her life.
Quotations:
“It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it.”
“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”
“A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband. ”
“In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.”
“And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.”
“In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed for men and forbidden to women.”
“The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.”
“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.”
Personality
From the beginning of the marriage Charlotte Perkins Stetson suffered from depression. She became so seriously depressed that she was persuaded by her husband to consult the well-known Philadelphia neurologist, S. Weir Mitchell, a specialist in women's nervous diseases. His treatment stipulated extended bed rest to be followed by a return to working as a wife and mother. She was to give up all dreams of a career, she was never to write or paint again, and she was never to read for more than two hours a day. She followed his regimen for a time and almost experienced a mental breakdown. Calling upon some inner sense of survival, she rejected both husband and physician and fled to the house of the Channings, friends in Pasadena, California, whose daughter, Grace Ellery Channing, was Charlotte's dearest friend. Charlotte Gilman, aware that she suffered from terminal cancer, moved back to Pasadena to be with her daughter.
She was a utopian feminist and served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle.
Connections
At the age of 24, after a long period of uncertainty and vacillation, she married Charles Walter Stetson, a handsome and charming local artist. Their only child, Katharine, was born the following year. Charlotte and Walter were divorced after her nerveous breakdown, and Walter married Grace Channing. The three remained friends thereafter and jointly raised Katharine. Soon after Walter Stetson remarried, both parents agreed that their child should live with her father and his new wife. Charlotte Stetson, moderately well known by this time, was vigorously attacked in the press for being "an unnatural mother" and abandoning her child.
In 1900, after a long and carefully examined courtship, Charlotte married George Houghton Gilman, her first cousin. They lived happily until 1934 when Houghton died suddenly.
